Welcome Back--and Back to Business!

I hope that everyone enjoyed our combined winter/spring-like weather over break.  It was so special to wake to winter white blanketing the ground and trees on one day, then to hike in a warm spring breeze the next, albeit through mud!  Today we switch gears, back to the business of learning in school.

"Little Red Riding Hood" essays were due today; if anyone fell behind with this or forgot to print, tonight and tomorrow night will be the time to catch up.  Today in class we revisited spelling rules, practiced using commonly misspelled words (linked below), and embarked on new rules in the form of plurals.  Students worked on ten rules for creating plural nouns, and should finish up the packet if needed tonight.  Tomorrow students will take the ELA department benchmark test that they took early in the year.  While I score the test to determine growth across the three times it is given, the scores are not entered into Aspen and do not figure into report card grades.  The data is informational for me and for our department to analyze students' growth and development.  The test questions are written a la the newest version of MCAS, so they serve the dual purpose of being practice for that test.  We will work on the essay component together so that will also become practice for the kind of writing required on the MCAS.

While this week is all business, students are in store for more choice reading next week!  This time, they will return to fiction and read in pairs or small groups.  Students in each class should think about with whom they might want to read, as well as a novel they want to read together.  Students are welcome to borrow or purchase their shared novels on their own, but we'll visit the library next Monday to choose books, and I have multiple copies of many selections as well.  They'll begin reading and meeting with their groups next week.

Homework

Monday/Tuesday:  finish plural packet; finish/print Little Red essay to turn in if needed.

Wednesday:  finish organizer for bee essay; if you want to begin drafting, go for it!

Thursday:  finish essay draft

Friday:  finish final draft of essay & print; self score on rubric (you will turn in essay and rubric Monday)

If you and your reading partner(s) are getting a book on your own (you each need a copy), bring it in on Monday (we'll visit library on Monday to get books).

Commonly Misspelled Words activity  

Editing Checklist

Writing Rubric

Common Ideas Between "Hum" and "Why We Need Bees"

A Single Story...Told Five Different Ways

We continue to weave the thread of "a single story" and its implications for readers throughout our reading this week.  Today's story was the classic "Little Red Riding Hood", a German folk tale published by the brothers Grimm, famous for their collection of fairy tales.  Students worked in small groups to examine how the setting, characters, actions, and language reflect the authors' background, Germany in the 1800s.  They also considered how this fairy tale presents a "single story".  Students will remain in their groups throughout the week, each day reading a different version of the tale and answering the same questions about it.  The versions include "Lon Po Po: A Red Riding Hood Story from China", "Red Ridin' In the Hood" by Mexican-American author Patricia Santos Marcantonio, "Little Roja Riding Hood" by bilingual author Susan Elya and Latina illustrator Susan Guevara, and "Little Red and the Very Hungry Lion", a "classic fairy tale with an African safari twist".  To culminate, students will synthesize their group work and our listening, discussing and writing about "the danger of a single story" in a short essay.  While we may have time to begin this writing in class on Friday, I will ask students to complete the essay over the break so that the information and their experience of it is still fresh, as opposed to waiting until we return.

Homework:

Monday:  add to group notes as needed; do spelling rules 15-18 in packet.

Tuesday:  add to group notes; do spelling rules 19-22.

Wednesday:  add to group notes; do spelling rules 23-25.

Thursday:  add to group notes; do spelling rules 26-28.

Friday:  add to group notes; write final response essay: due 2/26 (preferably typed!)

Little Red Riding Hood Group Work Questions and Essay

Little Red Riding Hood Original Version

Danger of a Single Story TED talk

The Power/Danger of a Single Story

Following JFK's Diversity Day events and continuing the mission to become a more inclusive school, students will explore the notion that there is power--and perhaps danger--in telling stories and reading them with a myopic viewpoint.  Chimamanda Adichie's TED talk (linked below) will be the springboard for some deep thinking and writing on this topic.  Students will be considering how an author's perspective influences their writing, and how readers bring their own lens of experience to texts they read.  We will pick up this work next week by reading five versions of a classic fairy tale retold by authors of varying ethnicity.

