Greetings!
We worked this week and covered a lot of material in class. As always, we started our day with a Quick Write. Yesterday was International Talk Like a Pirate Day (here is the official website and here is a Wikipedia article and here are the Muppets!) Most of the students were unaware of this notable event. As an alternative, they could write about super heroes. I look forward to reading their responses.
This week's Words of the Day included:
watchword-- noun -- fr. Middle English, wacchen, to be awake and woord, word--
a word or phrase used as a sign of recognition among members of the same society, class, or group
perpendicularity-- adjective -- fr. Latin, perpindicularis, a plumb line-- the relationship between lines forming right angles
blithely-- fr. Old English,
bliþe
, joyous, kind, cheerful, pleasant--
without thought or regard; carefree; heedless
IMPORTANT NOTE: I had told the students that there would be a test at the end of the semester for their words of the day. Instead, we will have a test at the end of second semester for the second semester words. The Words of the Day will include unusual foreign words and Latin roots.
In connection with the returned homework, we discussed their Final Drafts of their Descriptive Essays. As I grade the final drafts, I use a rubric for a more holistic look at their work. (The rubric is attached and is on this blog post.) For the first essay, I'm a pretty easy grader. As we progress through the year, we will use these rubrics to set writing goals and students will use them to evaluate their own writing. For example, in the Focus category, students will be thinking about whether their thesis statements are compelling and thought-provoking or simply a statement that combines the topic and opinion.
This week's Grammar topic of the Parts of Speech, Interjections, was brought to us by Bennett, Joshua, and Jesse. We watched a Schoolhouse Rock video, Interjections, and had a slide presentation about the main points regarding interjections. We had an in-class activity (a pretty challenging Word Fit) and a take-home assignment. The group did a great job, and I look forward to next week's presentation on Verbs by Elliot, Izzy, and Ellie. (The Adjectives group of Nalani, Gabbie P, and Josie should be preparing for their presentation on 10/3.)
We spent the remainder of the class dividing into 4 groups for next week's Literature Circles for our discussion of Animal Farm. This is the first time that this class has done this kind of small group discussion. In Literature Circles, each member is assigned a role. As they read through the assigned portion of the book, students are to prepare for their individual roles: Discussion Director,
Illustrator, Luminary, Word Nerd, Connector, and Summarizer. The circles give a structure and framework to help the students with academic talk.
We will continue to use these circles throughout the year.
Assignments for Next Week
-- Read Animal Farm Chapters 7 & 8
-- No Reader Responses
-- 3 Vocabulary
-- Prepare for your role in the Literature Circles
-- Interjections Homework
-- No writing homework
Links for This Week
Class Notes
Parts of Speech Presentation Dates
Interjections -- Bennett, Josh, Jesse (9/19)
Verbs -- Elliot, Izzy, Ellie (9/26)
Adjectives -- Nalani, Gabbie P, Josie (10/3)
Nouns -- Ethan, Carson, Mike, James (10/10)
Conjunctions -- Marie, Gabi, Alison (10/24)
Adverbs -- Maddy, Ashley, Faith (10/31)
Pronouns -- Tyler, Ingrid, Philip (11/7)
Prepositions -- Leighton, Levi, Logan (11/14)
Have a great weekend!
Blessings,
Mrs. Prichard
No comments:
Post a Comment