Hello,
Unfortunately, I will not be able to be here for curriculum night due to extenuating circumstances. To help cover the basics, I shot this video:
http://tinyurl.com/curriculumnightjc2106
Here is a transcript of that video:
Curriculum Night Syllabus
8th Grade English Language Arts
Hello.
It is my privilege to be your child’s English Language Arts teacher this year. Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond my control I’m not able to attend Curriculum Night. Please accept my sincere apology and know that I’m available to meet with you on most days during second hour. Please feel free to email me to schedule a quick meeting if you feel the need.
Meet the Teacher
This is my sixteenth year teaching, twelfth year in the Birmingham school district, and eleventh year at Derby Middle School. I love it here! I live in Lake Orion with my lovely wife Michelle and my three awesome kids. In the past I’ve served as a vice principal and worked as professional screenwriter. Also, I’m currently an adjunct professor at Oakland University in the evenings teaching creative writing. For fun I like to run the after school enrichment club for fantasy gaming, being a big geek at heart. My favorite thing about teaching is getting students excited about stories, writing, and the love of words. That, and building communities for kids that might otherwise feel like outsiders.
Pedagogy
I have three pillars form my educational philosophy: relationships, writing, and practice. First, students learn best when they are in a safe, positive environment that is both personal and structured. It’s all about making connections and clear expectations. Second, I believe that writing is the most complex task students must learn and requires tremendous focus and depth. There are no short cuts and students benefit greatly from explicit, one-on-one conferencing with a teacher on narrow topics of focus. When given the opportunity to get feedback, students should be able to immediately go and apply it. And third: practice practice practice. Students learn best by doing and applying concepts rather than studying ideas in the abstract. Read for comprehension regularly. Write to demonstrate your thinking regularly. Revise for clarity regularly. Students who practice regularly will succeed.
Daily Entry Practice - Deep Sentence Study and Deliberate Practice (Grammar)
On a daily basis, students will compose original sentences by imitating the sentence structures of famous authors as a means to apply grammar knowledge in the context of the real world. These sentence structures include simple, compound, and complex sentences, using different clauses (adverb, adjective), and applying different phrases (adjective, adverb, prepositional, absolute, appositive, participial, gerund, and infinitive ). Students will also model famous author’s sentences that use punctuation marks including ellipses, quotation marks, semi-colons, colons, and dashes.
Daily Homework - Intentional Reading Logs
Students are expected to read independently for thirty minutes every night, and document their reading in a reader log that addresses questions, makes predictions, and interacts with the text. It is recommended that parents help structure this expectation at home with a set routine. Students who do not have their journals updated will be ZAPPED and have the opportunity to read during their lunch and rec period.
Novel Studies and other Reading Selections
Students will be reading, discussing, and analyzing the Lord of the Flies by William Golding, The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton, Echo by Pam Munoz Ryan, and The Diary of Anne Frank adapted by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. Students will also be reading in book clubs around the Science Fiction genre with options including but not limited to: The Giver, Ender’s Game, Fahrenheit 451, Jurassic Park, The Martian, The Hunger Games Trilogy, Divergent Series, The Time Machine, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Maze Runner (the series), Uglies, and Unwind.
Composition
Students will be writing a personal narrative story about learning from a mistake, a literary analysis of the theme of The Outsiders, and creating an informational and research media presentation on an element pulled from their science fiction novel. They will brainstorm, outline, draft, get critical feedback, revise, and then edit their work. Students will also be doing regular “practice writing exercises” using models to increase their frequency using an online writing system similar to Criterion.
Individualized Learning and Support – Flex Friday
In an effort to provide individualized and small group support for students, most Fridays will be “Flex Fridays.” During this time students may get additional support, make up or retake tests or quizzes, confer with the teacher on writing, get tutoring, or work independently.
Grading
School policy is to allow up to two weeks for assignments to be entered into Powerschool. Typically, most homework is entered within 24 hours, quizzes and tests within a week, and papers within two weeks. Grades follow the standard middle school percent scale. For every day that a given assignment is late, the grade goes down one full grade with a floor of a D, or 65%. Students may get extensions on deadlines in the event of extenuating circumstances.
Communication
If the parent and the teacher are doing the majority of the communication on any given subject, the most important stakeholder, the student, is missing the opportunity to become more independent, more resilient, and responsible. 90% of the time self-advocacy is the best route of communication. The goal is to prepare our students to be high school and college ready.
However, sometimes a quick email or phone call between the parent and teacher can be helpful as well. Longer face to face meetings are also possible, if necessary. The preferred method to contact me is through email. I do my best to respond within 24 hours during the regular school week.
Contact Information
Email: jc14bps@birmingham.k12.mi.us (preferred)
Blog: http://mostexcellentstudents.blogspot.com/
Planbook.com: https://planbook.com/planbook.html?t=1114520&k=mostexcellentstudents
Phone: (248) 203-5000 Ext. 34940 (not preferred)
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