Salem Middle School Sixth Grade LANGUAGE ARTS ORGANIZATION

Salem Middle School – Sixth Grade LANGUAGE ARTS

ORGANIZATION Students are expected to keep an organized 3 -subject spiral notebook. Five pages in the front should be set aside for the table of contents. Pages should be numbered and handouts should be glued to the notebook pages. Mrs. Coulter keeps a language arts notebook, and students are welcome to use it to copy notes, catch up on missed work, or to organize their own notebooks.

HOMEWORK Students are expected to read thirty minutes a night. A weekly reading log is distributed each Friday. Students have until the next Friday to complete five entries. Each entry should be a minimum of one or two sentences, but writing more is encouraged. This and other homework assignments are posted on our team Weebly, http: //welcome 2 oz. weebly. com.

HOMEWORK Students should take their language arts notebooks home regularly to review class notes, especially when a test is approaching. No textbooks are assigned in language arts. We use class sets of literature books in the classroom and a variety of other texts throughout the year.

OUR WEEBLY AND OUR BLOG http: //welcome 2 oz. weeblycom This is where students can get access to Blackboard, the Salem Middle School website, our team blog, http: //welcome 2 oz. wordpress. com, and their core teachers’ pages. Students are encouraged to read current events articles and post relevant, respectful comments.

GRADES – FORMATIVE ASSESSMENTS Reading logs and other homework or class work assignments are considered formative assessments. These are recorded but do not factor into students’ class averages.

GRADES – SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENTS Major assessments are called summative assessments, and these are the grades that count toward a student’s average in language arts. Summative assessments include tests on the parts of speech, reading tests, and writing assignments.

GRAMMAR – 1 ST SEMESTER (Q 1 AND Q 2) Parts of speech Run-on sentences and sentence fragments Subject-verb agreement Compound, complex sentences

READING First quarter focus: Characteristics of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry So far…. Key vocabulary – characters, setting, conflict, plot, point of view, dialogue, dialect, tone, mood, theme, foreshadowing, flashback, irony, symbolism See pages 11 -12 in your child’s notebook for these terms and examples from texts we have read.

WRITING – ALL YEAR Major assignments will include the following: writing complete and organized paragraphs writing an editorial writing poetry writing a five-paragraph evaluation essay writing a five-paragraph problem solution essay