Ms. Jackson's Reading Rockets

Take a video tour of our new room...

Work for this week

I wanted to get the work up that we will be doing for this week so you can follow up with your students. 7th and 8th grade will be working on the Vocabulary for Fluency with worksheets #1 and #2 due by Thursday. The quiz will be on Friday. 6th grade will begin the Vocabulary for Verbal Interaction, please see an earlier post for the worksheets and quiz. All classes are working on fluency and it is going great! I will be recording the students' while they are doing the fluency warm-ups and posting them here so you can see how great they are doing, I am so proud of them!!

BOOK STUDY - the 7th and 8th grade classes have started their first book study on Chocolate Fever by Robert Kimmel Smith. This is a fun chapter book to get us into the hang of how to do a book study. This may be one of the few times your student has homework all year!! I will be sending home a rubric of project options next week. The project should be completed at home and sent to school by next friday.

Download vocabulary_for_fluency.doc

Download voc_for_fluency_worksheet_1.doc

Download voc_for_fluency_worksheet_2.doc

Vocabulary in full swing!!

Today the 7th and 8th graders took their first vocabulary quiz. Most did great but a couple will need to retest on monday. I am including the first version of the quiz so that they can study this weekend. Download vocabulary_for_verbal_interaction_quiz.doc   Please encourage your student to study for these quizzes, they are important!!

We are also well into the fluency warm-ups and the students are doing great. I am already seeing improvement with some of the students. We will be in the media center Monday to have STAR testing so that we can begin our reading at home program. Please ask your student about bringing home a book to read. They should be reading at least 15 minutes a night at home.

6th grade will begin the placement tests today and continue next week. They are also in the Media Center Monday for STAR testing. I will be sending home their reading levels next week. Please sign the slips and return them to me.

Starting off!!

Today we began pre-testing on Academy of Reading and I introduced the vocabulary to 7th and 8th grade. We will be working on the Vocabulary for Verbal Interaction for the next two weeks. Parents please remind your student to practice using the words in their everyday conversations. Thanks! Students should have gotten the syllabus and discussed it with their parents. Please email me any questions about the syllabus.

Download vocabulary_for_verbal_interaction.doc

Thanks for a Great First Day!!

We had a wonderful first day of school! Ok, all the buses were late arriving and leaving, but other than that, it was a great kick-off to a great school year! I will be handing out the syllabus this Wednesday. It should come home and be reviewed by the parents. This syllabus

(Download reading_enrichment_syllabus.doc) will explain my grading system, what we will be studying, and some of my expectations. Please remember that coming to school is critical. Make-up work is very difficult and for the children to learn, they have to be here. Thanks again for a great start!!

Welcome to Reading Enrichment!!!

I want to welcome all my new and returning students and parents to school year 2008-2009. I am very excited to be teaching reading enrichment again this year for 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. I think we can have a lot of fun, work hard, and learn amazing amounts! Reading well is the key to learning.

We have moved to a new classroom!! We are now in the new 7th grade hall, room 398. It is much bigger and we love it!!

This year we will be working in four areas. The first thing we will work on is fluency. We will be doing fluency drills, reading aloud in pairs. The first student reads, while the second student marks mistakes. Then, the students switch jobs and the other student reads. This will increase the ability to read aloud with fewer and fewer mistakes. The next area of concentration will be vocabulary. We will concentrate on prefixes from the latin and greek. We will also incorporate reading vocabulary words. I will post the words for the week every Monday, so check back! Another area that we will be working on is comprehension. This will be reading passages and answering questions about what has been read. This will really improve our ability in all the subject areas, since all the academics use basic comprehension questions. This will be done in small groups with the teacher. We will also be reading books this year, as a group. Please check back on the blog to see what group/book your student has been assigned. The biggest amount of our time will be utilized on a computer based program, "Academy of Reading". This is a fantastic reading program with great results. Some of the students who had my literacy class last year used this program and several made major reading gains with the program. We will have a rolling schedule for the class that will keep the students engaged and focused. The combination of these four programs will be the ticket to student success in reading!!

HOMEWORK - I don't usually assign homework with two exceptions. The first is reading, please encourage students to read at home. They can read aloud for the family, read silently to themselves, read to younger brothers and sisters, or even read to the pets, JUST READ!! The second exception is make up work. If a student misses classes, they will need to work at home to complete missed work. I would like to encourage all students to come to school everyday, it is important that no lessons be missed for us to have the great outcome we are hoping for!

Please feel free to contact me if you have questions or problems. The easiest way to reach me is by email, connie.jackson@cobbk12.org. I check email at least three times a day and sometimes at home in the evening.

This year we will be working in four areas. The first thing we will work on is fluency. We will be doing fluency drills, reading aloud in pairs. The first student reads, while the second student marks mistakes. Then, the students switch jobs and the other student reads. This will increase the ability to read aloud with fewer and fewer mistakes. The next area of concentration will be vocabulary. We will concentrate on prefixes from the latin and greek. We will also incorporate reading vocabulary words. I will post the words for the week every Monday, so check back! Another area that we will be working on is comprehension. This will be reading passages and answering questions about what has been read. This will really improve our ability in all the subject areas, since all the academics use basic comprehension questions. This will be done in small groups with the teacher. We will also be reading books this year, as a group. Please check back on the blog to see what group/book your student has been assigned. The biggest amount of our time will be utilized on a computer based program, "Academy of Reading". This is a fantastic reading program with great results. Some of the students who had my literacy class last year used this program and several made major reading gains with the program. We will have a rolling schedule for the class that will keep the students engaged and focused. The combination of these four programs will be the ticket to student success in reading!!

HOMEWORK - I don't usually assign homework with two exceptions. The first is reading, please encourage students to read at home. They can read aloud for the family, read silently to themselves, read to younger brothers and sisters, or even read to the pets, JUST READ!! The second exception is make up work. If a student misses classes, they will need to work at home to complete missed work. I would like to encourage all students to come to school everyday, it is important that no lessons be missed for us to have the great outcome we are hoping for!

Please feel free to contact me if you have questions or problems. The easiest way to reach me is by email, connie.jackson@cobbk12.org. I check email at least three times a day and sometimes at home in the evening.

welcome

Connie's Post