8th Grade ELA
My name is Mariah Gorham. This is my 3rd year of teaching, and my first year here at Belle Creek. The photo above is my partner and I. We live together in Thornton along with our 3 cats. When I'm not in the classroom I love to travel, swim, crochet, and country dance. I look forward to a wonderful year of growth and learning together.
Welcome to 8th grade ELA!
This will be a go to spot for all of our ELA related updates. A general outline of what we will be focusing on each week will be provided here. I will also post important updates about upcoming projects, larger assignments, tests, and quizzes. Make sure to also check student planners for additional updated information and due dates.
Curriculum Update 9/16
This week students will begin our Frederick Douglass unit. Students will be reading The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave. During this unit, students will be learning more about slavery in the United States. Along with this, students will be examining specific claims in narrative texts. They will learn to identify claims, create their own claims, and back these claims up with evidence. As always, students also have a book journal to complete this week for homework. Families, please remind your students of this assignment!
Personal Narrative Note: Students finished their personal narrative unit last week. As part of this unit, students were asked to write their own personal narrative. Many students have handed their assignments in and they have been graded. It has come to my attention that there was potentially an issue with submitting these assignments on our curriculum website. If your student knows they completed this assignment but it is marked as missing in Infinite Campus, please have them email me their writing at [email protected] so that I can update that.
August Recap
Wow! August flew by us. Thank you for a wonderful beginning of the school year. Students began our Narratives & Perspectives unit. During this unit we explored personal narratives (stories about your own experiences) and craft moves that author's make in this type of writing. We explored stories from Roald Dahl, Amy Tan, as well as Kaitlyn Greenidge. Students learned how to focus in on one specific moment in their writing. We explored the idea of showing versus telling, and when one might be better than the other. Students also learned how to pick out strong verbs to use in their writing to help keep readers engaged. We will begin to wrap this unit up in the coming weeks.
Curriculum Update 9/4-9/13
We are finishing up our Narratives and Perspectives unit. Students will begin working on writing their own personal narrative the week of 9/10. This will serve as their writing assessment. I will be looking for the application of concepts we talked about during this unit in their own writing. Students will also complete a reading unit assessment on Friday 9/13. Along with this, students should also be reading for 30 minutes at home each night (preferably a book that they can also take an AR quiz on). After completing this reading, students need to fill out their "Book Journal" assignment on Google Classroom. Remember there is information to be filled out EACH night for the book journal assignment.
Upcoming Dates
- 9/10: NWEA MAPs Testing
- 9/10-13: Students working on writing personal narrative
- 9/13: Reading Unit Assessment
- 9/13: Book Journal for week due
Update 9/30-10/4
Wow! First quarter flew by. Students have been working hard on our second unit, "Liberty and Equality". They just finished reading Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and are now working on writing speeches addressing different topics covered in the book.
First quarter ends this Friday, October 4th. Grades will be updated and posted by Monday October 7th.
Parent/Teacher conferences are coming up next week as well. They will be held Thursday October 10th from 4:00-6:00 PM and Friday October 11th from 12:30-6:00 PM. Friday is an early release day for students. All students will be released at 11:30 AM. All middle school students MUST attend conferences.
Thank you for a wonderful first quarter! Let's make Quarter 2 just as great.
Meet the Teacher