Posts from the ‘Grade 8’ Category

New grading tool! Hooray!

You may have noticed some reports coming home with your child that say Grammarly across the top.  What is grammarly (other than my new best friend)?  Grammarly is an online grading tool that checks not only plagairism but also over a hundred different types of grammar errors.  If you want to read more about it go to grammarly.com

How it is being used in my classroom -

When students have papers due, they will type them and save them on their flashdrive (they should save as a Windows 2003 document.  On the day the paper/writing assignment is due, students will bring a printed copy to me that will be graded for content, format, and presentation.  Students will also have the paper saved on their flashdrive.  I will copy and paste their paper to Grammarly.com and run a report.  Students will receive a copy of the report and will fix their grammar errors that night (if they have any questions about feedback on the report, they are to see me for clarification) and will resubmit their corrected paper (on the flashdrive) the following day.  I will then run a second report and will assign the grade from the second report as their grammar grade.  This grammar grade will be averaged in with the content grade. 

This is an amazing tool and I can already see improvement in the effort of the students.  If you would like to subscribe at home, I think it would be great!  Students are ultimately responsible for the corrections and I feel that it will help them all become more alert and better writers.

If you have questions, let me know.

Cynthia Roberts

Play Practice Schedule

Play Practice Schedule for 5th – 8th grade

Monday, March 5th                                                                  All cast (after school until 5 p.m.)

Monday, March 19th – Scenes 1, 2, 3, and 4                  After school until 5:30 p.m.

Monday, March 26th – Scenes 5 and 6 – After school until 5:30 p.m.

Monday, April 2nd – Scenes 1, 2, 3, and 4 – after school until 5:30 p.m.

Monday, April 16th – Scenes 5 and 6 – after school until 5:30 p.m.

Monday, April 23rd – Scenes 1, 2, 3, and 4 – after school until 5:30 p.m.  Stage crew will be present to work with props

Monday, April 30th – Scenes 5 and 6 – after school until 5:30 p.m.  Stage crew will be present to work with props

Saturday, May 5th – please let me know if there are any conflicts a.s.a.p.  All Cast and Crew – Dress Rehearsal – 1:00 p.m. until 4:00 p.m.

Monday, May 7th – entire cast and crew (dress rehearsal) – after school until 5:30 p.m.

Friday, May 11th – school dress rehearsal (entire cast and crew) – No after school practice.  PERFORMANCE NIGHT – Students should arrive at the gym in costume ready for the performance at 5:30 p.m.  The show will begin at 6:00 p.m.

Saturday, May 12th – 12:30 p.m. – students should arrive at the gym in costume ready for the performance.  The performance will begin at 1:00 p.m.

We need mechanics.

Students are learning the importance of mechanics in Language Arts.  They are working with commas, semi-colons, colons, hypehns, parentheses, and end marks.  Students will also be learning many other rules to help them with comprehension and with writing skills.

Social Studies Update

 Next Wednesday the eighth grade will be having a test over the Civil war. This includes everything in chapter 16 with an emphasis on all of the notes and handouts from class. This coming Monday they have a writing prompt due where they have to write a letter from a civil war soldier or nurse to a friend or relative back home. In these letters they must include personal details about this soldiers experience as well as historically details that we discussed in class. An assignment page with the details will be sent home on Wednesday. I look forward to reading these letters to see what our creative students come up with!