Friday

Only five more days!

And only four word parts today:

orb = "circle" like orbit and exorbitant
mot = "move" like motor, motivation, promotion, demotion, automotive, pedomotive, and emotion
sol = "sun" like solar, solstice, and parasols
ven = "come" like venture, avenue, convene, intervene, invent, event, revenue, convenient, and prevent

We've finished the first act of the Anne Frank play. That's a little over half of the play. Some of the students started a quiz today (mostly about characters, conflicts, and themes) and a small writing assignment where they write a diary entry as another character. I think most students like the play. Then again, I'm the same guy who thought 8th graders enjoyed writing, so what do I know?

As we approach the end of the year, let me know if you have any questions about student grades, high school, or anything else. My grades aren't completely updated on PEP, but I'd be happy to talk about your child's grade with you.

Thursday

Hey, party people...just six more days to go!

Today's word parts:

fore = "front" like forehead and foreshadow
-ish = "like" like elfish and snobbish
-oma = "tumor" like melanoma and glaucoma
mela = "black" like melancholy ("black bile" from the spleen, what the Greeks thought caused depression) and melanin
narco = "sleep" like narcotics and narcolepsy
-let = "little" like piglet and aglet (those little plastic things on the end of your shoestring)
vice = "in place of" but we aren't doing that one
solv = "loosen" like dissolve and absolve

More Anne Frank. We met a new character today--Mr. Dussel. We discussed our conflicts and looked at what bringing a new character into the mix would do.

Tuesday and Wednesday

Word Parts:

cephalo = "head" like microcephalic (small-headed)
kin = "motion" like kinetic energy and telekinetic
dactyl = "finger" like pterodactyl and polydactyl
gon = "angle" like polygon
vore = "eating" like voracious, omnivore, and devour
opia = "sight" like myopia and hyperopia
-ium = "element" but we're not really doing this one
calli = "beautiful" like calligraphy and calisthenics
caust = "fire" like Holocaust and caustic
terr = "land" like Terre Haute, territory, and terrarium
here = "stick" like adhere and coherent/incoherent
cracy = "government" like democracy and plutocracy
mania = "madness" like rhinotillexomania (look it up!) and pyromania
quad = "four" like quadrupeds and quadrilateral
lingu = "tongue" like bilingual and elinguation (look that one up, too!)
flect = "bend" like reflect and deflect
peri = "around" like perimeter and periscope
gno = "know" like diagnosis, prognosis, and agnostic
sept = "7" like septuagenarian and September (the 7th month...hey, wait a second...)
nona = "9" like Nona, the Roman goddess of pregnancy

We can now count to 10 using word parts. uni, bi, tri, quad (or tetra), penta, hexa, sept, octo, nona, dec. Ta da!

We've continued reading the Anne Frank play as a class. We're looking at character development and conflicts and themes. The students are also answering some journal questions on their own. The goal with the journal questions is to empathize with the characters and their situations. Yesterday, they answered what kind of things they would bring with them (sentimental value and material value) if going into hiding, and today they made predictions about the characters and thought about why the situation would be bad for the teenage characters and the adult ones.

Monday

We started reading the Anne Frank diary play after I gave the students some background on her and her diary. The students have a character thing to fill out along with some theme things to keep track of. That's all on one piece of paper.

Only two word parts today although I gave them the meaning for all of them for the rest of the year. Today's:

gastro means "stomach" like gastroenteritis (stomach flu), gastric, and engastrimyth, another word for a ventriloquist. Ventriloquist and engastrimyth both have to do with "stomach talking"

macro is the opposite of micro and means "large" like macrocosm (the universe, a large place) and macrodont (having large teeth) and macrocephalic (large-headed). Oh, and macrons which are those lines over long vowels in dictionary pronunciations. I guess that makes a large vowel sound?

More tomorrow.

Wednesday

Some of the students have not completed the Night reading, but I gave them their final test anyway--a high-school-caliber essay! The students have five choices:

1) write a persuasive speech (as a congress person in an isolationist country) convincing other congress people that they need to do something to stop what is going on in the Holocaust

2) an essay about what the cover of night should look like and what three or four striking or gripping images should be included on the inside of the book

3) a persuasive essay about how students in middle school should either have to read Night or how they should not have to read it because it is too "terrifying" or "unbearably painful"

4) a theme essay in which they need to pick at least five quotes and write about "life lessons" or big ideas the book covers

5) an essay about what a Holocaust monument should look like--it's got to be all symbols (no specific people, no words)

Students continued working on finishing up the reading and the reading work. As they get finished, they'll start working on their essay test.

