9.16.08

Tomorrow is Open House! I look forward to meeting many parents tomorrow night in our classroom. With only ten minutes of "class" time, I hope to provide some resources, such as this blog, for continued communication.
For class today, we checked out the Book Fair (also open tomorrow evening), I checked homework, and students read "Dog Star" in class while completing the corresponding questions. The short story, "Thank You, M'am," by Langston Hughes, is homework, with the corresponding questions. These both are great starter stories to identify how authors convey a sense of time with their word and phrase choice (rather than a reader becoming confused) and for how we will seek to understand characterization.
These short stories are just the start to our new unit on short stories. Yesterday we began with a review of literary terms we will use, and students identified movies as examples per each term on a worksheet.

Monday, Sept. 8, 2008

Today, students brought their completed notes on "Test Taking Strategies" from the back of the text book. Using them, they created 3 t/f question, 2 multiple choice, recall questions, 2multiple choice, inference questions; 2 vocabulary questions, one of which must be context clues, and 2 essay questions. All but the essay questions must have had answers on a separate sheet. This was due in class. For homework, students have an assignment to correct and reflect upon the errors each made on the Reading and Writing Strategies Quiz (returned today with the assignment). This is due tomorrow.

# ____ Question re-written:

Correct Answer written out:

Reflection about why the student missed the question:

WEEK 2

Last week, we finished reading strategies and moved into writing and test taking strategies. On Friday, students took a big quiz on reading and writing strategies.

WEEK 1

Day 1:
1. overview, books, parent signature slip for homework.
Rest of the Week:
Study Skills Unit with Reading Strategies (back of text book)