This is our last week for the City of Ember! We've all really liked this book! There are more books in the series, so if you want to continue reading, the next one is People of the Sparks! Today we discussed some issues I keep seeing in the homework from week to week and I informed the students that I would be getting pickier about the grading now that we have had this talk.
When we return from fall break, please have your next book (Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson) ready to go and in class. If you ordered from me, I will have those on 10/12!
Today we worked on a TON of grammar skills that were (hopefully) a review. We discussed nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, articles, prepositions, and prepositional phrases. We also discussed and the difference between subjects, predicates, independent clauses, dependent clauses, coordinating conjunctions, and subordinating conjunctions. We used all this info to create simple, complex, and compound sentences about The City of Ember. This week, students need to read 7-13 (it says 12 on the packet, but let's attempt to go on to 13). The grammar focus this week is prepositional phrases.
This week we started reading City of Ember. Students should read chapters 1-6 for homework. We did some prereading predictions in class and focused on writing complete sentences with capital letters and proper punctuation. We also learned about mentor sentences. These might be confusing for some at first, but they are GREAT for learning grammar and they will get easier as we move along throughout the year.
This week, we worked on My Name for week 2. We specifically focused on some critical thinking group questions and debates within our groups. For HW this week, everything needs to be complete from week 1 My Name, Multiple Intelligences, and Week 2 My Name. We will not have class next week for Labor Day, but I will be taking up all three packets and grading them. We will also start our new book when we return so please have City of Ember on Sept 14th. You will need it in class!
Today was our first day and we had some fun! We played some games and learned about Multiple Intelligences. We also learned how to annotate and take notes. For HW this week:
-Finish Reading the Multiple Intelligences article
-Take the Multiple Intelligences Quiz and report your findings on your graph (and then answer the questions).
-Read the short story My Name and complete the packet that goes with it (This was sent home).