Language Arts

Reading:

Students are expected to read 30 minutes per night, 5 times per week.  In addition, students are asked when they complete a book to write a summary.  An example summary has been attached here.  Please note a summary is NOT a book report. It does not retell every single detail.  It is a summary, which sums up the setting, characters, and theme and how they relate to the major events. To keep students on target, one summary is due about every 4 weeks.  The due dates are listed below. 

 

Summary #1: Friday, September 28th

Summary #2: Friday, October 19th

Summary #3: Friday, November 16th

Summary #4: Friday, December 14th

Summary #5: Friday, January 19th

Summary #6: Friday, February 15th

Summary #7: Friday, March 15th

Summary #8: Thursday, April 11th

Summary #9: Friday, May 17th

Summary #10: TBD

 

Nightly reading and summaries are the only assigned language arts homework.  Summaries are part of your child's language arts grade, so if they are not turned in on time, or at all, this will reflect on his/her report card.   Students also receive raffle tickets for each summary turned in, to use toward gift baskets and/or the Great Escape field trip at the end of the year (30 tickets of different genres needed). So, students can write more summaries than are required to earn more tickets!!

 

 

Writing: 

Windham Middle School uses the writing program title Units of Study by Lucy Calkins.  Units of Study focuses on three different genres of writing, each for 6-8 weeks of time.  Our first unit is personal narrative which focuses on writing stories about events within one's life that help him/her to learn a lesson, or come to a realization.  Our second unit is the literary persuasive essay, focusing on writing and supporting arguments about characters and themes within short stories or novels.  The last unit of the year is informational writing which focuses on students independently researching a teen activist.