About+MS+English

GRAMMAR As I teach the structure of our language, I strive to impress upon students that practicing grammar skills is a means to an end and not the end itself. The end is the effective and efficient use of language to communicate their thoughts in writing and speaking.

In 6th grade, students study single word sentence elements and several simple sentence structures.

In 7th grade, students learn to use compound sentence elements and are introduced to clauses and phrases as sentence elements. They also continue to study more complicated sentence structures.

In 8th grade, students build on the skills they have acquired before to begin to recognize and use sentence elements that are absent but understood, and they learn to avoid common problems with writing more complicated sentences.

WRITING Nearly all the students who enter middle school at Christ King know how to construct a sentence, a paragraph, and an essay or report. However, they find it difficult to improve upon their original writing beyond finding spelling errors and missing punctuation.

In middle school, I focus on improving the writing they already know how to do. One tool I use is a program called "6 Traits Writing." This program breaks down the elements of good writing into six traits. Each trait is studied and further broken down into small steps students can follow to recognize and correct weaknesses in their work. Students are given a rubric for each trait at the beginning of sixth grade and the rubrics are kept in their binders throughout middle school. I will be happy to provide a copy of these rubrics to anyone for whom it would be helpful.

VOCABULARY AND SPELLING Students learn the meanings of word bases, roots and prefixes to discover how knowing word parts can assist in understanding and spelling unfamiliar words. Occasionally, they will be given vocabulary words to study and eventually use in writing. These spelling and vocabulary lessons may be combined with another class's vocabulary words or a writing assignment to give them a more meaningful context.

GRADES Tests, quizzes, and project grades count for 50% of the quarter grade. Daily classroom work and homework count for another 40% of the quarter grade. Extra credit counts for the final 10% of the grade. Extra credit questions are often on tests or quizzes. The points gained from answering these questions correctly are not added to the test grade, but recorded as extra credit points on Webgrader. In addition, there is an extra credit journal project available each quarter. The number of extra credit points available for each quarter varies.

Tests and quizzes can always be re-taken. Both grades will count on the quarter average, however I will not count a re-take grade if it brings down the average.

Test, quiz and project grades are posted on web-grader, therefore they do not need to be signed and returned to me. However, I will require any student to show me a signed test if a parent asks me to. I realize that sometimes this is more helpful to parents in teaching their child accountability.

Missing homework assignments can be turned in late, however 10% may be taken off the grade.