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    Welcome!

    I am so excited for this school year to begin! This will be my 18th year of teaching in San Juan Unified and the years have flown by. Our class will be a place for reading, writing, researching, and digging deep into texts. I'm thrilled to share my love of words with your child this year. You can find my syllabus here. We are going to have a blast! 
     
    My Advice to Reluctant Readers
    Some middle schoolers love to read, many don't. Encourage reading. Suggest reading. Students learn vocabulary from reading, they learn how to spell from reading, and they learn about the lives of others through reading. My classroom has hundreds of books and students are welcome to borrow any of them. Once they find excitement in reading, they won't want to stop.
     
    My Advice to New Middle Schoolers
    Middle school is very different from the elementary model. Here are some of my observations:
    1. When you are absent, there will not be a pile of missed work on your desk when you return.
    2. We don't have parent conferences unless you see a need to. We like to meet as a team.
    3. Grades are online. Please familiarize yourself with how to check grades online through Parent Portal and start out doing it DAILY. Yes, daily. After two weeks, if things are looking good, drop down to twice a week. If things continue to look good, once a week, and eventually you'll be able to check every few weeks. If grades aren't acceptable in the first few weeks of school, there are some missing skills that we need to focus on. It's easy to dig yourself into a hole that's too deep to dig out of, so please, reach out and ask for help early on. You can sign up for nightly emails from the parent portal. Here are directions for how to log in.
    4. Letter grades A, B, C, D, and F are the allowable grades on progress reports and report cards. Citizenship is designated as O, S, NI, or U. Outstanding, Satisfactory, Needs Improvement, and Unsatisfactory.
    Google Suite Picture of Google Drive App
    Students will become very familiar with Google Docs in English but it will also be utilized in other content areas. Google Docs is essentially cloud-based document creation and storage program. These are available from any computer and are saved without the need for a thumb drive. Students also have a Gmail email address that is within the sanjuan.edu network which means that they cannot send or receive emails with anyone outside of the sanjuan.edu server.
     
    Suggested Supply List
    • Pencils/pens
    • Sticky notes
    • 2 composition notebooks (these will be for English ONLY)
    • Colored Pencils
    • Glue
    • Pencil pouch (to hold these supplies)
     
    Wish List of Misc. Items
    Kleenex
    Lysol Wipes
     
    Textbook
    We will use a variety of books, stories, texts, and articles as we learn this year.  The board adopted curriculum is Amplify. You can learn more at https://www.amplify.com/california/ela Students will have daily access to Chromebooks in the classroom and at home internet access is wonderful, but not required. Homework will take that into consideration.
     
    Grades can be checked here:

    Scholastic Book Clubs Image

     
    ORDER BOOKS FROM SCHOLASTIC HERE 
     
     
    Activation Code is L63HRPicture of Scholastic Book Clubs App
     
     
    You can follow our school on Facebook and Instagram!
Last Modified on August 7, 2022