Monday, December 14, 2009

Week of December 14

It's almost time for Christmas break! Happy holidays!

This week our work again walks us through the writing process, which includes:

Freshmen- Creating and presenting a PowerPoint presentation, including note cards for delivering the presentation about the students' "cheese," or a goal the student has. This is based on the book Who Stole My Cheese? which we read and took notes on last week.

Sophomores- Finish up practicing the elements of a short story, then creating a short story that includes each of the elements: introduction, rise of action, climax, and resolution. We will revisit the ideas in War of the Worlds as a starting point for the students' short stories.

Seniors- Continuing to read Catcher in the Rye and writing a letter to the soldiers in Afghanistan, just in time for Christmas. Writing this letter ties in with the state's goal of having seniors learn to be leaders in the world outside the classroom.

After break, we will be tying up and reviewing what we've learned during the semester. Progress report grades will be sent out this week.

Take care for the next few weeks!

Monday, December 7, 2009

Week of December 7th

11 Days until Christmas Break, and it's snowing!

This week we are finishing up books and beginning genre study. Mad Libs is used as a classroom opener to review parts of speech.

Freshmen- We are finishing Who Stole My Cheese and creating a professional PowerPoint presentation on personal "cheese", or what each student really wants in life. Monday and Tuesday we are writing down what will be written on each slide and note card; the rest of the week will be in the computer lab creating the presentation including words, pictures, and possibly music!

Sophomores-We are finishing War of the Worlds and practicing elements of a short story. We will be creating a complete short story, moving through the writing process, next week. Monday is introductions, Tuesday is rising action, Thursday is climax, and next Monday will be review and resolution.

Seniors- We will continue to read Catcher in the Rye and will be selecting a volunteer opportunity to practice being a leader in the community.

Tuesday, the students will receive a printout of their grades. Any missing assignments can be made up with extra credit and either sent to the class facebook page or in a hard copy in class. Extra credit must be done as a home assignment! Anyone who wants an 'A' and does the work will have one.

Have a great week!

Thursday, December 3, 2009

November-Week of November 30th Post

While Studying the Writing Process, the students wrote three paragraph essays. We ended with a Writing Process Jeopardy game. The topic of the papers varied with each grade:
Freshmen: A Bad Day
Sophomores: Defending their opinion of Hemingway's, "Cat in the Rain."
Seniors: Analyzing the husband and wife's relationship in Hemingway's, "Cat in the Rain."

Each grade went through each stage of the Writing Process with a final, polished and typed paper. I was impressed!

After the Writing Process, there were a few lessons on adjectives and adverbs. We wrote our own sentences, did some bookwork, played some jeopardy, and even diagrammed a few sentences. :)

Just before Thanksgiving, we watched movies that pertained to books we are now reading based on the Michigan curriculum focus for each grade level. These can be found on the Michigan Education website. The movies that we watched were:
Freshmen: Pursuit of Happiness
Sophomores: War of the Worlds
Seniors: The beginning of 1984, followed by a lecture about world history.

I hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving!

Upon return from the Thanksgiving holiday, we started reading a novel.
Freshmen: Who Stole My Cheese?
Sophomores: War of the Worlds
Seniors: Catcher in the Rye

We will revisit reading comprehension strategies as we read the novels. We will start a genre study after the novels. The students will write a paper based on the genre study, revisiting stages of the Writing Process as many struggled with that test. Review of parts of speech will continue with the Mad Libs game throughout the semester.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Week of November 2

The unit test has been moved to Tuesday, November 3 to allow for more time to review. This week we are wrapping up the Reading Strategy Unit and moving on to the Writing Process. Behavior in the room has improved and a learning community is in the works. Several students have stepped it up- I'm really pleased with how things are going!

Monday- Jeopardy Review (Morphemes, Sentence Structure, and Reading Comprehension Strategies)

Tuesday- Unit Test on Reading Comprehension Strategies

Wednesday- Prewriting for Hemingway's, "Cat in the Rain." Each grade will recieve a different prompt surrounding the text. Those who finish early will move to the rough draft.

Thursday- Continue Prewriting for those who have not finished, continue/start rough draft, move on to editing.

Friday- Catch up on any late work, continue with the writing process.

Have a great week!

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Week of October 26th

This week we are wrapping up sentence structure and moving on to reading comprehension strategies. The students will take a unit test early next week on the entire reading strategy unit- morpheme study, sentence structure, and comprehension strategies. The students will take the test after a jeopardy review next Monday.

Monday: Teacher for a day- students create and teach the class a lesson on everything they've learned about subjects and predicates to the group.

Tuesday: Students will learn and implement before-reading comprehension strategies including predicting, skimming/scanning, and KWL charts. We will read an exert from their literature books.

Wednesday: Students will learn and implement during-reading strategies including stopping to ask yourself questions, highlighting/taking notes, and visualization. We will read a poem.

Thursday: Students will learn and implement after-reading comprehension strategies including summarizing with a graphic organizer, answering questions about the text, and book-club discussions.

