The 2017-2018 school year is off to a great start!  Students have mastered lockers and schedules and are getting to know each other and their teachers better as the days progress.

We have established routines and in ELA daily warm ups all year, we will work on character traits/character education, interpreting quotes/figurative language, constructing detailed sentences while identifying and discussing parts of speech, editing for COPS (capitalization, organization, punctuation, spelling), and writing.  We have reviewed common Greek/Latin roots and students have been challenged to find them in their SSR books over the course of the year in order to earn hillbills.  We have also reviewed literary genres and have practiced identifying the genres of books from our classroom library.  This week, we will wrap up the genre unit, talk vocabulary strategies, and may get to literary devices and figurative language.  A spelling and vocabulary assessment is planned for Friday- the word list can be found at quizlet.com by searching for “hillbills” and then choosing “17-18 ELA” under the Classes tab.

In Geography, we have reviewed map basics such as continents, oceans and important latitude and longitude lines including the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer, the Arctic and Antarctic Circles, the Equator, and the Prime Meridian.  We have introduced the five themes of geography and will continue to explore them as the year unfolds.  We will look at geographers tools more closely over the course of this week an next.  Students all have access to the online text by visiting connected.mcgraw-hill.com .  They have a sticker on the Geo pocket of their red folders with their login information.  An online assignment was started in class and is due on Friday.  Please have your student arrange a time to stay after school with me, or a trip to the Charlton Public Library if computer access at home is an issue. 

You can see pictures of some of our class activities by following @CMSOwls on Twitter or Facebook.