8th Grade ELA

My name is Mariah Gorham. This is my 3rd year of teaching, and my first year here at Belle Creek. The photo above is my partner and I. We live together in Thornton along with our 3 cats. When I'm not in the classroom I love to travel, swim, crochet, and country dance. I look forward to a wonderful year of growth and learning together. 

Holy cow! This semester is flying by. Students finished up Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass at the end of October. Afterwards we ventured on to our third unit, Frankenstein. Students get to read a graphic novel version of the classic text and seem to be enjoying it so far. We are working with how pictures and images convey meaning, analyzing specific textual elements, and working to comprehend the story. We will finish this unit up with a body biography project right before Thanksgiving break. Students will have some reading homework for the week of 11/18 so that we can finish the book on time. 

Welcome to Quarter 2! We are officially back in the swing with quarter 2 this week. Students are finishing up learning about the Gettysburg Address and making connections with Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. This week students will be writing their unit essay, focusing on how to incorporate textual evidence and how to prove their answers. I am looking forward to see all of our students insightful responses to our prompt. 

 

As a reminder, students have a book journal this week. Students should be reading 20-30 minutes a night and filling out their book journal. This assignment can be found on their Reading Google Classroom and is #205. As always please feel free to reach out to me with any questions. Let's make it a great week Wildcats!

Welcome to Quarter 2! We are still hard at work in our second unit here in 8th Grade ELA. This week students will be reading the Gettysburg Address and comparing and contrasting it with the Declaration of Independence. As usual, work will be posted on Google Classroom.

 

As a reminder, Parent/Teacher conferences are this week on October 10th and 11th. All middle school students MUST attend conferences. They will follow a student-led format (using a script) and all teachers will be available to meet and answer any questions. 

 

There is no book journal for homework this week, but we will be starting that up again the week of 10/14. 

This week students will begin our Frederick Douglass unit. Students will be reading The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave. During this unit, students will be learning more about slavery in the United States. Along with this, students will be examining specific claims in narrative texts. They will learn to identify claims, create their own claims, and back these claims up with evidence. As always, students also have a book journal to complete this week for homework. Families, please remind your students of this assignment! 

 

Personal Narrative Note: Students finished their personal narrative unit last week. As part of this unit, students were asked to write their own personal narrative. Many students have handed their assignments in and they have been graded. It has come to my attention that there was potentially an issue with submitting these assignments on our curriculum website. If your student knows they completed this assignment but it is marked as missing in Infinite Campus, please have them email me their writing at [email protected] so that I can update that. 

We are finishing up our Narratives and Perspectives unit. Students will begin working on writing their own personal narrative the week of 9/10. This will serve as their writing assessment. I will be looking for the application of concepts we talked about during this unit in their own writing. Students will also complete a reading unit assessment on Friday 9/13. Along with this, students should also be reading for 30 minutes at home each night (preferably a book that they can also take an AR quiz on). After completing this reading, students need to fill out their "Book Journal" assignment on Google Classroom. Remember there is information to be filled out EACH night for the book journal assignment.