Friday: Students will use one before, during, and after reading strategy to comprehend a short text.

The unit ends with a test on Monday. The next unit will be on writing/analyzing texts.

Monday, October 19, 2009

Week of October 19th

This week we are wrapping up morphemes and moving on to sentence structure.

Monday- Worksheet and morpheme jeopardy review
Tuesday-Morpheme quiz, finding a verb activity, and probe
Wednesday- Finding subjects and predicates activity and probe
Thursday- Finding the subject and predicate story-activity and probe
Friday- Subject and predicate quiz and independent work

We will be continuing to work on building a learning community with staff and students supporting each other's learning.

**Note: The senior class has finished their morpheme quiz on Monday. They will do each activity noted in addition to analyzing outside texts in preparation of breaking into separate activities from the other classes. The freshmen and sophomore classes will do the same over the next few weeks. The classes have been doing similar activities as these are the basics needed for higher education.

Have a great week!

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Ms. Huffman, the student teacher, has taken over as lead teacher. :)

***This week we covered morphemes. Each day the students open class with looking at the rules they created and a schedule of the days activities. At the end of class, students take a credit/no credit mini quiz called a probe.***

Monday- 10 question reading strategy preassessment covering morphemes, comprehension strategies, and assistive technology.

Tuesday- Students put together paper cut-outs of morphemes to make words with prefixes, root words, and suffixes. They write the words they create on paper and underline the root word.

Wednesday- Students play madglib, a game that teaches parts of speech. They love it! We watch a video of President Obama addressing the American people about winning the Nobel Peace Prize. We read a NYT article about Obama winning the award, and the students write five words on paper, underlining the root word and boxing the suffix.

Thursday- Students play madglib and complete an activity, and the morpheme part of the reading assessment unit, pertaining to prefixes.

Friday- Students complete a review activity of the three morphemes in preparation of a jeopardy review game on Monday.

Have a great weekend!

Friday, October 9, 2009

Week of October 5th

What is a Noun Objective: Identify parts of speech

Warm-Up Procedure: Chapter 3 Teacher/Student Review

Group Activity: {arts of Speech Jeopardy

Individual Work: Basic English Student Text
  • Pgs. 63-66Pgs. 70-71Pg. 374
  • End of Chapter Assessment

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Week of Sept 28th: What is a Noun

Objective: Identify parts of speech

Warm-Up Procedure: Chapter 3 Teacher/Student Review

Group Activity:
  • Jeopardy

Individual Work: Basic English Student Text

  • Pgs. 63-66
  • Pgs. 70-71
  • Pg. 374

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Week of Sept. 21st: What is a Noun

Objective: Identify parts of speech

Warm-Up Procedure: Chapter 3 Opener/Project

Group Activity:
  • Words to Know
  • What is a Noun Chart
  • What is a Noun Worksheet (WS)
  • Compound Nouns WS
  • Proper/Common Nouns WS

Individual Work: Basic English Student Text

  • What is a noun: Pages 57-58
  • Create Noun Chart
  • Compound Nouns: Page 59
  • Proper/Common Nouns: 60-62

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

April 6th

Classroom Procedures:

Warm-Up Activity: Journal Writing

Reading Focus: Of Mice & Men/ Their Eyes Were Watching God Novel

Chapter Vocabulary

Before Reading Activity

Silent Reading: Audio VersionRead & Discuss Chapter

Comprehension questions: #1-10

After Reading Activity:
Write About It: more practice w/ the writing process

Monday, March 30, 2009

Week of March 30th

Classroom Procedures:

Warm-Up Activity: Journal Writing

Reading Focus: Of Mice & Men/ Their Eyes Were Watching God Novel

Chapter Vocabulary

Before Reading Activity

Silent Reading: Audio Version

Read & Discuss Chapter

Comprehension questions: #1-10

After Reading Activity:
  • Write About It: more practice w/ the writing process

March 23-27

Classroom Procedures:

Warm-Up Activity: Journal Writing

Vocabulary Workbook: #'s 1-10

Reading Focus: Making Predictions

Read & Discuss a short story from the Literature Book

Review the Selection: Comprehension questions #1-10

Write About the Selection: Writing Process

March 16-20

Classroom Procedures:Warm-Up Activity:Journal Writing

Vocabulary WorkbookReading Focus: Making Predictions

Read & Discuss a short story from the Literature Book

Review the Selection: Comprehensionqquestions #1-10

Write About the Selection: Writing Process

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Week of March 9-13

Classroom Procedures:Warm-Up Activity:

Journal WritingVocabulary Workbook

Reading Focus: Making Predictions

Read & Discuss a short story from the Literature Book

Review the Selection: Comprehension questions #1-10

Write About the Selection: Writing Process

Thursday, January 29, 2009

LL Language Arts

February 2-6

Classroom Procedures:

Warm-Up Activity: Journal Writing

Vocabulary Workbook

Reading Focus: Making Predictions

Read & Discuss a short story from the Literature Book

Review the Selection: Comprehension questions #1-10

Write About the Selection: Writing Process