7th grade

Welcome to seventh grade Reading/English class. I am looking forward to a year full of fun and challenging learning activities and building a strong sense of community within our class and school. Our work will be in reading strategies, building comprehension, analysis, writing, grammar, spelling, vocabulary, and oral presentation.

The primary focus of 7th grade Reading is to practice and master a variety of reading strategies that build reading comprehension. Developing before you read, while you read, and after you read strategies will increase story meaning. Some of these strategies include: prediction, inference, drawing conclusions, summarizing, evaluation, interpret, analyze, and noting details.

The next reading component is to analyze reading themes, author's work and point of view. You will read a variety of stories with connecting themes; plot, character development, poetry, myths and folk tales, critical thinking, and informational texts.

The final reading component is to identify literary elements of various types of literature; realistic, scifi, historical, follk lore, poetry, and nonfiction. For example, in scifi, some elements are: high level of technology, beings from another world, and futuristic time frame.

The primary focus of English is to practice and master technical writing skills. Developing paragraphs, writing to prompts, and organizing essays and reports, as well as, developing other forms of process and expository writing are deeply explored throughout the year.

The third focus of English is to acquire an expansive vocabulary. Understanding the origins of language, roots, prefixes, suffixes, and figures of speech, along with subject/content vocabulary will increase comprehension.

Becoming a strong reader requires attention to the process of reading. This means asking and answering questions while you read, building vocabulary, and connecting text to text and text to self, in order to build comprehension. Understanding the elements of various types of literature will help build comprehension. You can expect to write about what you read to connect one story or author to another and to explain your understanding of the text as you read.

Becoming a strong technical writer requires consistent, daily practice to increase your skills. You will write every day. You will use daily grammar, spelling, and vocabulary practice to improve your writing.

You will practice presentation and speaking skills in a variety of settings each quarter. These may include story reading, presenting your essay, giving a speech, making a demonstration, creating a powerpoint or podcast, and leading group discussions.

Homework is posted in class, on my Homework Central site, and on the weekly assignment sheet that you are given in class each week. There are NO excuses for not knowing what your assignments are each day. You can expect to have homework assignments Monday through Thursday, with long-ranged projects needing some weekend attention, as well.

Your writing will be assessed using a variety of methods. Checklists, writing process rubrics, and peer and teacher conferences are some of the methods used to inform your technical writing development. You can anticipate all practice work in grammar, spelling, and vocabulary to be graded to provide feedback for skill mastery. You will have unit quizzes and tests. Oral presentations, readings, and group sharing will help you learn techniques that will improve clarity, voice, and posture during public communication. Bring all work to class; finished or not. You will still benefit from class review and may have time to work on it during class!

Parents and students may access PowerSchool to check on student progress. This is the electronic grade book that each teacher uses to record assignments and grades. PowerSchool will show what is late, not handed in, and post your current grade average with each assignment that is entered. It is updated instantaneously. All assignments that I give will be posted on PowerSchool on a regular, nearly daily, basis. Missing and late work will be given a zero. You will have one opportunity to pass work in by the end of the day or before class starts the next day of school. I will follow the policy outlined in the Student Handbook when students are absent. Parents will receive further details about PowerSchool once laptops have been assigned to students in September.

Students have the opportunity to receive extra help with my assignments by attending my "After School Study" sessions held once or twice each week. Students will be invited to attend to complete work not done or to further practice skills for improved grades on failing work. Students and parents may also request to attend After School Study if extra help is wanted. Each session runs from 2:20 to 4:00 pm.

Laptop use will be an integral part of Reading/English class. We will use them nearly everyday. Misuse of the laptop, in any class or outside of school, will result in not having a necessary class tool. You will be able to access your main reading text on-line-thus avoiding the need to carry the massive text book back and forth from school to home and from class to class each day. We still have resource books in the library and you are still very capable of writing your assignments on paper, so not having a laptop is not a good reason for not having your assignments. Your laptop privileges come with appropriate behavior and use. Abuse it and you lose it! I understand that some parents may not grant take home privileges. I would like to encourage you to use a thumb drive to save and transport documents from home to school computers. This way you will not need to carry the laptop back and forth. Thumb drives are relatively inexpensive, running $10 and up. You only need enough space to save and transport writing assignments.

Thank you for being active in your child's learning. If you have any questions, please e-mail me at bullp@hermon.net or call to leave a message. My schedule is scattered, I will make every attempt to get back to you within one school day.