Mr. Jim Finley
Warren Elementary School
Marietta, Ohio 45750
Class Assignments

GRADE EIGHT: Last week (April 12-16) we read the first three scenes from "The Diary of Anne Frank." We took a quiz over scene two and finished all of scene three including the discussion. New vocabulary words were given out and an historical perspective was provided for necessary background information for this literature.

GRADE SEVEN: Last week we finished and tested on Chapter 25 capitalization. We also got our process logs and read Chapter 8 in preparation for the next writing assignment - Persuasive essay. Due April 19. GRADE EIGHT: Last week (April 5-9) we finished "Flowers for Algernon" and saw the film based on that story.We also read Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" and watched the skippers or some such rope jumping stuff.

GRADE SEVEN: Last week we turned in and read aloud our how to essays. We also tested over Chapter 24, Usage. We talked about writing persuasively, but nobody was persuaded. GRADE EIGHT: Last week (March 29-April 1) we spent the entire week reading Flowers for Algernon.We got a new vocabulary list and two handouts on IQ and inkblot testing. We had discussions in large group.

GRADE SEVEN: We got out new composition assignment from Chapter 7 - a "how to" essay. We also covered more of Chapter 24, the Usage Glossary. We completed two worksheets for a grade in English.

GRADE EIGHT: Last week (March 22-26 we read and discussed "The Monkey's Paw" and "The Lady, or the Tiger." We tested on the latter, discussed plans for spring book reports, and went to the library.

GRADE SEVEN: Last week we accomplished very little due to proficiency testing. See diagnostic test for Chapter 24.

GRADE EIGHT: Last week (March 16-19) we read and tested on O. Henry's "The Ransom of Red Chief." We also completed our oral and written book reports. The amount of graded material came to about three hundred points this week so check your average at this site and be sure to make up anything that you missed.

GRADE SEVEN: Last week we finished and tested on all of Chapter 23. This dealt with positive, comparative, and superlative degrees of adjectives and adverbs as well as misplaced prepositional and participial phrases. We also dealt with misplaced modifiers such as adjective clauses. We worked on Chapter 6, writing a short story.

GRADE EIGHT: Last week (March 8-12) we accomplished very little due to the calamity days. We did read "A Lesson in Discipline" and quizzed on that story. The literary term was "Theme." We also got our new list of vocabulary words for the O.Henry story.

GRADE SEVEN: Last week we finished most of Chapter 23 in our English text. We also turned in several worksheets and our process logs. We turned in our descriptive essays and read them aloud in class.

GRADE EIGHT: Last week (March 1-5) we covered nearly all of the poetry unit in the text. We discussed ballads, rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, onomatopoeia, symbols, imagery, meter, and other things poetic. 8-Ts missed nearly all of this due to proficiency testing.

GRADE SEVEN: Last week we covered all of Chapter 5 on Descriptive Writing. Process logs were handed out and the comp assignment was made for March 8. We also took a diagnostic test on degrees of adjectives and adverbs.

GRADE EIGHT: Last week (Feb. 22-26) we took a final test on THE CALL OF THE WILD, and we practiced for next week's proficiency test in reading. We began our poetry unit by reading "The Ballad of William Sycamore," "Nothing Gold Can Stay," and "Catalogue." We took a short quiz on these poems after some discussion.

GRADE SEVEN: Last week we completed Chapter 22 on pronoun usage. We took a test on Friday. We also wrote a business letter and turned it in for a 50 point composition grade.

GRADE EIGHT: Last week (February 16-19) we finished the novel THE CALL OF THE WILD. We used study guides and other resources to review this book. We saw a related documentary. Finally we took our final test on Jack London's classic.

GRADE SEVEN: Last week we finished and turned in our personal experience narratives from Chapter 4 of our textbook. We stuck to the writing process by filling out a process log and submitting it with our final drafts. Progress reports went out. We continued our study of Nominative and Objective pronoun cases.

GRADE EIGHT: Last week (February 8-12) we finished chapters 4 and 5 of The Call of the Wild and tested on the same. I gave out new study guides and vocabulary, and we read and discussed some of Chapter 6.

GRADE SEVEN: Last week we turned in and read our poems. We took a test over Chapter 21. We learned the differences between some troublesome verbs such as lie/lay, and we turned in our composition folders. A new composition assignment was made from Chapter 4, a personal experience narrative.

GRADE EIGHT: Last week (February 1-5) we tested on chapters 3 and 4. Only one student got a perfect score! I gave out new vocabulary (See "Odds and Ends") and we continued reading Chapter 4 of The Call of the Wild. I also assigned book reports, oral and written, for Mid- March.

