Good Monday, everyone! As a new week begins, there are some dates of which you need to be aware:

Wednesday, February 6: Progress Reports will go out. Please make sure you see them. It may seem early, since we just received report cards last week, but we are already three weeks into the new nine weeks' grading period, and we want you to be totally informed about your child's progress in each class.

Thursday, February 7: IB Information Night from 6 - 8 p.m. Come find out about this new program that will begin next year for our students.

Tuesday, February 12: The Florida Writes! test will be given. Please make sure your child has a good night's sleep and breakfast that morning. We want them to be awake, alert, and aware for the test. Just to remind you, your child needs to make a "4" on the test to be considered "passing."

I continue to offer tutoring for my students from 8 - 9 a.m. on Mondays, Fridays, and the first and third Wednesdays of the month. If you feel your child needs a little push, please make sure you let me know that they will be attending. Transportation is not provided.

Thanks for all the help you give us as we work together to make sure our students are successful.

Mrs. Short

Good Monday, everyone: This week we continue our unit about the Holocaust. The simulation we did Thursday before planning day was a great way to help our students get a handle on how those persecuted by the Nazis felt. Anyway, it certainly raised lots of comment!

This week we will be taking our first Quotations Quiz from Scenes I and II of Act I of the play. A Quotations Quiz is one of the ways high school teachers determine whether students are getting the themes of a piece of writing, and we are practicing for our future! We will also be working with more vocabulary related to our unit. Finally, we will be focusing on ironing out any writing issues students feel they need help with in preparation for FCAT Writes! which we will take in February. We have a lot to do this week!

Please be aware that report cards come out on Wednesday. Parents, if you have questions about the grades your child receives, please call us for answers. The school number is 381-7440.

Students, please be working to meet your new reading goal for this nine weeks' grading period - 19 books. We are half way through the year, and I want everyone to meet their 25 Book goal for the year.

Parents: Have you thought about talking with your child about what you have been reading? We should develop a "dinner table" type conversation with our kids about what each of us is reading. If you show that you value reading by talking with your child about what you are reading, then he or she will catch the importance of being a reader, and learn the skills needed to talk about what is being read intelligently. Thanks for your interest in your child's progress in reading!

Mrs. Short

Hello, everyone. We are beginning a new unit with our eighth graders on the Holocaust. An interesting fact we have learned is that the word "holocaust" actually means "total burning." I've heard it said that during World War II, Europe was on fire, and I know that it was meant figuratively, but it was literal as well. As part of his plan to control people, Hitler burned books that spoke out against his ideas. When people censor writers, they are preventing readers from making their own decisions about ideas presented in books. Every reader deserves to read what he or she wants to read, and form opinions about that information. If we allow censorship to continue, we face total control from an elite group that may not represent our own ideas. Read a banned book in protest for censorship!

Remember to work on your homework reading and getting those book logs turned in on Mondays with parent signatures.

Mrs. Short

Happy New Year!

Welcome back, everyone! Some things to remember:

• The end of the nine weeks' grading period is next week. All work will need to be turned in by this Friday, January 11.
• Our focus for the third nine weeks' period will be the Holocaust. We will continue to see how intolerance and racism affected people before and during World War II.
• Open House for parents interested in learning more about the Middle School International Baccalaureate program for next year at our school will be on February 7th. Please plan to come find out about the program.

Please talk with your child this week about what goals he or she has for the next nine weeks' grading period. We are at the half-way mark, and it is now time to look toward the end of the year. Students should be half-way toward meeting the 25 Book Goal. They should be focusing on their reading and writing skills that will help them to do well on the FCAT. And they should be deciding whether or not (with your help) they want to apply to one of the magnet programs at the high schools in town. The deadline for those applications is the end of February, so if your child is interested, please help them to get the forms filled out and returned. If you have questions about any of the programs, you can call the school that houses that program.

Have a good week.

Mrs. Short

Inferencing

Parents: We have been working on the difference between predicting and inferencing all year. In order to help your child learn the difference, you can ask them questions about what they are reading, or what is happening on a T.V. show or in a movie. If you ask them to predict, they should be able to tell you what is going to happen in the future of the story. If you ask them to make an inference, they should be able to tell you why something is currently happening in the story.

A good way to remember the definitions is to make them equations.

Inferencing : what you know + what you read = being able to tell why something is
happening in the story

Predicitng : what you know + what you read = being able to make an educated guess
about what will happen in the story
in the future

Please, talk to your child about what we are studying in class! :)

Mrs. Short

Is the Glass Half Full, or Half Empty?

