What a great week! We will be focusing on our historical novel and making connections between the lessons learned in Language Arts and Social Studies.

Grammar: We will keep working on prepositions and this week we also look at adverbs

Vocabulary: This week's vocabulary root word is -philia; Greek meaning love or friendship.

Literature: Focus on reading your novel. Remember to mark with post-its the references to character development, setting and historical references to things such as real people, places and events.

Writing: No writing assignment this week.

Wow! What a great time at Team Building! Thanks to everyone for their willingness to take risks and have fun.

In Language Arts, we're back in the saddle and off to a great start.

Writing: No writing assignments this week.

Grammar: Many of us are still struggling with prepositions, subjects and verbs. This week's minilesson is on Imperative sentences and "you" as the implied subject. Part 2 will be a review of everything we've learned about prepositions. The worksheet is due Tuesday. Quiz Friday.

Vocabulary: This week's vocabulary words come from the Greek root "topos" meaning to turn. Many of these words releate to the physics work that kids are doing in Science. Quiz Friday.

Literature: Civil War novels go out on Tuesday. Students need to look at setting and character developmnet as well as historical reference while they are reading.

We're at the crux of midterms. Last Friday, students finished their midterm for Prepositions. Today, the 8th, they will be studying for Tuesday's midterm over vocabulary. Tuesday the 9th and Tuesday the 16th students will be finishing their presentations of their analysis of the Gettysburg Address. We're still waiting for the historical novels to arrive and we'll get them started as soon as they do. Enjoy the break for conferences and get psyched for Team Building!

Rocktober! This week is off to a great start. Today in class we updated all of the gradebook. While the grades for assignments turned in last week aren't in yet, for the most part, the grades for Language Arts are current. Especially exciting was the roll out of the new laptops. It was great for kids to be able to work at their desk on the computer.

Please note - The Gettysburg Address essay due date has been moved to Thursday.
On Thursday, at the beginning of class, I expect (1) an outline which includes a thesis sentence, topic sentences and quotes (2) a handwritten rough draft. If you have more than one rough draft, only one of them needs to be handwritten. Be sure your drafts show signs of edits. (3) a typed final draft. It should be 10 or 12pt Times New Roman, 1.5 or double spaced.

Writing: Monday and Tuesday - work on Gettysburg Address analysis. Final due Thursday. Students should expect to share their work with the class.

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This week we will continue to work on our analysis of the Gettysburg address. Students have been looking at Lincoln's speech and deciding what techniques make it so memorable and timeless. They are also looking at how Lincoln incorporated the American ideals which the students have been studying in Social Studies. Writing: Students will be writing an essay proving the greatness of the Gettysburg address. The final product will need to be edited, revised, typed and have quotes from the speech supporting their assertions. Grammar: More work on prepositions and this week we look at sentence structure for prepositional phrases, helping verbs, and negatives. The last column of prepositions will be on Friday's quiz. Reading: Any day our Civil War novels should arrive. As soon as they do, we will get started. Vocab: This week's root word is 'tele' which is Greek for far away and distant.

I'm not sure what happened to the blog from last week, so I will repost it today. Also, thanks to the folks who let me know that the links to the documents weren't working. I think we got it fixed. Vocab - This week's root word is 'graph' (Greek meaning to write or draw. Homework due Friday. Quiz Friday. Grammar - We'll keep working on prepositions. This week we learn about compound objects. Homework due Friday. Quiz over column 2 of the Preposition sheet on Friday. Writing - Writing journals will be returned on Monday. This week students need to make at least two independent entries in their journals. These should be done at home. We will not be doing them in class. Students may write about about topics/stories of their choosing. Each entry should be at least one full page. Literature - This week we begin our study of Historical Fiction about the Civil War era. Students will choose their novel from the selections presented in class. Students need to bring their notecards to class beginning Tues ... Read More »

Vocab - This week we are studying the Greek root 'photo' meaning light. Homework is due Friday. Quiz on Friday. Grammar - We begin our regular study of grammar with prepositions. Students will take notes on how prepositions work, be given a finite list of prepositions which they need to memorize, and a worksheet to practice identifying prepositions in sentences. Worksheet due Friday. Quiz over column 1 of prepositions on Friday. Writing - Students will be doing a series of quickwrites this week that will serve as a baseline for both their writing skills and their understanding of some basic literary elements. Writing journals due Thursday. Literature - no literature assignment this week.

This week we get down to the nuts and bolts. Students' "stars" are due by the end of class on Tuesday. Tuesday students also received their vocab lists due on Friday. Friday there will also be a vocab test. This week's root word is de- (meaning down, away or from). See list below for the complete listing of this week's workds.