New School Year 2010

Well, I've come to the end of a great first day of school!  Our 'Shamrock Bootcamp' went well and our students are prepared to be on the Shamrock Way all year.  I am excited to meet more students tomorrow and the rest of this week.  My advisory class is full of globally minded students that are ready to meet the challenge of this next school year.  They have set high goals for themselves, and I believe that they can reach them all!

Spring Update

Wow,   am I realizing that I am not used to the whole blogging "thing"!  It has been too long since an update has been written.

We just finished our spring Parent Teacher Conferences here at BSMS.  I really appreciated all the parents and family members that came in to talk with me.  Remember that I also am available by phone, email or notes.  Everyone is super busy these days, but please, contact me if you have any concerns or questions.

My students in Reading 7 are finishing Unit 5 in the Making Meaning program, which focuses on making inferences and finding cause and effect relationships.  We will be moving soon into a unit on making inferences in non-fiction text.

I am looking forward to this last marking period that starts after spring vacation. We will be working on many more reading strategies-- including summarizing and synthesizing, and discussing how we plan to continue reading over the summer. I know that our students have become more thoughtful and focused while they are reading and by making plans to read throughout the coming summer months, our students won't lose stamina to read longer text-- and become 'rusty readers'.

Scholastic's ClassroomsCare

Our 7th grade reading classes have joined Peyton and Eli Manning in the race to read 100 books. When students in my classes read 100 books, Scholastic and their partners will donate 1 million books to kids in need. My 5 reading classes are currently racing to see which class will be the first to reach 100 books. Helping Scholastic give books to kids that don't have access to books shows our compassion, which is one of our Shamrock Pride values.

GO KIDS!

End of First Marking Period??

Is it really the time for report cards? Yes it is! On Friday, Nov. 6, we end our first marking period for school year 2009-2010! Students are busy keeping up with work, and turning in any missing work before it's too late.

In reading class, we are finishing our second unit of study. The first unit was "Our Reading Lives" and focused on laying the ground work for how we will work as a reading community. The second unit was focusing on Expository Text and it's features. We have learned about Woodlands and also Wolves in the process. Coming up for next marking period are Unit 3, Analyzing Literature through Short Stories and Unit 4, Inference in Literature and Poetry.

Welcome Parents!

I want to welcome parents to the Back to School open house today! I will be discussing my reading class with you and informing you about what we will be learning about this year.

I hope that I see many of you here!

Make sure to check out a Scholastic Book Order form. Many of my students have already taken one home. I recommend Scholastic for it's variety and reasonable prices for Children's and Young Adult Literature.

New School Year-- New Job!

It's the start of a new school year, and I will be teaching reading at BSMS, but in a new way. Instead of teaching small groups of students in grades 6, 7 and 8-- I will be teaching reading strategies to the whole 7th grade. I am looking forward to this new position, and the chance to get to know ALL of the 7th graders.

Reading Rocks!