Romano’s Recipe for Reading and Writing

Today in class we discussed the Essential Words from Unit 13 of the Language! Program.  These words are:  gone, look, most, people, see, water.  These are six of the most commonly used words in the English language.  It is expected that once these words have been presented to students and studied in class, there should be no reason for students to continue to misspell them in their writing. 

Today in class, we also went over the test that students took last Thursday on Using the Right Word.  Students got these back, so please ask to see them. 

The end of the marking period is drawing near, therefore, students received their averages in class today, and were told of any work they had missing that they were still able to make up.  Please check agendas to see their current language arts average. 

The 8th grade Holiday Party is this Friday.  Please see the attached note regarding this event. 

Two weeks ago a flyer went home advertising our holiday party needs. We are still looking for donations of sodas, chips, and m&ms. Please send in what you can so we can make the students’ holidays bright. ALSO—we are requesting a $1 donation to purchase pizza for our students to enjoy while they watch a holiday movie. We really need these donations to make our party a success. We have close to 400 students in the eighth grade, and so far we have collected only $150. Please contribute what you can so we can celebrate the end of the 2nd nine weeks and the approaching holidays! Please contact Mila Wink @ milawink1@comcast.net with any questions about what you can help provide.

This week we have been focusing on commonly misspelled words as well as using the right word in students’ writing.  We also started using Language!, which is a literacy progam which focuses on phonics and phonemic awareness, vocabulary, grammar and usage, spelling, writing and reading.  All students have taken a pretest, and throughout the year, I will retest them to see what growth they have achieved.  Please encourage your children to read at home nightly.  This will only imrpove their language arts skills.