Comma Rules Continued

          The test on comma rules was eye- opening. There was some confusion about how to identify and apply the rules of FANBOYS,OPENER, INTERRUPTER,LIST, and CLOSER (FOILC) to sentences.

When sentences from student compositions were re-examined for comma mistakes, there was strong improvement. 

Homonyms

          The commonly misused and misunderstood homonyms like TO, TWO, and TOO, YOUR and YOU'RE, ITS and IT'S, THERE,THEY'RE, and THEIR were reviewed. The student responses to questions were promising.

          We are going to have a quiz tomorrow, Monday, January 26.

January 14,2015

Comma Rules

          The lessons on comma rules seemed to have gone smoothly. We have compressed four weeks' amount of lessons into a week.

           We will have a graded oral recitation this week as well as a written test. So study your notes. Afterwards we will apply these comma rules to your writing.

Book Report



             Here is the schedule of deadlines for the book report:

January 13    Physical/ electronic copy inspection

January 16    First summary

January 23    Second summary

January 30    Final summary

February 10   Printed book report due

Creative Writing

              This semester we are focusing on great people for our biographical sketch. One new feature that was added was the ten practicable things you can imitate from this person.

               The work has to be printed and then reported/presented in front of the class. There will be question and answer sessions to follow.





Upcoming Events for 7th Grade Writing

January 6, 2015

WECOME TO SECOND SEMESTER

2015

Pre-AP Strategies and Resources

                    This second semester we  will utilize Pre-AP resources and strategies for our writing activities. Writings of published authors will be used as models to learn from and imitate. Pieces about clarity and brevity in composing sentences will help greatly in polishing your own writing.

                      We will go in-depth in mastering common skills like commas in sentences, irregular verbs, homonyms, some frequently misspelled words, and more. If we have time to spare, we might go into diagramming of sentences.

                      BE ALERT! There will be lots of re-writing that will happen. As E.B. White said, "There is no great writing. There is only great re-writing."

Creative Writing

                      Since there will be 8th graders who have signed up for this elective, projects like biographical sketch and rhyming poems will be elevated to a more professional level and researched as such.