Tomorrow, we they'll have a little more work time, and we'll also be starting the dramatized version of Anne Frank's diary.

Friday, there's a team party. This will be my last blog entry for the week. Let me know if you have any questions here at the end of our school year.

Monday/Tuesday

The time with my lovely students is slipping away, like sand through my fingers. Oh, how I'll miss these kids this summer!

There's at least some truth to the above sentences...

I gave the students a "found poem" assignment for Night. A "found poem" is almost exactly what it sounds like--it's using words and phrases that are "found" in another text (a book, a newspaper, a magazine, a story, etc.) and recontexualizing those words (using them in another way) to make an original poem. Their job is to go through Night and find words and phrases that are meaningful, powerful, poetic, imagistic, descriptive, etc. and then use those words to write their own poem.

There's a Tuesday quiz taking us through page 97. It was super-easy for those who did their reading. Unfortunately, that's not everybody. We should finish the book up the next couple days and be ready to start the dramatized version of Anne Frank's diary.

Word parts:

vol is "will" like volunteer or malevolent/benevolent
trich is "hair" like trichosis (see below) or trichina, worms that cause trichonosis
troph is "nourishment" like autotrophs and heterotrophs (they're learning about these in science) and atrophy
tox is "poison" like toxic and detoxification
sect is "cut" like dissect, intersection, and vivisection
zygo is "yoke" like zygote and zygodactyl (birds with feet that look like yokes)
zym is "ferment" like enzymes and zymurgy, the chemistry involved with making beer

That's it for this list. I think we'll do one last list so that we can end with 15 instead of 14. It's a better ending number. That's 375 word parts unless my math is way wrong.

Thursday

More Night reading. Friday, since a lot of my students will be at King's Island instead of here at school with their favorite language arts teacher, the students will spend the entire time reading and catching up on missing work. It seems like something else is going on Monday, so that might also be a catch-up day.

More word parts:

erg = "work" like energy, synergy, and ergonomics
rhiz = "root" like rhizoid and rhizophagous
sapro = "rotten" like saprophyte and saprogenic
schizo = "divide" like schizophrenic and schism
hippo = "horse" like hippopotamus (a "river horse") and hippodrome
som = "body" like psychosomatic, chromosome, and somatoplasm
spor = "seed" like endospore, sporozoa, and sporophyte
sta = "stop" or "stand" like constant, instant, station, hemostat, stationary, and static
rhodo = "rose" like rhododendron and Rhode Island, a state that I'm not sure is known for its roses and I know is not an island...the name comes from the reddish color of its soil apparently
taxis = "arrangement" like syntax, taxidermy, and ataxia

That's all for now. And to be completely honest, I'd definitely rather be here at my desk than on a roller coaster today. It's because I'm an acrophobic bibliophile.

Yadsendew

Only three weeks and two days left in this school year. I'm kind of ready for this one to end actually.

Today's word parts:

pleo is "many" like pleopod, pleophagous, and pleomorphic, three words that aren't important enough to me to define them for you
pod is "foot" like a podium, a podiatrist, and a cephalopod (like octopi, a "head-footed" creature)
soror is "sister" like a sorority
frat is "brother" like fraternity or fraternize, a word with an interesting military etymology that has to do with soldiers dating women from enemy countries
-a is a suffix that makes words plural like trivia, data, and cephalopoda
val is "worth" like valid, equivalent, evaluate, and ambivalent
para is "beside" or "near" like paraprofessional (paralegal, paramedic) or paradox
dom is "rule" like dominate, predominant, and dominion

And we read some more Night and had a little bit of time for the written work.

Well...

I haven't been able to log in to do this blog at school. It's got me blocked. I never think to do this at home either. Again, my apologies. I'll try to do better.

Not much has been going on anyway. We're still reading Night. The students took their vocabulary quiz last week. 70% of the students got either an A or a B on the test. Of course, 24% of them failed the test which is no good. Not many C's, and again, that tells me that either the students put a little effort into it and do well or not much effort at all and do poorly.

