Thursday

My University of Indianapolis student-teacher person, the wonderful Ms. Poppington (or something like that) took over most of my first class today. She did some Walk Two Moons discussion with the students in groups, playing a game called Save the Last Word for Me (or something like that). We still had time to go over the rest of the vocabulary word parts and do a quick written response over last night's reading.

Blocks 2 and 3 did some novel discussion. We also looked at some more persuasive terms: counterargument, perspective, bias or slant, stereotyping, and propaganda. We had some discussion on the pros and cons of zoos and started to read an anti-zoo article. Tomorrow, we'll finish that and read a pro-zoo article. There's a worksheet to go along with all this, something to help the students break down the arguments (claims + support), the counterarguments, and the use of both fact and opinion in the articles.

The rest of this week's word parts:

fus means "pour" like with the word fusion (pouring two things into one?). I like the word confuse though. Sometimes, things are pouring together (con) which makes it difficult for us to figure out what's going on.
ego means "I" like in the following: big ego, egomaniac, egocentric. Some of my students claimed that I'm an egomaniac, but when you're as awesome as me, it's kind of hard not to be.
spir means "breathe" like in the word respiration. Also, the word inspire. When the Greeks (the dudes who invented the word) were inspired, they thought their gods (the nine muses) were breathing into them and giving them the abilities to write, make music, paint, make pottery, dance, etc.
acr means "sharp" and I hope they don't confuse it with this week's acro. See acerbity and acrimonious for examples.
culp means "blame" like when you're a culprit. Exculpate and inculpate are antonyms that use this word part. One is putting the blame in somebody and the other is taking it out.
per means "through" like in the words permeate (to pass through every part of, like a strong perfume in a classroom) and percolate (to pass through pores) and persuade (to convince all the way through?)
pac means "peace"...if you're a pacifist, you are anti-war. And you parents know what a pacifier is used for, right? Also, the Pacific Ocean was named that because its discoverer, Rocky Balboa (or something like that), thought it was a lot more peaceful than the Atlantic.
brev means "short" like brevity and abbreviate. Ask your child if they can tell you what a brevirostrate bird has.
urb means "city" just like polis. An urbanite is a city dweller.
pugn means "fight" like with the word pugilist (synonym for boxer) and pugnacious, a word that means "full of fight"
il means "not" like in the word illegal
and finally, cle means "small"...my favorite bit of etymology from this week is the origin of the word muscle. When you break that one down, it means "little mouse" because your muscles look like little mice under your skin. This is not only the cutest bit of information I'll give my students this week, but it also gave me an opportunity to show off my biceps. Some of my students nearly passed out.

Students need to get to page 53 in Walk Two Moons by tomorrow.