Writing Assignment

Tomorrow is Jeans Day!! The cost is 3.00 for students! If you wear jeans, wear a school appropriate shirt.

On to the writing piece for the 1st trimester:

You will write a creative, fictional story. Your genre must be realistic fiction; therefore, your story must be set in present day and your events should be believable. Other than that, the story is up to you. You will, however, be assigned to a writing "group", other students who will help you think of ideas, in addition to revising and editing your work. You, in return, will help your group members in the same way. You will be required to complete certain tasks by a particular deadline in order to receive points toward your project grade.

I am going to be posting one part at a time.

Brainstorm/Prewrite is due Friday, October 3, 2008.
You must write on a piece of paper five ideas for a short story and bring it to class on October 3. You may use your writing journal as inspiration, but you are not required to do so. Your ideas must be numbered and at least 4 sentences in length. On Oct 3, you will meet with your group to discuss your ideas and to brainstorm new ideas. At the end of the class period, you will have narrowed your ideas to the one you will write. You will turn in all your written ideas, circling the idea which you intend to write.

Have a wonderful evening!

Writing Process

In writing, we are going to beginning a large writing piece soon. Today we reviewed and took notes on the writing process.
Prewriting=thinking
Drafting=writing
Revising=fixing ideas and details
Editing=fixing mechanics
Publish=final copy and turning it in
You need to make sure you have all components of the writing process completed before you turn in any writing assignment.

Helpful tips: Read your writing piece backwords. Start at the end and work up. This will help you pick up on misspelled words and other errors. You should also not write the same way that you talk. We do not speak with correct grammar, but you need to have correct grammar in your writing.

Health Homework

We began the Human Body Systems today in Health with notes. We briefly touched on 5 of the 11 systems-cardiovascular system, skeletal system, nervous system, respiratory system, and digestive system.

For homework (Due Thursday, September 25, 2008) is a fill in the blank worksheet about the human body systems. Students have a word bank at the top and have to read through the passage filling in the blanks with the correct word.

Reading Quiz Tomorrow

There is a reading quiz tomorrow Wednesday, September 24, 2008 for the story Baseball Saved Us.

The students will need to know:

• Vocabulary- know how to spell the words and their meanings.
• Details from Baseball Saved Us
• Definition of Setting-know how to find
• Definition of Predict-know how to perform

Vocabulary Words

1. barracks- houses built for military purposes
2. bleachers-outdoor stands or benches for watching games
3. glinting-sparkling

Study, Study, Study!!!

This Week

The Open House is Wednesday, September 24, 2008 from 5:30pm until 7:00pm. It is a great time to come and meet all of your child's teachers for the 2008-2009 school year. You will also get a chance to see some of the work that your child has done so far this year. The PTO meeting is immediately following at 7:00pm. I encourage all parents to attend and be involved in our PTO!

The school store will be open and available during the open house as well.

Tomorrow the 7th grade has a test in Science on living and nonliving organisms. Be sure to study and start your science grade out great!

Friday, September 26, 2008 is a jeans day. The cost is $3.00 for students. They may wear jeans and a school appropriate shirt.

We are working on subject and predicate in Writing. Study your verbs!

For Reading, students have to complete vocab for The Day The Sun Came Out and we will begin reading that story soon.

In Social Studies, we are still on Chapter One. We have been watching a video on Islam and will read Section 2 this week and have a quiz either the end of this week or the beginning of next week.

In Math, we are adding and subtracting fractions. Be sure to work with your multiplication facts daily so it is easier to memorize them! We will be learning to convert improper fractions to mixed numbers next. One important thing to remember when adding and subtracting numbers is that you need a common denominator. Tonights homework was to finish page 30 1-16. We have been working on this page for 2 class periods now.

Please feel free to email me with any questions or concerns!

Have a wonderful week!

