Welcome to the New School Year!

Welcome to the 2012-2013 school year!  I hope everyone had a wonderful summer.  I managed to squeeze a lot into the past few months: I visited family in New England—including my newborn baby nephew; I went to Washington to celebrate another nephew’s graduation from high school; I finished my thesis and presented my colloquium for my MFA at University of Alaska, Anchorage; I gardened, hiked, swam, and pickled vegetables; and of course, I read a lot of great books that I can’t wait to share.

I'll be posting here about what we're up to in language arts, so be sure to check in once in a while.  This first week, we'll be getting to know each other a little bit, discussing goals, looking at the year ahead, and jumping into a review of the parts of speech.  During the first quarter we'll focus on fundamentals of grammar: reviewing the parts of speech, punctuation rules, and sentence structure.  We study grammar because it strengthens our writing and gives us the language with which to discuss revisions and decisions when it comes to writing.

Some of the assignments we'll be working on during the first few days include the following...
Opening Day Letter
"What Is Success?" Poem and Prompt
Nouns and Pronouns Notes and Practice
Nouns and Pronouns Writing Prompts
Nouns and Pronouns Review
I'll post more as we go.  For the most part, assignments will be collected at the end of the week, so it's a good idea to make sure everything's organized and complete on Thursday nights.  On Thursday, I'll try to post a list of assignments that will be due the following day here.

This is my first year trying a classroom blog, so there may be some blips, and I welcome feedback about what works and what can be improved.  I'm looking forward to a great school year!