WEEKLY BULLETIN: GRADE 8 LEARNING SUPPORT

JANUARY 13, 2012

INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL MANILA

This Week in Grade 8

ENGLISH: We are beginning a new unit this quarter focused on Power and the power of words. Specically, students will be involved in Literature Circles with their classmates, reading and discussing a novel about the Holocaust. They will be using metacognitive reading strategies and will look for evidence in their novels such as plot, characters, summarizing, etc. Our students are reading either the book Night, by Elie Wiesel or Maus, by Art Spiegelman (a graphic novel). They are determining sections to read each week with their group and will have weekly literature circles/discussions about the section read. They will also continue to challenge themselves with some essay writing
IMPORTANT DATES TO REMEMBER: * Jan. 21 - International Family Fun Day at ISM 1-6pm * Jan. 23 - No School - Chinese New Year

assignments. Monroes and Shulls English classes both watched different videos in order to build background knowledge of WWII and the Holocaust prior to beginning their books. Students are also reading self-chosen books independently and will present a book talk (oral report) once over the next 2 months.

background knowledge activities in class.

SCIENCE: Our unit on Transformations is just about nished, with students completing their conclusion and evaluation for their Pendulum lab. We are now exploring Simple Machines such as pulleys, levers, wedges, and inclined planes. Next week students will begin their SOCIAL STUDIES: performance task which Students will continue to will be to build a rescue look at the theme of Power machine. and how people get and MATH: This week, students maintain power. Specically, they will learn continued learning statistics in math - using their about the People Power calculators to create Revolution of the 1980s in scatterplots and graphs. the Philippines which ousted Marcos as a dictator. They will be learning how They are currently involved to create these graphs on the computer next week. in introductory and

UPCOMING ASSESSMENTS & DUE DATES: * English - reminder for students to stay on track with their group assigned reading sections

IMPORTANT WEBSITES USED IN CORE CLASSES: Google Docs brainpop.com Noodle tools - research skills & notecards

Strategy Instruction Class

Skill & Strategy Areas of Focus: Vocabulary Development: - Developing strategies to help determine meaning of new vocabulary & expanding students vocabulary base - Using context clues - Categorizing/Classifying - Understanding words with Multiple Meanings - Prex & Sufx meanings using these to help determine word meaning - Root Words/Base words - for meaning The Writing Process: - Using editing checklists - Brainstorming - using templates or Inspiration to organize prior to writing - Identifying & Generating Topic Sentences, Compound Sentences (FANBOYS) - ordering paragraphs: placing sentence strips into proper paragraph order Research Strategies: - using templates to organize information - Noodle tools online - Paraphrasing skill practice Study Skills: - Note-taking strategies: we are using the Cornell method which is the 2 column notes method (main ideas on left side; supporting details on right) Time Management: - chunking long term/ large assignments into smaller due dates
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Study Skills Time Management Self - Advocacy Paragraph Writing Summary Writing Editing Strategies Interactive Reading Learning Styles

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