From the nitty gritty period to the stunning projects, everything we do in ELA class is designed with a purpose. Understanding the why of what we do is important to the learning process. Today students learned that practice, which might to some at times seem boring, is needed for the nerve cells in our brains to make the goop that helps the skill or understanding stick. Therefore, the old adage, practice makes perfect, really does have basis in scientific fact!
This week, students are practicing punctuation use, including periods, question marks, quotation marks, and apostrophes, as well as the formation of contractions and identifying and correcting sentence fragments and run-ons. This is the nitty gritty work! In the more thought-provoking realm, they are practicing their reading skills with their nonfiction books, and their thinking and writing skills in their dialectical logs. The backdrop to all of this is practice using the vocabulary words from List #7, which can be accessed on quizlet on last week's blog post. Our practice with words is playful: drawing them, writing group stories and acting them out in skits. Practice does indeed make them stick, and this is proved when they appear in students' writing or when, as one student did today, they point out a vocab word in something they're reading!
Homework:
Monday: Punctuation packet pg. 58-63 due Wed.; nonfiction book chunk #2 w/log due Thursday.
Tuesday: Finish punctuation pkt pg. 58-63; nonf. bk. chunk #2 w/log due Thurs.
Wednesday: Vocab quiz tomorrow! Punct. pkt (abbreviations, unit review, quotable puns and quote marks) due Friday. Complete log sheet #1 due tomorrow.
Thursday: Finish punct. pkt (abbreviations, unit review, quotable puns and quote marks) for tomorrow. Chunk #3 w/log due Tuesday.
Friday: Punctuation pkt (contractions, possessives, fragments, run-ons) + chunk #3 w/log due Tuesday.
