Reading Assessments: A reading assessments will be given at the beginning of the quarter so that your child and I can get a better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses.  As a result, classroom instruction and computer time on Study Island will be devoted toward the skills they need work on during the year.

Reference Skills:  Our class will also focus on a short dictionary and thesaurus unit.  Being able to use these as quick references throughout the year will be a beneficial skill for them not only in the 8th grade, but in the future as well.

Book Projects: Each quarter your child will be asked to complete a book project.  This quarter your child will select a fiction novel from our library to read for the book project.  They will choose one strong character to create a Character Trading Card as their project.  These cards will be very similar trading cards.  Your child will be bringing home directions for this activity soon after our first library visit.

Tears of a Tiger:  Our first novel this year will be Tears of a Tiger written by Sharon Draper.  Our unit will focus on teenage drinking and driving by reading this novel as well as newspaper articles, poems, and other writings about this subject area. While reading, we will focus on strategies that good readers use while reading and concentrating on comprehension skills and EOG type of questioning.

You will here me refer to the Standard Course of Study (SCOS) on this section of my webpage. The SCOS states what material should be covered in each subject for each grade level. You can visit the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (www.ncdpi.org) for further information.

Please be sure to ask your child about their day. You are important part of their education and even though you may think they do not want to share what is going on in their lives, you may be surprised how a little attention can go a long way.