Happy New Year ~2019~ Time to Gleam! 

Let's start the year off with a positive outlook on academic success and reach new heights.
Your ultimate goal as a high school freshman is LEVEL UP!

Make accumulating your 6-8 credits to become a high school Sophmore a reality!
We Believe in You!
You MUST Believe in YOURSELF!

https://opportunity.org/learn/lists/10-habits-of-successful-students#.XDJwwlxKg2x

10 HABITS OF SUCCESSFUL STUDENTS

1. Get Organized. Making a plan for what you're going to do and when you're going to do it will make sure you're always ahead of the curve - literally. 
   
2. Don't multitask. Studies have shown that multitasking is physically impossible. 
   
3. Divide it up. Studying isn't fun to begin with, and forcing yourself through a study marathon will only make it worse. Dividing your work into manageable chunks and rewarding yourself when you finish each chunk will make studying (more) fun.
   
4. Sleep. Don't underestimate the importance of those eight hours of zzz's every night! Getting a good night's rest will sharpen your focus and improve your working memory.
   
5. Set a schedule. Do you work better right after school or after you've eaten dinner? Are you more productive in 90-minute blocks or half-hour spurts? Find a schedule that works for you, and stick to it. 
   
6. Take notes. Taking notes will not only keep you more engaged during class, but will also help you narrow down what you need to study when exam time rolls around. It's much easier to reread your notes than to reread your entire textbook!
   
7. Study. This one might be obvious, but did you know that there's a right and a wrong way to study? Review your material several days ahead of time, in small chunks, and in different manners (for example, write flashcards one day and take practice tests the next). In other words, don't cram. 
   
8. Manage your study space. Find a place that will maximize your productivity. Look for places away from the television and other distractions. Whether it's your local library or just the desk in your bedroom, set aside a study space that you'll want to spend time in. 
   
9. Find a study group. Sitting down with a group of people who are learning the same things as you is a great way to go over confusing class material or prepare for a big test. You can quiz each other, reteach material, and make sure that everyone is on the same page. After all, teaching someone else is the best way to learn. 
   
10. Ask questions. You're in school to learn, so don't be afraid to do just that! Asking for help - from a teacher, a tutor or your friends - is a surefire way to make sure you truly understand the material. 

How to Begin an Essay: 13 Engaging Strategies

• An Introduction to Essay Writing

Dynamic Ways to Begin an Essay. Illustration by Hugo Lin. ThoughtCo. 

byRichard Nordquist Updated November 26, 2018

An effective introductory paragraph both informs and motivates: it lets readers know what your essay is about and it encourages them to keep reading.

There are countless ways to begin an essay effectively. As a start, here are 13 introductory strategies accompanied by examples from a wide range of professional writers.

13 Introductory Strategies

1. State your thesis briefly and directly (but avoid making a bald announcement, such as "This essay is about . . .").
   It is time, at last, to speak the truth about Thanksgiving, and the truth is this. Thanksgiving is really not such a terrific holiday. . . .
   (Michael J. Arlen, "Ode to Thanksgiving." The Camera Age: Essays on Television. Penguin, 1982)
2. Pose a question related to your subject and then answer it (or invite your readers to answer it).
   What is the charm of necklaces? Why would anyone put something extra around their neck and then invest it with special significance? A necklace doesn't afford warmth in cold weather, like a scarf, or protection in combat, like chain mail; it only decorates. We might say, it borrows meaning from what it surrounds and sets off, the head with its supremely important material contents, and the face, that register of the soul. When photographers discuss the way in which a photograph reduces the reality it represents, they mention not only the passage from three dimensions to two, but also the selection of a point de vue that favors the top of the body rather than the bottom, and the front rather than the back. The face is the jewel in the crown of the body, and so we give it a setting. . . .
   (Emily R. Grosholz, "On Necklaces." Prairie Schooner, Summer 2007)

1. State an interesting fact about your subject.The peregrine falcon was brought back from the brink of extinction by a ban on DDT, but also by a peregrine falcon mating hat invented by an ornithologist at Cornell University. If you cannot buy this, Google it. Female falcons had grown dangerously scarce. A few wistful males nevertheless maintained a sort of sexual loitering ground. The hat was imagined, constructed, and then forthrightly worn by the ornithologist as he patrolled this loitering ground, singing, Chee-up! Chee-up!and bowing like an overpolite Japanese Buddhist trying to tell somebody goodbye. . . .
   (David James Duncan, "Cherish This Ecstasy." The Sun, July 2008)
2. Present your thesis as a recent discovery or revelation.I've finally figured out the difference between neat people and sloppy people. The distinction is, as always, moral. Neat people are lazier and meaner than sloppy people.
   (Suzanne Britt Jordan, "Neat People vs. Sloppy People." Show and Tell. Morning Owl Press, 1983)

