Our 8th Grade team (three homerooms) will be using a ring binder system with our students so that all work that is handed back to students must be filed and saved. In this way students are developing a portfolio that they can refer to throughout the year. Each marking period students empty the binder and save the papers in an accordion file. At the end of the year, students will have work to use for review for final exams as well as a picture of their growth while in the 8th grade.
All of the two-column notes, all writing assignments and any completed and corrected worksheets now become handy references (of model sentences, paragraphs, conclusions, parts of speech). This unit will be taught at the end of the 2nd marking period so that students will be able to compare their writing with their efforts in the earlier part of the year. I think a portfolio system is actually the best way for a student to see how much he has accomplished (students are always impressed by an inch of completed paper organized in a binder). And if a student should read an early piece of writing and compare it to something that shows his improvement, the smile says it all.
Class work
Students will hand in their two-column notes and any webs or outlines they develop during the unit. The DO-NOW activities (diagrams of sentences or other short activities) will be collected randomly. The Letter to Uncle Sam will be assessed as will the final performance task on the frontier.
Homework
Homework is checked into a homework log regularly -- review at home of material covered in class is the focus so it is important that students work routinely (developing a good habit) on each homework assignment and bring it into class so we can go over the work or answer questions.
Rubrics and self-evaluation
I will develop multi-point rubrics for students to use to guide them through certain projects. There will be a rubric for the Uncle Sam letter and the Frontier project. Students will evaluate their own work and determine the points that they think they earned. By using the rubric, the students and I will evaluate separately the process as well as the final outcome (the essay or paragraph) of the assignment.