Temporary Link: Reading Inventory Testing
English Encore May 7, 2018
You will need paper and pencil today as well as your Chromebook.
You will find the activity page here. Follow the directions carefully.
You will need paper and pencil today as well as your Chromebook.
You will find the activity page here. Follow the directions carefully.
Ms. Dark
About Ms. Dark
I attended college as a 17 year old freshman, but did not finish my degree at that time. I became a wife, mother, writer, dramatist, and - upon learning sign language - an interpreter for the deaf. I was able to return to college to complete my undergraduate degree in Secondary English/Language Arts. While taking classes at DMACC to refresh my high school Spanish, I decided to pursue a Teaching Spanish Endorsement in Elementary through High School.
I began my employment in the West Des Moines Community School District in 2014 teaching elementary Spanish. This will be my second year teaching eighth grade English/Language Arts. I have worked in the editing and publishing field in the business world and enjoy teaching others. I have been both an alto in the choir and a choir director, a lead in a play as well as the drama director. I have found the role of leading others to success to be infinitely more satisfying that the finding myself in the center of the spotlight.
I began my employment in the West Des Moines Community School District in 2014 teaching elementary Spanish. This will be my second year teaching eighth grade English/Language Arts. I have worked in the editing and publishing field in the business world and enjoy teaching others. I have been both an alto in the choir and a choir director, a lead in a play as well as the drama director. I have found the role of leading others to success to be infinitely more satisfying that the finding myself in the center of the spotlight.
Course Syllabi:
At the onset of the school year, students receive a card-stock copy of the course syllabus, which details the class specifics, including what students can expect to learn throughout the duration of the school year and what my expectations are of my students. Furthermore, the syllabus elaborates on the independent reading expectations for all West Des Moines 8th graders. Below is the syllabus for 8th English/Language Arts and Advanced 8th English/Language Arts.
8th English/Language Arts
Advanced 8th English/Language Arts
Helpful Links:
The below buttons can be used as shortcuts to some of our class's frequently used websites/websites you might want to access frequently on your own. :)
Research Assistance:
The below documents can assist you in completing Internet-based research. Diigo offers the ability to bookmark, highlight, add sticky notes, etc. to your online materials while storing them in a library for easy future access, taking out the necessity to bookmark a large number of pages, print multi-page articles, etc. Plus, it's FREE (unless you upgrade to a more advanced version). The document below explains how to add Diigo to your Chrome browser. The other two documents assist in refining Internet searches to narrow down search results to those most applicable to your topic of research.
Helpful MLA Documentation Style Links:
The below links will assist with a couple of MLA-related assignments during our research paper unit. All are pulled from the phenomenal Purdue Owl Writing Lab, which has an incredibly easy-to-navigate, extremely helpful MLA Style overview: Even more tabs are available through the site than what I provide quick links to below. More importantly, these are quick links for formatting assistance for any assignment in English or in any other class requiring MLA documentation style to be utilized.
Link to Citation Machine for MLA Documentation Style:
Whereas looking up Works Cited "equation" examples and "plugging n' chugging" source information works, this helpful tool puts the citation together for you (minus the formatting). It's a little more work than using the "cite" option on databases (where you just have to copy and paste), but if you correctly enter the information into Citation Machine or Easybib, out pops a citation to copy and paste into your Works Cited page as well! Again, keep in mind that some formatting--double spacing, hanging indents, etc.--will need to be manually done by you after you finish copying and pasting citations from either databases or Citation Machine/Easybib.**