Welcome to 8th Grade ELA!

About the Teacher Experience Third year teaching at Franklin Academy. MS and HS ELA: 13 years teaching MS and HS English Language Arts in public and private schools Have been teaching theatre for 15 years Education B.S Accounting – St. John’s University/State University of New York Teaching Certification – Florida Atlantic University Juris Doctorate – Brooklyn Law School, NY Certifications Elementary K-6 English 6-12 Social Sciences 6-12 Spanish K-12

Classroom Behavior Expectation/Rules S - Sit up! L - Listen!  A - Ask and answer questions N - Nod your head to acknowledge speaker T - Track the speaker When Mrs. Caperna raises her hand… Stop what you’re doing and track her.

Learning Expectation I expect students to be positive, courteous, and respectful to me, their classmates, and all staff members at our school.  I also expect students come to school prepared and ready to learn each day.   I am committed to challenging and motivating my students so they can achieve the goals required to prepare them for high school and beyond. My goal is to make learning fun and help all students reach their academic potential; however, I expect every student to take their learning seriously which means they will commit time and effort toward achieving their learning goals. No excuses.

Homework and Classwork Our school has a no homework policy.  However, if a student is struggling academically, I will assign additional handouts or provide additional computer- based lessons that need to be completed at home/library in order to help those students catch up to their peers.  For students who do not have access to a computer at home, I will gladly make arrangements for them to complete the work in my classroom before school. (7:30am – 8:30am) Otherwise, students must complete these computer assignments at home.  For those students who are not struggling academically, but want to improve their reading comprehension and diagnostic skills, I will have additional computer- based lessons available on our Collections, Discovery and iReady web sites that can be completed at home.  Classwork Policy:  If a student does not complete his/her class work during class, then that student will be required to finish their work at home.  It is not homework—it is work that the student was expected to finish in class but will have the opportunity to complete it at home instead of receiving a poor grade.

Curriculum

Writing Curriculum Students will be writing essays in MLA format and emailing them to me for review and comment. There will likely be numerous revisions before the final draft, so students and I will be playing email ping-pong with the essays.  Essays/writing assignments email address: mrs.caperna@gmail.com (This email address is for student writing use only.) Parent questions/concerns: caperna.mary@franklin-academy.org

Diagnostic Assessments iReady Diagnostic – explained in next slide.  Discovery Diagnostic Assessment/Discovery Education– school benchmark assessment of student performance, teacher-created progress monitoring probes and assessments AR Star Test – measures student reading level in both Lexile and AR levels. Students select books to read based on their level and take an AR quiz after each book read. Will count as a grade. AR Finder site: http://www.arbookfind.com/UserType.aspx

CLASS WEBSITE The class web site is updated frequently and has a tremendous amount of information including the middle school period schedule, more information about me,the vocab words for each week, helpful Franklin Academy links, resource links like iReady and Discovery, class calendar of important events like assessments and more. Our class web site is: http://fa-caperna.weebly.com

iReady Diagnostic Assessment iREADY DIAGNOSTIC TEST THIS WEDNESDAY(8/25) The software on the iReady website helps provide differentiated instruction for all students.  Each student initially takes a diagnostic test and then receives assignments based on their personal level.  Students and parents can monitor growth, amount of lessons completed, time spent on the system by logging into the student account. iReady Lessons: are designed to help expand the vocabulary of the students, improve grammar and spelling, increase reading comprehension and critical thinking skills, and provide achievement goals for students. iReady questions are based on the Florida standards so they help prepare students for the FSA. After taking the initial diagnostic test, each student will have a parent report that I will generate and send to you.  I will also be discussing the results with the students.

Communication Please do not hesitate to contact me with questions and concerns. Email: caperna.mary@franklin-academy.org Tel.: (561) 348-2525 Weekly Agenda, Assignments, Projects, Tests and Quizzes will be posted on Weebly site: http://fa-caperna.weebly.com/

Grading Revision Policy: The pursuit of learning, as well as learning from one’s mistakes, is rewarded in my class. Sometimes students can have a bad day and not perform well on a quiz or test. In my opinion, I do not think that this student will learn from this situation if they are not given the opportunity to correct their mistakes. In addition, I do not think that students should be punished by having one or two grades that significantly reduce their overall grade in the class for that quarter. In order to motivate students and give them an incentive to maintain high grades or raise low grades, students will be given opportunities to revise and correct mistakes. Grade Scale: Classwork 20% Project 20% Quiz 25% Test 35%

Either before or after school in order to work around your hectic work schedules. Please email me to schedule a parent conferences, and I will send you calendar invites when we confirm the date/time.