When I read the following article, I thought to myself, "How often have I said that to one of my students?" It is really a question of perspective. I can choose to tell a student, "That's not hard, it's easy!" or I can boost that child's self-confidence in her own power to learn, and tell her, "Yes, it's hard - but you can do hard things!" Both parents and teachers need to keep this in mind when talking with our young people.

Teaching Secrets: Students Can Do Hard Things
By Anthony Cody

I recently observed a teacher passing out an assignment to a class of high school English students. "This is hard," complained one. "No, it's really not hard, it's easy!" replied the teacher.
Even though I could recall saying the same thing myself on occasion, something about this exchange bothered me. What can our students possibly learn if we only gave them easy tasks? On the other hand, how can we motivate our students to accept a challenge if they doubt their own ability?
As part of a partnership, teachermagazine.org is publishing this regular column by members of theTeacher Leaders Network, a professional community of accomplished educators dedicated to sharing ideas and expanding the influence of teachers.
I asked Lynn Scott, an experienced teaching colleague, what she thought. Her reply: "If my second graders say something is hard, I say 'That's ok. You can do hard things!'"
To make her case, Lynn talked to her students about hard things they had mastered. They all were born not knowing how to walk. Did they just stand up one day and run around? No, they taught themselves, by grabbing onto furniture and other people, and they gradually learned to walk without falling. They learned to ride bicycles the same way -- by hard practice and by sometimes falling down.
Research shows that students who lack motivation are often not convinced that the effort they invest in themselves is going to be rewarded. They simply have not been academically successful in the past, so why bother? Furthermore, their parents may have been ineffectual in school, creating a template for failure easier to live up to than disprove.
So how do we teach our students they are capable of doing so much more than they even realize? This is the true art of teaching. Here are some ideas:
• Keep a portfolio of work, beginning with samples from the first week of school (or any fixed point in time). Then, in November or December, you can take a look at their earlier work, and highlight all the things they know how to do now that they could not do in September. This helps students understand their goal is to improve from their current level, and no matter where they are starting, they can learn and grow.
• Researchers tell us that if you give students a letter grade along with feedback, all they focus on is the grade, and the value of the feedback is lost. Therefore I try to avoid giving grades, especially on first or second drafts. Instead, I try to give specific suggestions to guide students toward improvement. Rubrics that describe your expectations can be especially helpful with this. Look at the path to quality work as a ladder, not a leap, and support them as they climb.
• Sometimes students do not really know what high quality work looks like -- or how to produce it. The first time I asked students to do science projects, I was disappointed by some of the work they turned in (apparently assembled the night before with a roll of scotch tape and a magic marker). But when I thought about it, I realized they did not have any clear models.
The next time, when I introduced the assignment I shared some of the better projects I had saved. I also had the students take a close look at the projects and develop a list of characteristics associated with quality work. What do the great projects have? What do less successful projects look like? We took the notes from this discussion and created a rubric the students could use to guide them as they worked. Then the students used the rubric to score their own projects with the help of their peers and make improvements before turning them in.
I've really come to see the power of peer review after years of practicing this teaching method. When students are involved in reviewing each other's work using a clear set of guidelines, they not only have a tool that promotes honest and objective judgments, they also become more familiar with the hallmarks of quality, and they can apply that understanding to their own work as well.
Our students can do hard things, but they do not always know that. High self-regard is important for all the kids we teach, but it is not built through empty praise. It grows as the student actually succeeds in creating quality work. True satisfaction comes when we know for sure that we have achieved excellence. Then let the celebration begin!
An award-winning science teacher, Anthony Cody served for two years as a peer reviewer in the Oakland (CA) City Schools. He now works as a professional development coach, partnering with secondary teachers to improve science instruction.

Have a nice day!

Hope you have all had a great holiday, and are back into work mode. We are continuing to work on the following things:

Read 180: Students are trying to finish their topics in a more timely manner. We are also working very hard on producing very good essays.

Standard Class: We are still working on our unit on Civil Rights. We are learning what the Little Rock Nine went through in order to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. We have also read about Ruby Bridges, who was part of the integration of schools in Louisana. We also are working through our webquest, which you can view at http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/pages/listlittler8t.html

Advanced Class: We are looking at civil rights in a slightly different way, thinking about issues that could violate our civil rights, such as gun control, censorship, and the advantages or disadvantages of bilingual education.

Parents: Please make sure that you are seeing the progress reports and report cards that come home with your child. We had a progress report go home the week before Thanksgiving week. This, along with your child's planner, is one of our best methods for communicating with you about your child's progress.