Melissa

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Melissa
By Jeanine

WOW! YOu are on the ball. This sounds almost exactly like my day! I feel like I really need to get things started and back on track. I have been on maternity leave for a while and I am going back in 4 weeks. I am excited
yet sad to leave my daughter. Anyhow, my 8th grade class is more of an intervention class. We teach many different short books like, "Buried in Ice", " Titanic", "SCorpians" and a few others. We use the Accelerated REading system in our school heavily. My main focus in this crew is MOTIVATION! These kids have been off track for a while. I have many students who have 12th grade levels

of reading who just refuse to do work. They have struggles at home and have histories of problems with the law or not coming to school. I create an atmosphere of mutual respect and fun. My clssroom is an open forum created so that we can communicate about important issues and things. After this is established we work on skills. The majority of time I focus on comprehension activities. The activites are created around those earlier mentioned books. They have to read 2 individually chosen books a quarter on their own time. We have book conferences and they are tested periodically with the STAR reading test. ( this is great if you have access to it!) My 7th graders are less at risk. We work on 2 different themes in REading per quarter. ( ex; foreshadowing, conflict, theme, setting) We read short stories that have been gathered from many different sources. ( ex; anthologies, chix soup for teen soul, kids sports illustrated, kids people etc.) They also are on the Accelerated reader system and must read 2 books per quarter. I hope I haven't bored you to death. I suppose my main focus is always motivation first and learning later. Too many of my kids can't focus on learning because of other issues so we work on those first. If you have any questions just email me. Thanks Jeanine