Everyone is looking forward to celebrating Red Ribbon Week with enthusiasm, emphasizing the critical importance of maintaining a drug-free lifestyle. Students and teachers are very excited about all the activities planned for this special time of year. 

All students completed the assessment on Vocabulary Unit 4. Due to the short week ahead, we will not begin our next unit until November. We will be doing some review activities to help reinforce the students' knowledge of Units 1 - 4. 

Study Strategy Recommendations:

- Engage in daily vocabulary review sessions lasting 10-15 minutes

- Develop flashcards or utilize digital study platforms

- Practice incorporating new terminology into contextual sentences

- Facilitate discussions regarding word meanings and practical applications at home

We are maintaining our NFF (Non-fiction Fridays) initiative, wherein students analyze non-fiction articles, respond to comprehension questions, and complete brief, ten-question, multiple-choice assessments. This program is designed to prepare students for MAP testing and the HSPT examination; therefore, these assignment grades will be recorded in the "practice" category of the gradebook.

Sixth-grade students did a great job on their projects for the novel! The projects were shared in class, and we all learned a lot from the process of navigating this brand new Google program. We will definitely use it more this year for some shorter assignments, and students should be quite proficient in it by the end of the school year. 

We are now working on a combination project that combines an application of our grammar lessons with persuasive writing. Students will be applying everything they learned about both topics as they create an advertisement to persuade others to come to their carnival. We will work on this project throughout the week ahead, and students will hopefully enjoy the opportunity to be creative, particularly during a short week. 

Seventh-grade students have finished their novel, taken the final assessment, and are now working on a project that covers the novel. They will be working on this during the week ahead, and hopefully they will enjoy the flexibility of working on a project during our short week. 

When we return in November, students will finish out the trimester by reading some high interest short stories. This will give students the opportunity to work on some of the skills they will need to use when we begin our next novel. 

Eighth-grade students are continuing to read the historical fiction novel, Johnny Tremain, while at the same time, working on HSPT preparation. We are taking practice tests to help students get familiar with the timing aspect of the test, as well as how the test is structured. At this time, we are focusing on the Language section, which encompasses three parts. 

The first part is capitalization, punctuation, and word usage. The second part is spelling, which the students are not very excited about; however, there is a spelling list in the HSPT practice book that all students have. The third part of this section of the test is composition, where students have to answer questions about the structure of the writing. In this section, they are asked to choose a sentence that doesn't belong in a paragraph, a sentence that expresses the main idea of a paragraph, etc.  

We have incorporated educational games to facilitate word learning, and students are encouraged to create flashcards for reinforcement. A link to complimentary flashcards covering over 1,000 essential vocabulary words has been provided for the students in their Google Classroom, as well as links to videos that further explain all of the sections on the HSPT.

We will continue to practice all of these areas between now and the test. Initially, I was only doing the lessons on Wednesdays, but as we are getting closer to the date of the test, we are going to be incorporating these areas nearly every day, if only for a few minutes of discussion and/or practice. As a reminder, if you have not signed your student up for the test yet, please reach out to Mrs. Ashby to take care of that as soon as possible. 

While students participate in test preparation activities within their ELA and Mathematics courses, they should definitely supplement this instruction with independent study outside of school, reviewing vocabulary and practicing additional skills that will be assessed.

Remember that there is no school on Thursday or Friday, and that conferences are held on Thursday for those who have already signed up.

Have a blessed week, 

Mrs. Lastner