To capture what’s been going on in 8th grade Language Arts lately, I decided to go straight to a few of my students to hear what their semester has been like so far. I’m happy to share their reflections with you.
In language arts, we’ve recently been working on persuasive essays. We were asked to pick a topic that strong opinions could be formed about and that could be easily argued. I chose to do mine on if homework is beneficial or not. We then researched our topic (and learned how to make a bibliography for it in the process.) If you didn’t pick a high-profile, clear-cut topic, then you had a hard time finding things. I had a little trouble because my topic is so quiet and there is little to look at for it. Then came the hard part: planning and writing the essay. We first did a funnel format for our introductory paragraph(s) before filling out an outline. After that, we took our outline and made the draft of our essays. We just recently had partners to revise each others’ essays. There have been a few issues but overall it was a good exercise that showed me about defending my views in my writing, and about how to research things and plan a paper before writing it.
-Austin
I always look forward to Mrs.Cruthirds’ class because it always challenges me with new experiences. Lately in class we’ve been doing a lot of new activities, and projects. A lot of the new activities involve the style we do our word study, the format of our writing prompts, and a Bingo activity. Every time we get a new set of word study words we go over the definition of a few prefixes and suffixes as well as our root word for that set. It’s very helpful to know those definitions because then we can figure out words we don’t know. We also do some other challenging activities with our word study words that involve using those definitions.
Recently we started a long research and persuasive essay project. Since we had to choose our own topic it’s been a little difficult because I have had a hard time coming up with good and strong arguments. It’s also been nice too because we got to pick a topic that really interests us which gives us more motivation to get all our work done.
Lastly we’ve been doing a new Bingo activity. During this activity we have to read a lot of different genres of books we may not normally read. At times this activity can be a little frustrating because some genres I’m really not interested in reading. I understand that it’s important though because we can gather more vocabulary and it’s important to read out of your comfort zone because you learn a lot more. Over all I enjoy being challenged everyday with something new and really enjoy this class.
-Sarah
Since the beginning of the third quarter of school, our language arts class has been putting together persuasive essays. We started off by picking a topic. Mrs. Cruthirds took us to the library and Mrs. Proffit showed us how to find good sources and facts. After that, we worked independently on finding good sources and facts to put in our essays. Once we finished finding resources, we worked on a thesis statement and a draft. Mrs. Cruthirds then paired us up with a classmate and we gave feedback on one an others essays. We are still working on revising our essays. Work on the essays has been challenging at times but for the most part, easy. I know for some topics including mine, it was hard to find three good ideas to argue and to find good facts to back it up. Once I found good facts, the actual writing part has been really easy. Getting to hear about everyone’s topics is fun too. I can’t wait to read some of the essays.
-Kevin
This year with Mrs. Cruthirds, we have focused a lot on both writing and reading. Her way of enriching our experience of writing is to pick a topic and write an essay on the topic. For example, right now we are working on a Persuasive Essay. The whole class picks a topic that is controversial and shows both sides of the argument and then states facts and so forth about both sides.
On the Language Arts portion of the class, we are learning about some of the more sophisticated roots in words. For example, she will give us a 3x3 square of prefixes and suffixes. In the middle of the square, the root that we should use to create words is in the middle square. It really helps me with knowing how to work with words, either easy or hard.
-Steven
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