Thursday's Class

Things were a little different today depending on whether I have your child in my first class or my second or third classes.

Today was Ms. Perpendicular's (or whatever her name is) last day with us. She's been working on Tuesdays and Thursdays in my first block class all year, and I think most of the students liked having her around. For whatever reason, they think she's a nicer person than I am, and some of them would much rather have her teach the class than me. Anyway, today was her last day, and she had certificates to give to all the students. There was a certificate-passing-out ceremony, and then we all enjoyed some cheesecake from the restaurant she works. A wonderful time was had by all! Well, except for me. I'm on a gluten-and-dairy-free diet, so I just spent the time standing around watching other people enjoy cheesecake. That's not much fun.

Block one was able to complete a Walk Two Moons quiz. We also looked at a poem called "the little horse is newlY" by e.e. cummings, a guy who didn't capitalize his name. Sal, the protagonist of our novel, reads that poem in her English class, so I thought we'd look at it. Here's the poem for your enjoyment:

the little horse is newlY

Born) he knows nothing, and feels
everything; all around whom is

perfectly a strange
ness (Of sun
light and of fragrance and of

Singing) is ev
erywhere (a welcom
ing dream: is amazing!)
a worlD...and in

this world lies: smothbeautiful
ly folded; a (brea
thing a gro

Wing) silence, who;
is: somE

oNe.

Yep. That poet's messed up. But it's not a bad poem about rebirth and new experiences, ideas that fit in nicely with our novel.

My first class also started a letter to Ms. Pencilberry (or whatever her name is). I'm going to mail those to her on Wednesday.

The other classes took the quiz, looked at the poem, and had some writing time. Today, we looked at Brilliant Beginnings, ways to hook the reader and force them to want to read the rest of the essay. We looked at examples of using questions, quotations, anecdotes, descriptions, allusions, dialogues, and shocking details. The metaphor we used is that it's like a worm for a fish. You have to entice the fish to jump on the hook just like you have to entice your readers to jump into your essay.

I hope my students don't misunderstand and start stapling worms to the tops of their essays.

Students need to read ONLY to page 176 in W2M for Monday. They will also have their last vocabulary quiz next Thursday. They need to be studying nightly for that because that's the biggest one of the year!