Holiday Book Recommendations

	Jingle (Swindle #8) by Gordon Korman (Ages 8-12, GL 3-7) Griffin Bing and his friends are NOT happy. Instead of going away for winter break, they've been signed up to volunteer at a local Christmas extravaganza...as elves. It's not easy being an elf. But it's nothing compared to being blamed when a prized Christmas possession is stolen from right under your nose. It's time for these elves to get off the shelf and track down a Christmas thief!
	The 12 Screams of Christmas (Goosebumps Most Wanted) by R.L. Stine (Ages 8-12, GL 3-7) Kate Welles wants to play the lead in her school's Christmas play. Kate's teacher decides she needs to find a special place to rehearse. A certain house with a special history. The kind of place that Kate would normally be pretty frightened to go into. The kind of place that gives new meaning to the term: Christmas Spirit.
	Let It Snow by John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle (Ages 13+, GL 7+) This novel is being produced as a major motion picture. What do a Christmas Eve snow storm, 14 perky cheerleaders, a Waffle House, and a guy covered in tin foil have in common? Answer: these romantic holiday stories. Through an interconnected cast of characters set in one small Southern town, each author reveals a serendipitous night in the life of a particular teen.
	What Child Is This? by Caroline B. Cooney (Ages 11-15, GL 6-10) On this Christmas Eve, the snow lies on the ground and the stars shine bright, but the grown-ups leave a lot to be desired. And the children desire so much. Katie, a foster child, wants only one thing: a family.
	The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan (Ages 12+, GL 7+) With only twelve days left until Christmas - Lily's favorite time of the year - Dash, Lily's brother Langston, and their closet friends take Manhattan by storm to help Lily recapture the holiday magic of New York City in December.
	North Pole High by Candace Jane Kringle (This book is only marketed as YA -- no specific age/grade information given.) Meet sixteen-year-old Candycane Claus. She's the most popular girl at North Pole High. Her father is world famous. Every day is Christmas. What more could a girl want?
	Whispering to Witches by Anna Daze (Ages 8-13, GL 5-7) When his father is called away at Christmas, Joe resigns himself to spending the holiday with his mother, stepdad, and half-sister Esme. After a train ride leaves him stranded at the wrong station, he borrows a large tricycle that seems to have a will of its own. It transports him to the ramshackle headquarters of the somewhat disreputable Dead-nettle Coven. The witch world is in an uproar over the theft of the world's most dangerous spell, and apparently, somebody thinks Joe has it.

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays from my classroom to your home! I sincerely believe that each and every one of you (students AND parents) deserve a break and some relaxation from the craziness that was the first semester of middle school! Here's hoping you get some quality family time in and lots of sleep, reading, and playing outside so you can come back on Wednesday, January 4 rejuvenated and ready to go!

I often post book recommendations for these longer breaks, and I haven't this year so far. Here are my past book recommendation posts, and please check back later today for my Holiday Book Recommendations for Middle Schoolers!

Symbaloo for Argumentative Group Research

www.symbaloo.com/mix/fightingfor

Attendance

I cannot stress how important it is that your child attend school on a regular basis. Also, understand that while we are happy to give make up work to your child when they miss school, they are missing instruction. We plan our lessons carefully to build on each day, scaffolding learning for students so that they can learn concepts over a period of time.

Start Strong
Absenteeism in the first month of school can predict frequent absences later in the school year. Nearly half of all students that missed more than two days of school in September when on to miss almost a month of school.

Chronic Absences
An estimated 5 to 7.5 million students in the United States miss almost a month of school every ear. This adds up to over a year missed by the time of graduation.

Chronic Absence = Missing two or more days per month
Research shows that students who miss 10 percent of school, or two days per month, show negative academic progress. In some schools, that adds up to 18 days a school year and is considered to be chronic absence.

Dropout Indicator
By sixth grade, a chronically absent student is shown to have a significantly higher chance of dropping out of high school.

Excused Absences Hurt, Too
Excused absences are just as negative as unexcused ones. Suspensions add additional missed time in the classroom, which in turn increases the dropout risk.

Every Minute Matters
If a student is 10 minutes late to school each day, this adds up to missing more than 33 hours of class time.

www.americangraduate.org

MAPs testing

Tuesday, 12/6 is our Winter MAPs testing day.

One of our goals is for students to make an average of two points growth from their Fall MAPs score. The higher their score was initially, the less growth they are expected to make, and vice versa.

MAPs (Measures of Academic Progress) gives us an idea of student's reading comprehension skills. You can read more about MAPs here.

To be considered "on grade level" in MAPs, scores for sixth graders are:
Incoming (Fall MAP): 212.3
Midyear (Winter MAP): 214.3
End of Year (Spring MAP) 216.4

How Text "Fits" Together

We have been working on the standard RI6.5: Analyze how a particular sentence, paragraph, chapter, or section fits into the overall structure of a text and contributes to the development of the ideas.

This standard focuses on how pieces of a text fit together to make the whole meaning, much like a puzzle fits together to create an image that you cannot see until it's complete.

This post describes text structure in nonfiction and how the concept was introduced.

11/29 - We learned five examples of how authors create structure in nonfiction text and discussed how structuring text ensures a reader's understanding. The PowerPoint for this lesson is here. We practiced by sorting five articles into the five different text structures.

11/30 - We applied our learning from yesterday by searching for these text structures in nonfiction articles. This is the Symbaloo we used to start with -- a ton of interesting arguments here!

12/1 - We close read Steve Jobs' commencement speech given at Stanford University in 2005. We found four of our five structures in the speech and annotated the speech through close reading.

12/2 - We watched a video of Steve Jobs' speech and listened closely as the structures were presented in audio format. We answered questions about how the speech was structured and analyzed how the message would be different if the speech was not structured that way.

This is important practice for our assessment on Monday, 12/5. The assessment will be online using the same format (EdPuzzle) as the Steve Jobs' speech practice.

The rubric for this assessment is here.