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Literacy - Mr. Rowan

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Weekly Update - September 9

This week students will begin their rough draft of their trial opening statement on whether Brother, from The Scarlet Ibis, is guilty or innocent of the death of Doodle. We will be going over what a trial, jury, prosecutor, a defense attorney are. In addition, we will break down the opening statement into the following parts:
Theme
Appeal to Emotion
Theory
Claim
Evidence
Appeal to Expert
Summary
Verdict
In addition, students will continue to work on their writing by focusing on forming compound sentences from two simple sentences using and, for, but, so, or.
 

Weekly Update - September 9

This week students will begin their rough draft of their trial opening statement on whether Brother, from The Scarlet Ibis, is guilty or innocent of the death of Doodle. We will be going over what a trial, jury, prosecutor, a defense attorney are. In addition, we will break down the opening statement into the following parts:
Theme
Appeal to Emotion
Theory
Claim
Evidence
Appeal to Expert
Summary
Verdict
In addition, students will continue to work on their writing by focusing on forming compound sentences from two simple sentences using and, for, but, so, or.
 

Weekly Update - September 3

In Language Arts students will be working on a couple of things this week.
  1. Students will be given questions from the Scarlet Ibis. Students will be required to go back through the story and answer these questions. They will need to provide evidence as they answer these questions using the RACES strategy.
  2. Students will continue to research and put together their arguments for or against whether Brother is guilty or innocent in the death of Doodle. Since this will be a persuasive opening statement, students will be taking a pre-assessment on persuasive writing. Students will be learning persuasive techniques such as appealing to emotion and using expert advice when writing their arguments.

Weekly Update - August 26

After spending a couple of days doing anticipation and pre-reading activities for The Scarlet Ibis, we are going to start reading the short story this week. 
  • First we will read through the story as a class to to see how close the predictions the class made are to the actual plot of the story.
  • Second students will go back and answer questions from specific sections of the story. Students will need to use evidence from the story and cite specific lines in their answers

Weekly Update - August 20

Welcome to Language Arts week number two!
  • This week students will complete their study of the RACES strategy and will be making a classroom anchor chart to use throughout the year.
  • We started our first Article of the Week last week, and will finish this today. This provides great practice reading non-fiction news articles and answering a variety of questions where some are in the text and others require inferring. 
  • We will also begin work on the short story The Scarlet Ibis
 
This year our theme is Social Justice. 
Quarter 1 focus:
  • Using writing sample and other assessments to develop writing groups that will focus on specific writing skills.
  • Learning and using the RACES strategy to develop detailed paragraphs that answer questions using evidence from the text.
  • Reading the short story The Scarlet Ibis and then writing opening statements about whether we think one of the characters is guilty or innocent and using those statements in a mock trial.

Students were each given a planner to use this year to aid in time management and organization.  Each day, they should be copying down the agenda for each class.  This is a great tool to see what's happening daily.  Please encourage your student to maintain this by checking in with them regularly.  Students are also encouraged to track upcoming due dates in their planners.

If you have any questions or concerns, you can email me at [email protected]. I will return your email within 48 hours or two business days.

Weekly Update - August 15

Welcome to Language Arts! We have begun content area class rotations and I'm excited to have you as part of my Language Arts family! If you have any questions or concerns, you can email me at [email protected]. I will return your email within 48 hours or two business days.
 
This year our theme is Social Justice. 
Quarter 1 focus:
  • Using writing sample and other assessments to develop writing groups that will focus on specific writing skills.
  • Learning and using the RACES strategy to develop detailed paragraphs that answer questions using evidence from the text.
  • Reading the short story The Scarlet Ibis and then writing opening statements about whether we think one of the characters is guilty or innocent and using those statements in a mock trial.

Students were each given a planner to use this year to aid in time management and organization.  Each day, they should be copying down the agenda for each class.  This is a great tool to see what's happening daily.  Please encourage your student to maintain this by checking in with them regularly.  Students are also encouraged to track upcoming due dates in their planners.