Woods School

Sixth Grade — Our group novel is Thief Lord. While reading this novel, each student has chosen an aspect of Venice, Italy, to research. They will then learn the format for a four paragraph research paper and then write on the topic they've chosen. The students are finishing a unit on nouns and will begin a unit on verbs. The importance of using active verbs and correct, consistent tense will again be stressed.

Seventh Grade — This class will begin reading the novel Call of the Wild. Their unit of grammar is pronouns. We have just finished a unit on descriptive writing and the importance of using transitions to show time order and patial order in the student's work. Their writing this month will be a persuasive restaurant review. Parents, look for some good places to eat out.

Eighth Grade — The class is reading the Giver.  When they finish the novel, they will learn to write a book review of the novel. The grammar unit will be pronouns and their correct usage.

Grammar

The sentence is the basis for all conversation. The sixth, seventh and eighth graders are all working on finding the subject and verb in a sentence. This is  a fairly easy task in 'natural order' sentences. However, when we try to find the subject and verb in an inverted order sentence, the job becomes more difficult. We will work on diagramming sentences this year to help see the order and parts of speech in a sentence. Next we will work on compound sentence parts and combining sentences for more interest in the students' writing.

Writing Workshop

The sixth graders will be writing their first book report. Wahoo! This group is also learning sentence fluency as one of the 6-traits. Seventh graders have finished a persuasive essay and are starting a personal experience narrative about and embarrassing moment in their lives. Eighth grade is beginning their second persuasive writing assignment. Next, this class will write compare and contrast paragraphs, studying sentence fluency and word choice in the course of writing.

Literature

The sixth grade will soon be using the Holt reading series. Currently, the class if reading Julie of the Wolves. The sixth graders are working on two reading skills. One is how readers use inference to find the main ideas, and the second is how readers learn to recognize ways an author reveals hir or her viewpoint and character traits of the characters is a nove. Currently, the seventh grade is using a literature book titled Elements of Literature. They are learning to recognize the element of 'theme' in novels and short stories. Eighth grade is finishing a unit in literature on conflict and suspense. They will have a short unit on humor and then begin reading the novel Outsiders.