Later this week, we will begin reviewing and practicing spelling rules. Students will be given a packet of the rules with which they'll practice, and they should hold onto these in their binders as a reference.

Homework:

Monday:  finish nonfiction book cover

Tuesday:  finish "Power/Danger of a Single Story" hw writing prompt on handout

Wednesday:  none!

Thursday:  finish practice work Spelling Rules 1-5

Friday:  finish practice work Spelling Rules 6-10


TED talk

Power/Danger of a Single Story hw writing prompt

...By the Light of the Moon...

The full moon on Wednesday should induce great energy for students' presentations of their slide shows!  In doing this work, they have addressed the Common Core standards of analyzing and synthesizing informational text, writing in different formats and with accurate mechanics, using technology, and presentation and listening skills.  Challenged to "sell" their book to the class, they are aiming to inspire others to read the book they chose.

Just as we might anticipate the full moon and the warm light it sheds on a winter's night, so do we anticipate our upcoming Diversity Day events scheduled for Friday of this week.  Following a morning of assembly and forum activities, the team will be viewing popular films that tie in to the theme of diversity.  I am planning to extend this theme in ELA classes by listening to a TED talk about "The Danger of a Single Story".  This hopefully will shed light on some broad ideas about implicit biases in both authors and readers.  We will follow this up by reading authors and characters of color, including retellings of classic fairy tales by a Mexican author and poetry ranging from Maya Angelou to Tupac Shakur.  


Homework:

Monday:  work on slideshow

Tuesday:  finish up slideshow; submit to SCHOOLOGY; practice for presentation

Wednesday:  practice for presentation if you haven't gone yet!

Thursday:  nonfiction book cover: due Monday.

Friday:  nonfiction book cover due Monday.

Nonfiction Book Cover

A Short Week...Long on Learning

Here we are faced with yet another shortened week, but as always, we will make the most of our time!  Students are in the final stretch of reading their nonfiction books, and they have been sharing some very thoughtful insights through their responses logs.  On Thursday, they will begin to compose slide shows that touch upon the book's content, nonfiction structure/features, the author's purpose and point-of-view, new vocabulary within the text, effective and/or beautiful language, and new understandings of the book's topic.  They will present their slideshows to one another next week, and perhaps be inspired to read someone else's book!

Along with this reading and writing, students are practicing seven usages of commas, editing for capitals and punctuation, as well as using their vocabulary words.

Homework:

Monday:  VOCAB QUIZ tomorrow; Chunk #6 w/log due Thursday; Nonfiction Moments due Friday.

Tuesday/Wednesday:  Chunk #6 w/log due Thursday; Nonfiction Moments due Friday.

Thursday:  Nonfiction Moments due tomorrow; work on slide show

Friday:  work on slide show

Quizlet for Vocab list #8

Pausing, With Commas, for Nonfiction Moments

This week brings a variety of activities, but not without some pauses, literally and figuratively!  First, we will kick off the week with a new list of vocabulary words.  Students will also learn, over the next few days, seven rules for using commas.  They will view each rule in a sentence, then practice it in sentences of their own.   In addition to using commas, they will take a pause of another sort by experiencing some "nonfiction moments" in their individual reading:  wow!, ah-hah!, hmmm...interesting..., I wonder, and I can relate!

After drafting this while gazing at steely grey skies, I've decided to take another pause at the start of each class today to read a beautiful little poem, "Snow Toward Evening" by Melville Cane.  Seems apropos given the forecast! 

Homework:

Tuesday:  Reading chunk #4 w/log due Friday.  RENEW library bk by Thursday!

Wednesday:  Chunk #4/log due Friday; work on nonfiction moments; RENEW bk.

Thursday:  Chunk #4/log due tomorrow; work on nonfiction moments.

Friday:  Reading Chunk #5 w/log due Monday.


Comma Rules

Comma Practice

Nonfiction Moments

"Snow Toward Evening"

To Everything There is a Purpose

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.