The students have in their possession a quiz over the weekend's reading of Uglies. There's a little quiz about Tally's trip to Smoke since that's what the bulk of the reading was about, an 11-question figurative language quiz (with examples from the book), and space on the back to write a letter from one character of their choosing to another. Why did I let them take the quiz home? Well, over the weekend I graded a lot of quizzes taken by students who haven't read anything or who are way behind. It depressed me. I know that reading isn't always on their minds during the weekend and that they may have forgotten, so I'm giving them a night to try to catch up and do well on the quiz.
They should be finished with page 211 by tomorrow. A lot of my students have finished the book and are asking about the others in the series--Pretties, Specials, and Extras. We're not going to read those as a class, but the students can definitely find copies in any bookstore (they're all bestsellers) or library and read them on their own. I'm pleased a lot of the students seem to like the book!
We looked at some of our vocabulary word parts today. I encourage the students to think of an easy-peasy word to attach to the word part to help them remember the meaning. Today we looked at the following:
germ (vital or related) like germane
greg (group) like congregation
mar (sea) like submarine
prim (first) like prime
pyro (fire) like pyromaniac
clam (cry out) like exclamatory or exclaim
We finished discussed Keats' "Ode to Autumn" (it's a toughy!) and then moved on to sonnets. Sonnets are 14-line rhymed lyric poems. There are different kinds of sonnets (Shakespearean, Petrarchian) but we're not going to focus on that. For the next couple days, we're going to look at Shakespeare's sonnets. Today, we read the lovely Sonnet 18 where Shakespeare compares his female companion with summer (a metaphor!) and briefly looked at another one that starts "When I do count the clock that tells the time." The other starts with "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" If you Google them by first line, you should be able to find them online, and it might be a good idea to read them over with your child and discuss what each (sometimes confusing) line means. We'll work more with sonnets tomorrow.
As always, let me know if you have questions about my class or the work we do.
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