Welcome Back!

I hope you had a restful recess! Now it is time to get back into the swing of school! We will wrap up our public speaking unit with speeches Monday and Tuesday of this week, and we will finish the week with a mini-unit focusing on some important reading strategies. And then, on to poetry!

Presentations RESCHEDULED! Acuity today!

We have rescheduled the speeches for the week after break. Early this week, we will be working on Acuity testing in ELA class, then Wednesday and Thursday will be devoted to watching famous public speeches and responding to them via an in-class writing assignment. Mr. Smith will be absent Wednesday through Friday for surgery. Then, enjoy your vacation!

Public Speaking Presentations Tuesday!

Our final presentations for our public speaking unit will take place on Tuesday, February 9th. Students are responsible for getting up in front of the room and delivering a 45 second to 1 minute speech about one of the following four topics:

*The availability of soda for lunch
*Valentines day at its merits/problems
*Hats being allowed in school
*The economic implications of the Super Bowl

All speeches will be graded as per the 7 P's of Public Speaking notes that we covered in class earlier this week. Good luck!

Public Speaking!

With the two remaining weeks before break, we'll be focusing our energy in ELA on learning the elements of Public Speaking! Students will be performing all sorts of speeches in front of classmates in the hopes of developing strong oratorical skills.

Dear Parents-

Today we had our first Middle Level Student Security Search. The searches are confidentially scheduled through our Security Office, under the direction of Tom Ristoff.

Students and/or families are not notified ahead of time when searches will occur. When students are at the high school or a middle level grade only school, searches happen monthly. There will be other searches throughout the spring of 2010 for our students and we will notify you after they occur.

This is one of the procedures we need to introduce our students to as middle level students. If you have any questions, please direct them to Tom Ristoff @ 435-4527.

Thank you.


Daryl Hall
Lisa Garofalo
Jason Armstrong

Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue!

In class this week we will combine our learning by utilizing our new information on dialogue construction, characterization, point of view, and bias by writing a creative writing piece based on a fun prompt from a specific point of view. This piece will be due Wednesday, January 27th.

PROPAGANDA!

In early January, ELA classes will be examining point of view and propaganda. We will learn about how this influences emotions and actions. We will also examine the connection to bias in writing. The purpose of the unit is to teach students how to examine how an author's perspective can influence his or her work.