GRADE SEVEN: Last week we studied the six basic verb tenses and conjugated them in front of the class for extra credit. See pages 592-593. We turned in our weekly essays and read them in front of the class. Good work this week.

GRADE EIGHT: Last week (January 25-29) we read and discussed chapters two and three of THE CALL OF THE WILD. On Monday we tested over the first chapter. New vocabulary words and study guides were given out.

GRADE SEVEN: Last week we worked on composition - Chapter three from ELEMENTS OF WRITING. We completed seven or eight practice worksheets only one of which was collected for a grade. We discussed introductory and closure techniques as well as transitions for coherence and unity. On Friday we began Chapter 21 on the principal parts of verbs and their usage.

GRADE EIGHT: Last week (January 19-22) we read a chapter and more in THE CALL OF THE WILD, and we got our first vocabulary list on this. I gave a lecture on Jack London's background and how it influenced his writing. I gave out study guides, and we discussed what we read.On Friday we reviewed for a test.

GRADE SEVEN: At last we finished Chapter 20 on Usage, specifically subject and verb agreement. We had a test on Friday which measured your ability to make subjects and verbs agree in number when sentences contained such complicating factors as prepositional phrases between the subject and verb, compounds, collectives, "here and there", amounts, titles, etc. We also dealt with pronoun and antecedent agreement. Gender agreement was our last lesson.

GRADE EIGHT: Forget the first week of 1999. We only had one day of school. Last week (January 11-15) we finished our book reports, read and discussed multiculturalism in the essay "One Land, Two Worlds," and reviewed the terms "connotation" and "denotation."

GRADE SEVEN: Last week we worked on Usage Chapter 20 and turned in our "present" essays. New seating charts were created for all seventh graders and we had both a spelling and a geography bee. GRADE EIGHT: Last week (Dec. 14-18) was an all Christmas story week. We read "A Child's Christmas in Wales" while we listened to a recording of Dylan Thomas's reading of this story. We also read O'Henry's "The Gift of the Magi." We read and tested on Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory." The literary term of the week was "characterization."

GRADE SEVEN: This final week of 1998 we completed paragraphs from our Chapter 2 writing lessons. We wrote paragraphs to persuade, to express, to describe, and to inform. We completed a number of worksheets that counted as a composition grade.

GRADE EIGHT: Last week (Dec. 7-11) we read Hyacinth Drift by Marjorie K. Rawlings. We then watched and tested on her autobiography "Cross Creek." We updated our library logs and discussed book reports. Some students practiced the 9th grade proficiency test on CD. All students will complete this activity before March.

GRADE SEVEN: Last week we completed all of Chapter 19 on simple, compound, and complex sentences. We completed a number of worksheets on compound sentences as well as independent and subordinate clauses. On Friday we tested on the chapter. We also began Chapter 2 on paragraphs, main ideas, and topic sentences.

GRADE EIGHT: Last week (Dec. 1-4) we read "The Music Inside My Head" by Gordon Parks and "Hyacinth Drift" by Marjorie K. Rawlings. We tested on the latter. This is our introduction to non-fiction. Please acquaint yourselves with the various forms that this can take: articles, essays, letters, autobiography, biography, speeches, etc.

GRADE SEVEN: We spent this short week developing an in class essay on heroes. We watched a film that included half a dozen short stories of heroism, and we followed the writing process for a period and a half to compose our essays. Most students used computers for the final drafts.

GRADE EIGHT: Last week (Nov. 23-25) we read a number of plays for fun from Scholastic Scope. You are not responsible for any make up here. However, we did read and take a quiz on "The Ugly Duckling."

GRADE SEVEN: (Nov. 23-25) This was a short but busy week. We turned in and read aloud some of our short stories and took a test on Chapter 18.

GRADE EIGHT: Last week (Nov. 16-20) we read and discussed Conan doyle's "The Three Garridebs." We tested on the story at the end of the week. See Vocabulary at this site - "Odds and Ends." We also focused on stereotypes in literature and how authors use this device for quick, painless characterization. See the housemaids in the Sherlock Holmes story.

GRADE SEVEN: Last week we studied independent and subordinate clauses. We learned how the latter could be an adverb or adjective clause. We completed several worksheets and took a practice test. Some students turned in their short stories early for extra credit. These were read aloud in class. GRADE EIGHT: Last week (Nov. 9-13) we read "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and saw a twenty minute film on that story. We also read and discussed "Back There" by Rod Serling. I made a study guide on time travel and irony. We learned twenty new vocabulary words.

GRADE SEVEN: We finally took our test over Chapter 13 and we turned in our personal experience narratives. You had a choice of five.

