Parent+Letter

Dear Parents,

Welcome to Texas Discoveries, our 7th grade Language Arts class for gifted students a.k.a. room213cms. My name is Deborah Morgan, and I wear many hats: mother of two adult children, a brand new grandmother, a wife, a sister, a life-long learner, a believer, an avid reader, friend, and most importantly to you, your child’s teacher. After I discovered that my life long goal, at age 5, to be a teenager was not going to work out for me for the rest of my life, I finally saw the light and began teaching in middle school.

Being a student in room213cms consist of high volumes of daily reading and writing in a modified workshop setting. This means our classroom will be mini-lesson driven, and there will be ample time in class for independent practice and content mastery. During this year, I hope your child discovers their inner voices, writes from their heart, devours books like never before, falls in love or back in love with reading, and most of all, stays true to themselves and their beliefs. Your child is in for a great experience in language arts this year. I also want them to learn to be self-paced, organized, and brilliant independent thinkers.

This year should be a very exciting and busy year. The key is communication. You will know what your child is doing in my classes through google classroom and this wiki. On these sites you will find a wealth of resources including any homework assignments and future projects. You will also find links to internet sites we are currently using, power points and prezis, and other resources.

Learning isn't what it used to be! We live in an age where technology is the language our children understand best. I am a huge advocated of technology integration for the 21st century learner. Like last year, our class will strive to be as paperless as possible. Much work will be done or submitted on-line through classroom or email. We will be using many tools this year, and one of my main goals is to un-blur the plagiarist and copyright lines for my students. To do this, students will be creating many of their own photos, illustrations, collages and videos for class assignments. So please believe your child when they tell you they need their camera for school, or they are working on homework online. With that said, e-readers, such as a Nook, or Kindle, are allowed in our classroom along with flip video cameras and digital cameras, and even use their phones. To that end, all of the sites we use in this class have been approved by our district as appropriate for the middle school student. These are protected sites where personal information is not shared. Please schedule a time to see me if you have questions about any of these sites.

Did somebody mention homework? Yes, everyone has reading homework. Students will leave school with one or more books to read at home and return to school with their books the next day. Every night your child should read a minimum of 30 minutes. Research shows that the single most important predictor of academic success is the amount of time children spend reading books, more important even than economic or social status. I know that time is precious and your child has many other obligations, but I assure you that we will learn to steal reading moments.

Reading does not have to be 30 minutes of sustained silent reading; they can stolen by ‘always’ having a book with me in my purse and reading at the doctor’s office, while someone else is driving, before I fall asleep, and I DVR my favorite tv shows (ignore those commercials) and it cuts a show down to 20 minutes which gives extra time for reading.

To wrap it all up, I have a homework assignment for you, the parent. Yes, you are getting homework. In a million words or less…tell me about your child! The reason behind it is that it takes us a great deal of time to know your child. This activity gives you a change to tell me what you think I should know about your child. I will read every one of them and not share them with any other person, including teachers, unless you tell me in your message that I can. Take your time with this, but there must be a deadline. Please get //A Million Words or Less// to me no later than Friday, September 11. You can either send it with your child or email me it to me at Deborah.morgan@gcisd.net.

Thank you for sharing your child with me. I am thrilled to work with you and your family this year. If at any time you have a question, comment or concern, please contact me.