We'll start with our list 14 words on Wednesday. We'll also continue reading the Holocaust materials and finish up the year with a couple writing assignments.

I still don't have book reports and/or research papers from a lot of students. It'll be hard for me to pass them if they don't get those in.

As always, let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Monday

1. Misplaced/Dangling modifier review sheet--turned in
2. Little lesson and class practice on parallelism in grammar/writing
3. Vocab. review sheet--I gave them 100 word parts (THE word parts that will be on the next test) and they have to make brand-new words
4. Night reading; correct and/or complete quiz

Vocabulary quiz is Thursday! ISTEP for language arts is Friday and Monday. Great days for test taking, right?

Friday (Well, Wednesday-Friday)

Not that you read this to hear me whine, but there was some trouble on Wednesday that zapped away a lot of my time. Some students from my homeroom weren't happy with me because I have the nerve to make them do actual work (reading) at the beginning of the day. They banded together, went to student services, and spread a lie that I had pushed another student. Administration wasn't happy, statements had to be written, and it was a mess. I felt terrible and sad and didn't really even want to come to work the next day. Luckily, some of my homeroom students do have integrity, and the truth saved the day. Things are fine now, but I'll admit that it does still hurt a little bit.

Anyway, that's my excuse for not blogging the last couple days.

The rest of the word parts:

chrom = "color" like chromosome and monochromatic
form = "shape" like formation and oviform (egg-shaped)
sequ = "follow" like consecutive, sequence, sequel, consequence, and obsequious
glyc = "sweet" like glycerin and hypoglycemia
-ose = "sugar" like fructose and glucose
ultima = "last" like ultimate and ultimatum
infra = "beneath" like infrared and infrasonic (beneath what the ear can hear)
leuko = "white" like leukocytes and leukemia
lys = "breakdown" like hemolysis and analysis
meso = "middle" like Mesopotamia and mesomorph and Mesoamerica
gress = "step" like progress and regress
labor = "work" like laborious, collaborate, laboratory, and elaborate
tude = "state of" like attitude, solitude, aptitude, and rectitude
patho = "disease" like pathogenic, psychopath, and idiopathic
phor = "carry" like euphoria and chromatophore

We did some more work with participle and infinitive phrases. Today, we looked at misplaced and dangling modifiers, misplaced prepositional phrases, and misplaced adjective clauses.

And we're continuing with our reading of Night. I collected some of their class work, and a great deal of it doesn't look like the high school work I'm looking for. Some students are reading but not doing the work. Today, we took a quiz over what we've read so far. We're about halfway through the book.

Tuesday 3/19

First off, I did not end up sending anything home with the students That will be tomorrow. Tomorrow is also a library day. Friday: Book report (or other project) is due.

Today's word parts:

phyte = "plant" (neophyte, sporophyte, gametophyte, or my [childish] favorite coprophyte, a plant that grows in poop)
myo = "muscle" (myocardium, myotomy, myoglobin, or amyotonia [flabbiness])
phyll = "leaf" (chlorophyll, phyllopods [crustaceans that have leaf-like appendages], phyllophagous)
milli = "1000th" (millipede, millimeter)
oligo = "small" or "few" (oligarchy, oligodactylia [fewer fingers or toes than normal], oligocarpous [few fruits])

Students spent most of the time reading Night. I gave some examples of good response question answers because what I read and graded over the weekend and last night were not good examples of high school student work, and that's what I expect from my students right now. As scary as it sounds, parents, they are almost there.

Ask you child about what they're reading in Night. I know a lot of the students are getting a lot out of it, and I'm sure they'd love to share it with somebody else.

Monday

OK, so I didn't post at all last week except on Monday which was actually a post for Friday. Sorry about that. It was really the perfect storm of it being an extremely busy week and me being an extremely lazy man.

We stared Night last week, a Holocaust novel by survivor Elie Wiesel. It's not easy reading, but as we discussed after reading an introduction, it's important reading. The students have three things to work on while they read in class:

1) A Night journal where they answer questions I've given them
2) A double-entry journal where they write about quotes that resonate with them or that they think are important
3) A character chart for Elie

Some of the students are not using their class time very wisely. Last Wednesday, a day in which I had a substitute, there were a ton of students who did not use their time wisely. I've got a lot of students who are behind.

