November News!!
7/8A Language Arts:
This month in English Language Arts, we will continue on perfecting our paragraphs, this time looking at non-fiction and persuasive writing. For Media Literacy
We will focus on the RSA videos - mainly the 
video 23 ½ hours. Have you seen it? Check it out:
video 23 ½ hours. Have you seen it? Check it out:
Very cool!
Reading: mostly self-selected texts plus articles I choose for in-class reading. WHY? WHY DON’T YOU DO A NOVEL STUDY MRS. BIBBYSMITH? Because, what if you hate the novel? I once had a grade 11 teacher drag me through Macbeth. We read it word for word. She would stop every couple of lines or so and explain in her plain English what it meant. Ugh. By the end of that play I hated it and hated English class. There is nothing wrong with Macbeth (or as McDeath, as we nicknamed it), but it was dissected to death until there wasn’t a wonderful play written by the world’s best playwright, but rather a pile of mush on a plate a dog wouldn’t touch!
I think you should enjoy and choose what you want to read, for the most part. And by grade 7 and 8, books can be swallowed up by paragraph after descriptive paragraph, sometimes whole chapters in one gulp, not cut apart until you can’t see the forest for the trees! Okay, I’ll get off my soap box now. On to:
DEBATES!!!
Yes, we will be entering the severely rule-based world of formal debates for our oral language skills. This should go along nicely with the persuasive writing.
sPeLLiNg: We really need to work on this. I wish spelling would go away but it won’t. Everyone is at different levels so you will get your own list on Monday and get tested on Friday. There will be many different activities you can choose from to help you learn the spelling rules.
SCIENCE: Grade 7
We will finish working on Ecosystems, with a test and a culminating project. There will be many different options for showing your understanding of an ecosystem. Stay tuned!!
SCIENCE: Grade 8
Our Water Systems Unit is almost complete, as the students finish up their Scientific Posters on the distribution of the World’s water, or researching our Grand River trip. Yes, there will be a test. Not a big one, but we will have a good, old fashioned test.
