Literacy 8
Literacy is a semester long
elective class. The class will focus on improving student reading
skills. Students will use the Accelerated Reading Program to set
reading goals and evaluate progress.
Reading strategies that
students will practice throughout the semester will include:
- Predict - Students will
try to figure out what will happen next and how the selection might
end. Then they will read on to see how accurate their guesses
were.
- Visualize - Students will
visualize characters, events, and setting to help understand what's
happening. When reading nonfiction, students should pay
attention to the images that form in their minds as they read.
- Connect - Students will
connect personally with what they are reading. They will need to
think of similarities between descriptions in the selection and what
they have personally experienced, heard about, and read about.
- Question - Students will
question what happens while they read. Searching for reasons
behind events and characters' feeings can help students feel closer to
what they are reading.
- Clarify - Students will
stop occasionally to review what they understand, and expect to have
their understanding change and develop as they read on. Students
will reread and use resources to help clarify their understanding.
- Evaluate - Students
will form opinions about what they have read, both while they are
reading and after they have finished. They will develop their own
ideas about characters and events.
Reading any type of writing will be easier for a student to
understand if they know how it is organized. A writer organizes
ideas in a sequence, or structure, that helps the reader see how the
ideas are related. Five important structures that students will
be working to understand in this class include:
-
Main idea and supporting details
- The main idea of a paragraph or a longer piece of writing is its most important
point. Supporting details give more information about the main
idea.
- Chronological order
- Writing that is organized in chronlogical order presents events
in the order in which they occur.
- Comparison and Contrast
- Comparision-and-contrast writing explains how two or more
subjects are similar and how they
are different.
- Cause and Effect -
Cause-and-effect writing explains the relationship between
events. A cause is an event
that gives rise to another event, or condition, called an effect.
A cause may have more than one effect, and an effect may have more than
one cause.
- Problem - Solution
- This type of writing describes a difficult issue and suggests
at least one way dealing with
it. The writer provides reasons to support his or her suggestion.
Students will also practicing enriching their vocabulary through a variety of ways including:
- Context Clues -
the context of a word is made up of the punctuation marks, other words,
sentences, and paragraphs that
surround the word.
- Word Parts -
knowing base words, roots and affixes - that is, prefixes and suffixes-
can help students figure our the meanings of many new
words.
Grading
Students will be graded on their AR reading test scores, point goal, and daily work that is assigned during class.
Class Expectations
- Be prepared and on time for class
- Come prepared daily with AR book, assignment book, notebook, and a pen or pencil
- Complete assignments on time
- Participate in class readings and discussions
- Listen attentively to class directions
- Respect others
Consequences for not meeting these expectations may include:
- A conference with Ms.Stake
- Parental contact
- RTA referral
- Office referral
District 145 Public Schools
and
Educational Service Unit #6, Milford, Nebraska
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