Click on the green links in the notes below to find online resources.
Helping You Help Your Children
As adults, it has sometimes been a while since we've seen some of the topics that children study in school. When this happens, we need a refresher course.
Here are some resources you can use to brush up on your language arts knowledge.
English Grammar and Writing
- The Guide to Grammar and Writing provides some thorough review of major English concepts sorted by category. It's word heavy, but thorough.
- Grammar Bytes is more concise and is designed to be easy to understand.
- The Optimist Oratorical Competition
- Daily Writing Tips has help in both grammar and writing. (I just discovered this site over the summer.)
- You can email me or try to use the web to find other information that you need. Depending on the search engine that you use, your results with vary. Here are some academic search options. Duck Duck Go! is also a nice search engine to try. Some additional search engine options can be found here. Finally, iSEEK is not pretty, but its results look quite promising.
2013 - 2014 Novels
- We will be reading Anthem by Ayn Rand this year. Here are some resources to help you follow what is happening in the novel: Shmoop (wonderfully easy to follow), SparkNotes, an annotated copy of the story online, and the Objectivism Reference Center (Objectivism was a philosophy of Rand's that inspired many of her works, though we do not study it with this novel as it is a bit too advanced for middle school). You can learn more about the author's view on the book by reading this interview. I would also encourage you to have discussions with your child about the novel. Some questions you could ask can be found here and here.
- This year, the 8th grade will be reading A Teen's Guide to World Domination by Josh Shipp. Sadly, there are not many resources online available for this sensational book, but I can show you what it is about and who Josh Shipp is here, here, here, here, and here. Last year's 8th graders found it a humorous and inspirational book that they could take some life lessons away from.
- This year, the 7th grade will be reading Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes. This is a wonderful book and one that has won many awards. I make a point to read each year with my class. Keeping track of the characters is difficult in this book since there are eighteen distinct voices that tell the story. This site provides an incomplete description of characters and this one a student written description of the characters. These are good discussion questions for any point in the story.
- The 7th grade will end the first semester with a piece of classical literature: Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. A summary of the story can help you follow the story as can this modified play/summary or the Shmoop version (click Next at the bottom for the summary). To add on to this at home, try watching one of the many television or movie versions of the story to see how it compares to the original. Here's a few to start you off. Here are some questions to discuss as well.
- We will also be studying some Shakespeare, including A Midsummer Night's Dream and attending another play (Twelfth Night) at (the fully amazing) Shakespeare's Tavern in Atlanta. (If you want to get a jump start on the year, go and see the play between July 20 and August 17, 2013. Sadly, that is too soon for us to finish the play and book a field trip this year.) We'll be using the No Fear Shakespeare book series that pairs the original and modern text and can be found online for free. Summaries can also be found on Shmoop, here, and here (as a video). This purpose of this novel is to help students fall in love with Shakespeare in a more supported setting before leaping into it in high school. You can also watch several versions of the story online, including this (poorly animated but linguistically accurate) video version, a Disney version, and an old Mister Magoo version. The video versions have differences from the original story, so it would be a good idea to discuss them after or as you watch.