GRADE EIGHT: Last week (OCTOBER 26-30) we concluded our unit on Edgar Allan Poe by reading "The Cask of Amontillado" and watching the PBS version of "Hop Frog" called "Fool's Fire." We took an essay test contrasting the principal characters motivations for revenge, the single emotional effect in these two stories.

GRADE SEVEN: Last week we completed a thirteen page packet on the writing process from Chapter One of The Elements of Writing. We also took a test on Chapter 17 , phrases, participles, and infinitives.

GRADE EIGHT: Last week (October 19-23) we spent the entire week on Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat" We discussed "single emotional effect" and the effectiveness of first person point of view with an unreliable narrator or narrators, I should say. We used discussion questions from the book and from my made up s heet, and we tested on these stories on Friday.

GRADE SEVEN: Last week (October 19-23) we finished our short reports (five paragraph minimum), turned them in, and read some of them aloud. These were returned red-inked for your composition folders on Thursday. Keep these folders up-to-date. We also finished our chapter on phrases (adverbial and adjectival), participial phrases, and infinitives. We took our Chapter 17 test on Friday. No test for 7-S because some magician interrupted our academic day third period. He does this every year. Let's see. You folks have now seen him seven or eight times?

GRADE EIGHT: Last week (October 13-16) we spent all four days on our book reports. They took a lot more time than I had anticipated. However, who could have anticipated that most of the basketball girls would miss half a period so they could eat and the football boys would miss an entire period for a game? Oh well, you couldn't hear the reports anyway over the sound of the mowers and trimmers.

GRADE SEVEN: Last week (October 13-16) we covered prepositions and prepositional phrases used as adje ctives and as adverbs. We completed three worksheets and read our "Preparation" papers aloud in class. Grades were posted by ID weekly as always.

GRADE EIGHT: Last week (October 5-9) we finished our survival unit by reading "Top Man" from our text. You were responsible for a whopping 80 vocabulary words, and I thought you did quite well. We tested on the story Friday and paid a visit to the library where some of you procrastinators picked up a book for your report.

GRADE SEVEN: Last week (5-9) we collected our persuasive essays, read them aloud and made way for the next assignment. In English we finished and tested on Chapter 16, which dealt with direct objects, indirect objects, predicate nominatives, predicate adjectives, linking verbs and transitive action verbs. GRADE EIGHT: Last week we read Jack London's "A Piece of Steak" and Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game." There was a quiz on London's story that included numerous objective questions and ten vocabulary words. We also saw the fight portion of "When We Were Kings," a documentary about the famous 1974 "Rumble in the Jungle" that had many echoes of London's story of Youth versus Age.

GRADE SEVEN: We finished parts of speech by reviewing Chapter 15 and taking a test at the beginning of the week. We then read our tabloid news pieces aloud and you received a persuasive writing assignment for the next week. We started Chapter 16 by studying direct objects.

GRADE EIGHT: Last week we read, discussed, and tested on Jack London's story "Love of Life." You had to learn ten spelling and vocabulary words, and fill out a study guide on this story.

GRADE SEVEN: Last week we covered linking and helping verbs and tested on them. We also memorized prepositions and learned conjunctions and interjections. A composition on honesty was collected on Wednesday. Pictures were taken on Tuesday, and most of Wednesday was wasted because of a band trip to the Barlow Fair. I did not conduct class for the remaining six students.

GRADE EIGHT: Last week (Sept. 14-18) we read silently the excerpt Paw-Paw by Lawrence Yep. We took a quiz on that story and immediately b egan a unit on Jack London. Characterization and setting were the two literary terms of the week. We read London's classic "To Build a Fire" and tested over that on Friday.We visited the library to prepare for our October book reports.

GRADE SEVEN: Last week we covered transitive and intransitive verbs, action verbs versus linking verbs, and helping verbs and verb phrases. We had at least three worksheets to complete for homework. In addition, we had an essay ( choice of three topicss) due on Wednesday. We read some of these aloud and then read a Readers Digest piece on an honesty test where 120 wallets were placed around the country. I assigned a weekly essay based on that piece.

GRADE EIGHT: Last week (Sept. 8-11) We read and discussed "The Inspiration of Mr. Budd." In addition we tested on that story and spent some time in the library. Short week!

GRADE SEVEN: Last week we tested on the first three parts of speech: Nouns, Pronouns, and Adj ectives. We also wrote essays on advertisements in which we first described and then assessed the effectiveness of the ads.

GRADE EIGHT: Last week (August 41-Sept. 4) We test on "The Last Specimen." We also read "The Treasure of Lemon Brown" We discussed plot. We kept up our library logs, and some of us prepared for our October book reports.