November 30- December 4

Hello, parents!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your families and that you are having a great day back at work again. In your child's English class, we are studying The Odyssey, so I hope they are excited to hear what will happen next!

This week in class, as well as next week and probably some of the next, we are spending the majority of our time reading in class. Here is a brief run-down of this week in English class:

Monday: power point presentation about the Trojan War
Tuesday: begin reading The Odyssey
Wednesday: continue reading
Thursday: continue reading
Friday: continue reading


Today (Monday), I am showing the students a power point presentation about the Trojan War so that they have some background about what was happening prior to the beginning of The Odyssey. We do not have any new vocabulary words this week, as we are focusing all of our attention on reading The Odyssey.

Tuesday through Friday in class, I will be reading the poem out loud to the class, and they should be following along in their books. I will stop periodically and explain things from the story that they need to know in order to understand what's going on in the story, and I will also be asking them questions along the way to get a feel for whether or not they are understanding everything.

They don't really have any homework to speak of this week for my class. At the end of each day that we are reading The Odyssey, I will give them something called an exit ticket, which is just a question that they will answer briefly in order to get out of class. This is to make sure that they are paying attention to what is going on, as well as to help me determine the extent of their learning. Each exit ticket will be worth five points, and this will be the main way that they will be able to earn points for this week.

I realize that there are still several students who would like to raise their grades in my class, and I am willing to work with these students as well. If you check Power School in the near future, you will see that there will be assignments in the gradebook that are worth zero points. These will be bonus assignments that I will be giving in order to give students a chance to raise their grades in my class. Don't panic if your child does not turn these assignments in; they are just for bonus, and not turning them in will not hurt their grades at all. I will keep you all informed about these assignments as they come along. Also, reading logs are due next Friday, December 11.

Once again, feel free to contact me if you have any questions or concerns about this class. My email address is kwalls@byngschools.com, or you can call the school at 580-310-6744. Have a great day!