Good Afternoon,

Several news items to share -

• 7th grade students will be going to see the fall play at the high school on Thursday morning.  A $5 fee has been added to your school fees for this.  All  7th grade students will attend.  
• Today is the first day of a new grading period.  It is a fresh start in many ways.  Report cards will be issued later this week.  
• Thanksgiving break is next week.  No school on November 22, 23, 24.  
• Today I introduced a new plan to work on some grammar skills in class.  It is a program called NoRedInk.  I have set up pretests in many different grammar skills for students.  If a student scores 80% or above on the pretest, I will record the grade and they are finished with that skill.  If a student scores below 80%, they will have to do some practice skills and take a post test.  Explanations and mini-lessons are provided within the practice skills.  And, of course, I am here as an additional resource.  One problem I see with students is that they just click through things and do not stop to read the explanation.  This is not helping them understand and learn.  Students can choose what order to work on the skills.  For most students, they must complete 7 skills this trimester (and 7 in the last trimester).  Each skill will be recorded as a 20 point grade.  Please let me know if you have any questions about this.  
• We continue to work on iLit to help us with our reading/writing skills.  Some students are several weeks behind on this program.  Unfortunately, even though it is a new grading period, I cannot fast forward students to the current week.  They still have to complete the work for the previous weeks but now they no longer get credit for it because the grading period has ended.  Students were warned about this ahead of time.  
• Please try to have a time and place for your student to work on homework each night.  There is ALWAYS homework.  Even if there is nothing written that must be turned in, notes can be reviewed.  Reading is a skill that should be practiced daily and all students should be doing some reading in their free time each evening.  

Have a wonderful week.