What's Going On in McDonough's ELA Class?

Week Six is beginning!

Students in Ms. McDonough's class have officially finished reading the Holocaust memoir, Night, by Elie Wiesel.

Students have also focused their attention on honing and mastering many skills that are essential for success in English Language Arts.

First, students learned how to actively read a text and annotate using the following symbols:

Once students know how to actively engage in a text, they are reading to begin analyzing it. Students can first check that they understand a text by creating a summary, or the gist, of the text. This is different from a paraphrase in the following ways:

Summarizing the main ideas is only the first level of analysis; students will then use the Freitag's triangle to understand the sequence of events and the author's purpose for constructing the story as it appears.

Once students have identified the major conflict(s) in the narrative and how that conflict was resolved, they can then begin determining the author's purpose for writing and the lesson that was intended for the reader to learn. We call this theme. Remember: theme is different from plot!

Having determined the gist, plot elements, and theme of the story, students are now ready to begin communicating their ideas through writing. At PCA, we have a specific structure for creating paragraphs that we want our 8th grade students to adopt; we call it the Quote Sandwich structure for body paragraphs:

Initially, this is the requirement for a Quote Sandwich paragraph; as the year progresses, students will be asked to include even more text evidence per paragraph.

 

Here is an example of what a Quote Sandwich body paragraph may look like:

As students become more sophisticated in their analysis of literature and the written expression of that analysis, the requirements and expectations will evolve. For now, students are really working hard to analyze and write proficiently. Next up, the complete essay!

**For Absent Notes of any of the above concepts, please contact Ms. McDonough!**

Grammar Week Five

Students continue to learn grammar basics and practice those skills during DEAR.

This week, students focused on subjects and predicates, regular and irregular verbs, subject-verb agreement, and collective nouns.



Students must understand that all complete sentences are comprised of these two parts: A) a subject, and B) a predicate.

 

Subjects of sentences can come in the form of any of the above: singular or plural nouns, compound or collective nouns.

Likewise, the predicate of a sentence must contain a verb; the verb may be regular or irregular based on its conjugation into the past tense.

 

Finally, the subject and the verb must always agree!

Grammar Week Four!

Students continue studying their grammar concepts in DEAR here in 8th grade at PCA. Week four saw students covering verb tenses in the past, present and future, as well as the different types of sentence constructions.

Students remember the four purposes of sentences using the acronym D.I.I.E.

 

Students study these examples to understand how we communicate the passage of time in English language.
 

"To Be" is a fundamental verb to understand in all its tenses to be successful in English.

Grammar Week Two!

Grammar instruction continues in our DEAR Interactive Notebooks!

This week, we looked at the difference between singular (one) and plural (many); we also analyzed the difference between common and proper nouns:

Once we understand the difference between general nouns and specific nouns, we can also analyze the difference between the articles that we use to specify nouns:

Finally, we ended our week by talking about pronouns (a word that replaces a noun) when used as a subject of a sentence; called Subjective Pronouns:

Next week we continue analyzing nouns and parts of sentences!

Grammar Week One

This week students began using their DEAR Interactive Notebooks to learn and practice grammar concepts. We started with some review, like the ways that verbs function:

 

 

 

Then, we began discussion infinitive verbs and their formula: TO + VERB = Infinitive

 

 

 

Once students understand infinitive verbs, then we can discuss phrasal verbs. These are verbs that are part of a two (or more) word phrase, which often changes the meaning of the verb altogether.

 

Here are the formulas for a phrasal verb:

 

VERB + Adverb = Phrasal Verb

 

or

 

VERB + Preposition = Phrasal Verb

 

 



For example, if you use the verb 'to take' that means to acquire something; if you add the word 'off,' then your phrasal verb becomes 'to take off' which means to depart.

 

Here are some examples, though there are many, many phrasal verbs in the English language:

 

 

Week One was a SUCCESS!

Students have finished week one of school and they are exhausted!

We’ve had some great discussions and learned some new, very important skills and procedures.

This week, students learned to format their DEAR Notebooks. This is where students will take notes on their grammar lessons, and have opportunities to practice and ask questions to the teacher.  If you want to help your student stay organized, here are some tips below:

 

 

Additionally, in preparation for our first quarter literature selection, Night by Elie Wiesel, students are beginning to discuss important social topics that impact us all, here in the United States and all over the world. We started by defining and discussing the idea of genocide and its stages. If you are interested, you can read about it here: Genocide.

Our final activity of the week was discussing the expectations for annotation and summary. When students interact actively with a text, they are able to understand the text better and get more from it. Here are the symbols we will use for the remainder of the school year:

Finally, we learned the difference between paraphrasing and summarizing, in anticipation of learning how to write clear, objective summaries in the future, to capture the real main ideas of a text.

Overall, students performed very well and seem to be ready to get back to work. We are so excited for this school year and all of the adventures it will bring!

Welcome!

Welcome back to school!

We’ve been waiting for you!

 

Dear Phoenix Collegiate Academy scholars and parents,

            Welcome to the 2015-2016 school year. Everyone here at PCA is excited to begin this school year. Having students in our classrooms and making relationships with students and families are the things we enjoy the most.

            My name is Ms. Sarah McDonough; I will be the 8^th grade English Language Arts teacher here at PCA. This will be my twelfth year in the classroom. I love teaching and I especially love teaching literature. I have experience teaching here in Arizona and also abroad, as I lived in Ukraine for 27 months working with the Peace Corps.

            This year in 8^th grade English Language Arts, we will be focusing on preparing scholars for High School. In addition to honing study habits and building grammar and vocabulary skills, we will also be engaging in scholarly discussions and reading advanced literature that teaches strong character skills and reinforces equality, justice, and human rights. Our books and activities not only build strong character, but they also empower our students to think critically about essential issues.

            Again, I am so excited for this new year. Please feel free to contact me anytime with questions or concerns. Welcome back!

 

Sarah McDonough

smcdonough@phxca.org

(623) 282-1568