Book Donations

The Student Council sent home a flyer about book donations last week. We are looking for donations of books with the reading levels of kindergarten through eighth grade. The school store will sell these books from $.50 to $1.00 to students at PCA. This allows all students to have the availablity to build their home library. With the economic situation around society today, it is difficult for some families to allow students to visit bookstores and purchase books. The average book is $4.00-$5.00. This is going to give students the opportunities to have those books at home. Having books at home will help students in their reading abilities as well as the desire to read.

For every 10 books that you bring in, you will receive one free item ($1.00) from the school store. How cool is that?

Please bring all of your donations to the main office where there is a box for book donations! Thank you so much for all of your help in helping the students of PCA!

Writing Quiz

Don't forget that there is a Writing quiz on Monday. It will be on the Parts of Speech that we learned in class. We made a chart, created a song, and played a Bingo game on the parts of speech. Be sure to study and make sure you know each one. You will need to know the name, definition, and a few examples!

The parts of speech are Noun, Verb, Adjective, Adverb, Preposition, Interjection, Conjunction, Article, and Pronouns. Study your chart.

Also, make sure your Social Studies project got turned in. It was due on Friday. You loose citizenship points each day that it is late. After 3 days, the citizenship grade will be a 0. It is important to start the year off great and get things turned in when they are due!

I hope everyone has a great week!!

SCHOOL STORE

The Providence Creek Academy Student Council school store is officially open for business now! It feature much of your basic school supplies that students will need throughout the year. You can purchase pencils, mechanical pencils, spiral notebooks, loose leaf paper, folders (plastic and paper), hole punches that fit in the 3 ring binder, glue sticks and much more! All of the school supplies are $1.00 and under. We also have Providence Creek Academy water bottles and magnets for sale. Come check us out!

We will be at the Open House on September 24, 2008..

The school store is also accepting donations of school related items that can benefit the students. Please let me know if you have anything to donate. One thing I would like to be able to offer the students is books for $1.00 and under. If you have any old childrens books that we could offer, please let me know. Books can be expensive and this would be a nice way to allow children to have affordable books to read.

Thank you for everything you do!

ITS SEPTEMBER!

We are into September and in full swing here at Providence Creek Academy! If you have not already purchased your school supplies, you need to do that by Monday. We spent the first week of school working on beginning of the year activities including the rules, procedures, discipline, intervention, etc. The students were had a say about the rules and the consequences. It was an enjoyable experience for the students. The rules are universal around the middle school:
Respect Yourself, Respect the Teacher, Respect Others, and the Learning Environment.
The students created a list of consequences. Once they have earned the consequence level, they will choose which consequence they would like to fulfill.

Fall sports are underway as well! Congrats to all of our fall 2009 athletes! You can check out the sports schedules on www.providencecreekacademy.org and come out to cheer on your Saints!

Student Council will begin today during Elective time. Bring all of your great ideas and thoughts to help better your school and the education of your peers! We will also be getting the school store up and running very soon. There will not be any food sold this year. The school store will sell school supplies and hopefully some Providence Creek Academy items. The days and times will be announced soon!

If you have not had a chance to explore our new grading policy, please look into that. It has drastically changed to help your children become better students and be more successful in school. One change is that there are no longer marking periods, we have changed to trimesters. Your child will bring home 3 report cards this year rather than four. We have also add a citizenship grade which the students will be graded on participation, respect, following directions, responsibility. This grade will accompany the academic grade and be just as important. Students will be able to attend gatherings with a 1.7 or higher citizenship grade. The academic grades have been broken down into more specific learning targets so that you are able to see what your child might be excelling in or struggling with.

The discipline policy has changed as well. There are no more demerits. All level offenses (1, 2, 3) will be recorded on a discipline referral and input into the eschool system. This is for tracking and intervention purposes. The consequences will depend on the level offense that the students has broken. There was a discipline paper that was sent home for parents to review, please sign and return that as soon as possible!

Emergency cards need to be turned in immediately as well. They are VERY important to have on hand for the students. If there should be an emergency, they need to have all of the medical information as well as contact information for the parents or family members. Please return those cards this week.

If anyone has any questions or concerns please send me an email at nlewis@pca.k12.de.us or call 302-653-6276.

I hope everyone has a good day and a great weekend!