(May 16) Students received their cultural folktales today and are having fun reading their stories.  In the next couple of weeks, students will be studying their individual folktales and preparing to retell them orally in class.  The retellings will begin May 30.

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Friday (April 20) -  Today, students took the math test.  On Monday, they will take the reading test.  Although the scores for these tests does not give a complete picture of a student's performance level, it does give a snapshot of his/her reading and math levels.  Thus, they are used to aid in placement of classes and to give teachers an understanding of students' progress.  This test is not something a student can study for; it tests the knowledge the student has already gained. 

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Today we completed the reading of the play,  inspired by the 60's television show, The Twilight Zone.  Classes discussed the effect of how fear and prejudice brings people to suspicion and illogical thought. 

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Classes finished reading the play, adapted from the novel by Charles Dickens, and now students are working on activities/handouts to prepare them for the upcoming test.  For the regular classes, the test is tomorrow (Friday - March 16).  For the high class, the test is Monday (March 19).

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Testing begins Tuesday (March 6), and goes through Friday (March 9).  The schedule is adjusted in order to allow time for testing, so classes are shortened.  In LA, we practiced extended response, which is a challenging part of the reading section of the test.  Also, throughout the year, students' unit benchmark tests are formatted similarly to the ISATs, so there's been plenty of practice in test-taking.

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Classes will begin reading a play version, this week, of the well-known Charles Dickens story, A Christmas Carol.  We will be  incorporating the uses of stage directions and character dialogue.  Students will be assigned their roles soon and are excited to participate.

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Students should be in the process of reading their third required book at this point in the quarter.  A book project is due March 16.  The project options were presented to the students at the beginning of the quarter, along with the reading schedule.  The three required readings have been: a classic, a fictional book within the student's lexile range, and a narrative nonfiction.  Students are not required to read them in that order.

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Students should be actively reading their silent reading books at this point in the quarter.  Students were given the opportunity to check out books from the Lincoln LMC two weeks.  These must be fiction books, within the students' lexile ranges, and single story novels (not anthologies).  Students must complete the reading by March 16.  A book project will follow.

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Students are in the process of working on their editorials.  This week, we'll begin the prewriting process and move into typing on Wednesday and Thursday.  Students will be submitting their essays in to Writing Coach (Lincoln's writing program) online for instant feedback and will have the opportunity to make corrections before handing in the final draft.  This will be the first time seventh graders will go through this process.   

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