Dear 8th Grade Parents:
Students were sent home this past Friday with four assignments to share with you.
The first was the edited copy of the essay that students wrote on the First Ammendment; final, clean copies were entered in a contest earlier this month. These assignments did not receive a grade, as it was students' first formal writing assignment this year and was used to establish their baseline for writing. I did two things with these papers: I proofread them for typos and obvious mistakes, and I used them to give each student one or two new writing rules to learn and follow. Also, because we were pressed for time (the information about the contest arrived late in September), I did not assess them on content or organization. These are skills that we will work on throughout the year, and they will be specifically addressed in later assignments. I have scanned copies of these essays if they do not make it home to you, so please let me know if you did not see the essay.
There were also three Article of the Week assignments. (Click here to see the assignments.) Each assignment was worth 20 points; 10 points were for marking up the article and answering short questions and 10 were for the longer written response. Here were the scores for both classes:

An 8 was the default score for following the directions, a 7 meant something was missing, and a 6 meant redo. On the positive side, a 9 meant impressive, and a 10 demonstrated critical and original thought. Examples of assignments that received 20/20 are available to students via Edmodo, which I will introduce to parents in a later post.
Article of the Week is a social studies assignment designed to increase students' background knowledge about the world and current events (which is key to success on standardized tests) while at the same time increasing critical reading and writing skills. We know from our discussions with both New Trier and Loyola that students from across the township are lagging when it comes to reading informational text. We also know that our emphasis needs to be on skills rather than content. As such, students are being asked to do more reading and writing this year, and less memorization of facts. The thinking, reading, and writing practiced in the Article of the Week will form the building blocks for later writing assignments.
Students have two longer assignments due this week: an annontated bibliography/research topic description for social studies on Tuesday, and a final copy of their Out Of My Mind extra on Wednesday. While I have been encouraged by the drafts that I have seen of the creative writing assignment, we clearly have much work to do when it comes to research skills. Students have not made good use of their time in the library on Fridays, and tend to give up if a source is not immediately available via Google. This is something that we will clearly continue to work on.
It is essential that this work is turned in on time as the quarter ends on Thursday. A shorter-than-usual Article of the Week assignment will also be due on Thursday, as is a very rare opportunity for extra credit.
As always, please contact me with any questions or concerns. Email is the best way to reach me, but I will be happy to return your email with a phone call if you prefer.
Miss Kelley