Thursday, 2/26/2009

AP

Organization

• I handed out grade sheets.  If you need to chat about them, please see me during seminar.
  

Vocabulary

• We laid out the first eighteen lit terms on our desk (pink and blue flashcards).  We went through them all once, uniting definition with lit term.  Keep this safe and secure in your binder, as we'll use them for the rest of the term for learning, review, games, and connections.
  

Mythology

• We watched parts 1, 2 and 3 of the History Channel's Gods and Goddesses.  We took notes on new information, and on material that conflicted with or contradicted what we've learned before.  
  

Homework

• Finish reading Oedipus, and complete the study guide.  We will have a reading quiz Friday.
  

CREATIVE WRITING

Writing Lesson--Using the Five Sense to Create an Image

• We looked at the hot chocolate sentence on page 54, and we talked about how to revise it, focusing on each of the five sentences.  We talked about people's examples until it seemed like everyone got the basic idea.
  

Revision (Using What We Just Learned in the Writing Lesson!)

I had everyone open up their Perfect Moment memoirs.  (Directions are on pages 68-69, for those of you who need to review.)  I walked the class through a revision that included each writer doing the following:

• eliminating unnecessary words and phrases
  
• eliminating phrases like "I hear" and "I smell", and re-structuring the sentence
  
• elimination phrases like "the taste of" and "the sound of", and re-structuring the sentence
  
• including AT LEAST ONE kind of figurative language (simile, metaphor, hyperbole)
  
• changing all verbs to present tense
  

We printed our second drafts, and we'll share them with a partner Friday.

Organization

• I went over the checklist from yesterday, and most people needed more time to work on the Snapshot Poem and come up with the first-grader interview questions.  We spent the last twenty-five minutes of the block working on anything from yesterday's checklist that we didn't have done.
  

Homework

• Nothing is due tomorrow, but the Snapshot Poem is due MONDAY.
  

TACW

Timed Journal #6.5

• We wrote for ten minutes on any topic, any genre.
  

Organization

• We went over the rubrics for I Am a Russian Tailor and the Graphic Memoir, and we clarified the expectations.
  

Workshop

• We had forty-five minutes to work on the two assignments.
  

Organization/Planning

• We spent the last twenty minutes looking through our folders and considering everything we've done this term, printing off things we needed for our folders....  I asked people five questions about revision, the end of the term, etc.  We have sixteen days left of the term.  How do we want to spend it?