1. Briefly describe the place that serves as the primary setting of your essay.It was in Burma, a sodden morning of the rains. A sickly light, like yellow tinfoil, was slanting over the high walls into the jail yard. We were waiting outside the condemned cells, a row of sheds fronted with double bars, like small animal cages. Each cell measured about ten feet by ten and was quite bare within except for a plank bed and a pot of drinking water. In some of them brown silent men were squatting at the inner bars, with their blankets draped round them. These were the condemned men, due to be hanged within the next week or two.
   (George Orwell, "A Hanging," 1931)
2. Recount an incident that dramatizes your subject.One October afternoon three years ago while I was visiting my parents, my mother made a request I dreaded and longed to fulfill. She had just poured me a cup of Earl Grey from her Japanese iron teapot, shaped like a little pumpkin; outside, two cardinals splashed in the birdbath in the weak Connecticut sunlight. Her white hair was gathered at the nape of her neck, and her voice was low. “Please help me get Jeff’s pacemaker turned off,” she said, using my father’s first name. I nodded, and my heart knocked.
   (Katy Butler, "What Broke My Father's Heart." The New York Times Magazine, June 18, 2010)

1. Use the narrative strategy of delay: put off identifying your subject just long enough to pique your readers' interest without frustrating them.They woof. Though I have photographed them before, I have never heard them speak, for they are mostly silent birds. Lacking a syrinx, the avian equivalent of the human larynx, they are incapable of song. According to field guides the only sounds they make are grunts and hisses, though the Hawk Conservancy in the United Kingdom reports that adults may utter a croaking coo and that young black vultures, when annoyed, emit a kind of immature snarl. . . .
   (Lee Zacharias, "Buzzards." Southern Humanities Review, 2007)
2. Using the historical present tense, relate an incident from the past as if it were happening now.Ben and I are sitting side by side in the very back of his mother’s station wagon. We face glowing white headlights of cars following us, our sneakers pressed against the back hatch door. This is our joy--his and mine--to sit turned away from our moms and dads in this place that feels like a secret, as though they are not even in the car with us. They have just taken us out to dinner, and now we are driving home. Years from this evening, I won’t actually be sure that this boy sitting beside me is named Ben. But that doesn’t matter tonight. What I know for certain right now is that I love him, and I need to tell him this fact before we return to our separate houses, next door to each other. We are both five.
   (Ryan Van Meter, "First." The Gettysburg Review, Winter 2008)

1. Briefly describe a process that leads into your subject.I like to take my time when I pronounce someone dead. The bare-minimum requirement is one minute with a stethoscope pressed to someone’s chest, listening for a sound that is not there; with my fingers bearing down on the side of someone’s neck, feeling for an absent pulse; with a flashlight beamed into someone’s fixed and dilated pupils, waiting for the constriction that will not come. If I’m in a hurry, I can do all of these in sixty seconds, but when I have the time, I like to take a minute with each task.
   (Jane Churchon, "The Dead Book." The Sun, February 2009)
2. Reveal a secret about yourself or make a candid observation about your subject.I spy on my patients. Ought not a doctor to observe his patients by any means and from any stance, that he might the more fully assemble evidence? So I stand in doorways of hospital rooms and gaze. Oh, it is not all that furtive an act. Those in bed need only look up to discover me. But they never do.
   ( Richard Selzer, "The Discus Thrower." Confessions of a Knife. Simon & Schuster, 1979)

1. Open with a riddle, joke, or humorous quotation, and show how it reveals something about your subject.Q: What did Eve say to Adam on being expelled from the Garden of Eden?A: "I think we're in a time of transition."
   The irony of this joke is not lost as we begin a new century and anxieties about social change seem rife. The implication of this message, covering the first of many periods of transition, is that change is normal; there is, in fact, no era or society in which change is not a permanent feature of the social landscape. . . .
   (Betty G. Farrell, Family: The Making of an Idea, an Institution, and a Controversy in American Culture. Westview Press, 1999)
2. Offer a contrast between past and present that leads to your thesis.As a child, I was made to look out the window of a moving car and appreciate the beautiful scenery, with the result that now I don't care much for nature. I prefer parks, ones with radios going chuckawaka chuckawaka and the delicious whiff of bratwurst and cigarette smoke.
   (Garrison Keillor, "Walking Down The Canyon." Time, July 31, 2000)

