WELCOME TO 8th Grade Language Arts. Ms. Davis!

17 August 2011
Dear Class, I am writing this to you approximately two weeks before I have the pleasure of meeting you all! After having taken quite the trip (13 hour drive to be exact!) from Connecticut I am anxious, excited and impatiently awaiting our fabulous year together. Throughout the course of the school year we will be exploring literature in ways you probably never anticipated! 8th grade is such a wonderful year for reading as the books, articles, audio clips and poems become quite controversial and intriguing. You will continually be allowed to explore your personal opinions and apply those opinions to literature. We will then as a class, take this exploration and apply it to our world around us. Every day I will arrive to class with a smile and (if you're lucky) a quick story about my cat-Sophia (she is practically my child!). I hope we can establish a comfortable learning atmosphere as we explore many different novellas, poems and excerpts. Level 3-we will be beginning with Lois Lowry's The Giver. Focusing around the idea of "Challenges" we will explore how our character, Jonas, faces many obstacles in his Utopian community. Level 4-we will be beginning with To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. With a setting during the very racially segregated 1940s, I feel as if you will take quite a liking to the controversial novel told from the perspective of a young child, Scout. With both of these novels we will be thinking "outside the box," meaning, we will be applying the central themes/messages/issues of these novellas to the world around us. Please...never hold back your opinions/ideas as this year. Yes, technically, I am your teacher and you are my students; however, I also would like to learn from you and I look forward to this occurrence. Well future students, I will touch base later. Ciao-Hasta Luego-Ms. Davis