-Where the Red Fern Grows
-Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie- October/November
-Dar and the Spear Thrower-November
-A Long Walk to Water-February
-Homeless Bird-Read in April during Social Studies
-Number the Stars -May/June
-In addition to the novels above, we will also read several short stories while practicing reading strategies such as Questioning, Predicting, Summarizing, Finding Evidence, etc. We will also do a unit on poetry in May, including analyzing song lyrics of current songs.
-StudySync Stories
-Stray-
-Sound of Summer Running-
-Zlateh the Goat-
-Titanic
-Lob's Girl
-Mummy 1770 (in conjunction with our Social Studies Egypt unit)
-Breaker's Bridge (in conjunction with our Social Studies China unit)-
Order scholastic books online!
-Use this link to order books from scholastic. Each time an online order is placed, it gives points to our class which turns into free books for our classroom library!
Students will be responsible for reading 1 ARP book per month for a classroom assignment. This book must be in their color range. They will also be required to take a computerized test on that novel as well as occasionally do a monthly project on that book, which will change each month. The project is usually due the last day of the month. Students will need to hand in a cover sheet, a printout of their test, and the project if there is one for the month. This will be worth either 50 or 80 points per month (a huge part of their grade).
Check your book's level and point value here!
September-no project-read a book on your level and take an ARP test
October
November
December
January
February
March
April-no project due to PSSA testing, read a book and take a test
May
Each book is worth a certain amount of points depending on its level. In May the school will hold an ARP auction. Each student with more than 80 ARP reading points, and an 80% cumulative score on tests, will be able to attend the auction and bid on prizes. The more you read, the more points you get, and the better your chances are at getting a great prize. Students may save up their points for the coming year as well.
Each unit in Vocabulary works on a one or two week cycle. Each assignment will be checked the following morning.
Projects by Unit
We will do a daily review using 5 sentences to review concepts such as punctuation, commas, usage etc. There will be a quiz after we have completed 10 weeks of practice.
We will practice grammar every day using one sentence for the entire week. Each day we practice something new. There will be occasional quizzes (at most 5 per year). They will use this type of grammar throughout middle school and it will be helpful for the grammar exit exam that they must take at the end of each year.
Monday-Parts of Speech
Tuesday-Sentence parts
Wednesday-Types of Sentences/clauses
Thursday-Editing
Friday-Diagramming
Quiz 1
Quiz 2
Grammar Exit Exam: -100 questions
-We will take a pre-test in Sept. and the post test in May/June