1. Offer a contrast between image and reality—that is, between a common misconception and the opposing truth.They aren’t what most people think they are. Human eyes, touted as ethereal objects by poets and novelists throughout history, are nothing more than white spheres, somewhat larger than your average marble, covered by a leather-like tissue known as sclera and filled with nature’s facsimile of Jell-O. Your beloved’s eyes may pierce your heart, but in all likelihood they closely resemble the eyes of every other person on the planet. At least I hope they do, for otherwise he or she suffers from severe myopia (near-sightedness), hyperopia (far-sightedness), or worse. . . .
   (John Gamel, "The Elegant Eye." Alaska Quarterly Review, 2009)

Being Academically Honest - HOMEWORK

Watch the following video, take notes and then answer the following questions. THIS IS FOR A GRADE.

1. What is academic integrity?

2. What is academic dishonesty? 

Define the following terms according to the video: 

~plagiarism
~cheating
~facilitating
~fabrication
~multiple submissions

3. If you are not sure if you are in violation of any of these, what should you do?

4. What are some of the consequences of academic dishonesty?

Please turn in your work by  November 16th.

Your diligence is much appreciated!

Ms. Sanders

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Please purchase a copy of Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird" by November 12th

To Kill a Mockingbird is Harper Lee’s 1961 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a child’s view of race and justice in the Depression-era South. The book sells one million copies per year, and Scout remains one of the most beloved characters in American fiction. (Sparknotes)

Being There..."Developing Your Classroom Presence" from Edutopia

 Believe me. Kids are extremely perceptive and they can pick up when a teacher's heart is not in the teaching. With every lesson I create, especially when I truly believe its out of this world cool and full of the wonder of learning, my students see me giddy and excited and well prepared to deliver. I have been successful at pulling off some amazing lessons. However, I have also had some simply fall flat and fizzle out. Also, I have had student input to turn the assignment on its head and create a whole new moment of learning. That is the best and most rewarding part of teaching.

"Teachers know they have presence when they have a genuine connection with the students that breeds confidence and respect throughout the classroom, allowing for risk taking and increased learning opportunities." (Edutopia)

As you read and enjoy this awesome article, which was shared with me by my amazing principal, consider your classroom presence. Are students walking into an atmosphere of excitement or a den of "let's just get this done"!  (just click the image)

Enjoy your summer!

Pass it on...Teacher Tips to Close out a Great School Year!

My first teaching position consisted of a few days of shadowing a wonderfully gifted teacher, receiving a key with a smile and then left on my own. It was tough, I could barely manage lesson plans let alone a classroom full of second-chance at-risk students, but I LOVED my new career and I was determined to help my students succeed.
I went to every experienced teacher on campus asking question upon question, attending training and finally becoming the kind of teacher I wanted my students to have. I have to thank all of the patient veteran teachers and principals who were willing to help me when things got tough.
With that said, I missed the opportunity to sit with a first-year teacher and offer up a bit of sage advice from my experiences in the past 13 years of teaching. So, to keep my word I created a short informational video that I hope in some small way will help new teachers diving headlong into one of the greatest and toughest professions out there.
Blessings,
Paula

When looking for answers...

3/29/2018 by Paula Sanders

When you have a child with learning difficulties, it seems as if there is either an information overload or nothing out there at all. One website that I have found to be very helpful is Understood.org. Their mission statement is simple:

“Our goal is to help the millions of parents whose children, ages 3–20, are struggling with learning and attention issues. We want to empower them to understand their children’s issues and relate to their experiences. With this knowledge, parents can make effective choices that propel their children from simply coping to truly thriving…We promise well-researched, practical information that’s easy to apply to everyday life.”

The website includes:

Learning and Attention Issues, which provides a better understanding of your child’s learning difference.

School and Learning provide useful tips on how to communicate with your child’s teachers.

Friends and Feelings offer advice of solving social problems such as shyness, coping with change and bullying.

You and Your Family guides parents through planning events and helping other family members to understand the various aspects of behaviors related to children with learning challenges

Community and Events provides a list

of blogs, support groups, and even webinars to learn better ways to help your child through their social and academic journeys.

And finally,

The Parent Toolkit is your go-to area for discovering what your child’s disability “feels” like through simulations, apps to help children learn and even school ratings to find the best education possibilities for your child.

Take a look and learn a lot more at 

www.understood.org