Kick Start

In the next series of posts, I'm going to go over the various class requirements and routines that we have set up as an 8th grade English/Language Arts (ELA) department.  All 8th graders going through DPMS will experience the same activities and the same curriculum delivered on the same day. In fact, if you went from one ELA classroom to the next you would enter the new classroom at almost exactly the same point in the lesson going on in the room you just left!  As you read through these posts you will find that I use the pronoun "we" instead of "I" because all of this information applies to every 8th grade ELA teacher.

Kick Start is the way that we start our ELA classes.  We want to kick start their thinking to get class off and running.

The first component is a word of the day.  We have a vocabulary word that is either taken from a text that we are working through in class or from the Vocab Ahead website.  Vocab Ahead takes collections of common SAT vocabulary broken down by grade level.  They include short videos that give the definition of each word and then use the word in a few sentences.  In the vocabulary section of their notebook, students write the word, part of speech, definition, synonyms, and antonyms.  In addition we usually have the kids write a sentence about an instance where the vocab word applied to them, or we have them list three things that would match the definition (3 things that are archaic - if archaic was the vocab word).

On the same slide we also have one of the national holidays - and there are definitely some odd ones (Friday is National Talk Like a Pirate Day) - as well as some trivia that usually connects to the holiday. It provides for some great discussion!

Lastly, depending on the day, we either have a short written component or we do a book talk.  For the written component, we ask students to either respond to their choice reading book or the current class read aloud.  We also try to reinforce the grammar we are teaching by having students apply those skills in a short response.  In an effort to combat the "I don't know what book to read" complaint from the kids, we give book talks or show book trailers so kids always have a title in mind for their next book.  It's amazing how many of the titles we've shared are in the hands of the kids!

After we complete Kick Start we are ready to get going for the rest of the day!

As always if you have any questions or concerns send me an email or give me a call!