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 Welcome to English in Ms. Sanford's Class

I hope you all had a great summer and are ready to start the 2009-10 school year; I visited Santa Cruz a number of times over the summer and was able to really relax (hence the picture of surfers on my website :-).  I'm very excited about teaching your 8th graders this year; I know some of the students from last year when I taught 7th graders too, and I'm anxious to see how they've all changed over the summer.  I've been teaching at Churchill for the past six years and I taught 8th grade English at Carnegie Middle School before that.  I love Churchill and I think we have a great staff here, plus I thoroughly enjoy teaching English.  We will be concentrating on expository writing, which is writing that explains or persuades, in getting our students ready for high school and wherever their future takes them.  We will be covering all of the many California English Standards, including grammar, vocbulary, reading, writing, speaking and listening skills.  I know we have a busy, interesting, and fun year ahead of us.  My students don't always have homework, as we do a lot of work in class, but it is very important for all students to regularly do assigned homework, and you can check that by looking in their planner every night to see what they've recorded, as well as checking my homework calendar on this site.  They also need to stay organized and try not to fall behind.  If they are out absent, they are responsible for making up any missed work, and for contacting me to find out what they missed. Their new planners cover just about any information you might need about classes and our school, and you can contact me or the office if you have any additional questions.  If there are questions or issues about my class, including missed assignments, low scores, or any other concerns, please contact me.  We have a new system, called Zangle, for recording and posting grades online; to access your student's grades, an adult (parent/guardian) must come to our front office with a piece of ID to get your password to the system.  The best and easiest way to reach me is by email, which I check frequently throughout the day:  esanford@sanjuan.edu.  I will try my best to reply within 24 hours.  Each of our students at Churchill needs support from home and school to be a successful student, so let's work together to see that this is a great year for all of our kids. 

Introduction to class, including Class Rules and Procedures for 09-10 (doc file - 46kb)

.doc file: You need the Microsoft Word Program, the free Word Viewer 2003, or a program that can import Word files in order to view this file type.