I'm sending home some paperwork tomorrow (I hope! Maybe Wednesday) about how students have done on a few recent things. As I've said before, the progress report just doesn't help all that much.

Today, we looked at verbal phrases. The students worked with verbals (gerunds, infinitives, participles) last week, so this is just an extension of that. The phrases start with the verbal and include any modifiers or nouns that help further explain the verbal or help it do its job.

We also read a poem by Holocaust survivor Yala Korwin called "The Little Boy with his Hands Up," a poem written about a famous Holocaust photograph. The poem (and the picture) can be found here.

Finally, we started our new word part list. I told the students that the next test (April 29th) would be a biggie. I'm willing to drop all their previous scores if their next test score is a really good one. It's a golden opportunity that a lot of my students will unfortunately not take advantage of. If they want to boost their vocabulary grade, however, they can start studying right now in preparation.

Today's word parts:

mem = "remember" (memento, memorial, immemorial, memorandum)
-osis = "condition" (thrombosis, symbiosis, ichthyosis, hypnosis, neurosis, psychosis)
vac = "empty" (vacuum, vacant/vacate, evacuate)
hemo = "blood" (hemorrhage, hemostat, hemophiliac, hemoglobin)
phag = "eat" (phagocytes, sarcophagus, phyllophagous)

My favorite word for the day: allotriophagia, a morbid desire to eat things that are unnatural like dirt, gravel, hair, lice, paint, laundry starch, boogers, etc. I'm not sure when I'll be able to use that in conversation. Actually, I hope I don't ever have to use that word in conversation.

Slightly Late Friday Post

Reminders:

Research rough draft is due Tuesday the 12th.
Book report (or other project) is due April 19th now. That's next Tuesday.
Next (real) vocabulary quiz: Friday the 15th.

Our last five word parts for List Twelve:

cyt means "cell" like erythrocytes and leukocytes, red and white blood cells respectively
diplo means "double" like diplomacy and diplopia (double vision)
eco means "house" but I'll also take "environment" on the test like economy, ecology, and ecosystem
idio means "peculiar" like idiosyncrasy and idiom
fil means "thread" like filament and filiferous (thread carrying)

We also took our List 6 test on Friday. Students are still writing the ones they miss five times each (word part and definition) and drawing a word part picture for each.

We learned about verbals today using the verbal gerbils--Gerry the Gerund, P-Dawg the Participles, and Buzz the Infinitive. It's dorky stuff, but hopefully the jingles will help the students remember these things that the state of Indiana seems to think they should remember.

Verbals are words that are verb forms (-ing words, -ed words, other verb forms) but act like something else in a sentence. So they look like verbs but are doing the jobs of nouns, adjectives, or adverbs.

Gerunds always end in -ing and are nouns. Playing basketball is my favorite form of exercise. Playing looks like a verb but it's the subject noun in that sentence.

Participles are the -ing or -ed form of a verb, but they are adjectives in the sentences. The barking dog scared me. Barking looks like a verb but is tells "what kind" for the dog and is therefore and adjective. Barking ferociously, the dog chased me down the alley. Barking there is still an adjective. The chopped lumber was stacked neatly by the barn. Chopped in that sentence is also telling "what kind" for the lumber, making it an adjective.

Finally, infinitives. They're the easiest because they have the word "to" in front of them. It's "to" and a verb. They're used as nouns, adjectives, or adverbs in sentences. I would like to ski down that mountain. To ski is an activity (a thing--a noun) in that sentence. He's creating a quiz to see if his students learned about verbals. To see isn't the verb there. It's modifying the verb creating which makes it an adverb.

We'll continue working on verbals most of this week.

Wednesday and Thursday

Well, softball and chess club certainly have me busy these days. I apologize for the lack of daily posts.

We're working on our research rough drafts now. Some of the students, as I mentioned the other day, are ill-equipped. They got their notes, topics and topic categories, and source sheets back yesterday. I lumped it all into a grade called "Research" which is out of 100 points. It's a big chunk of grade because we put a lot of time into it. Or, to be more accurate, some of the students put a lot of time into it. As the scores might indicate (some scores as low as 30 or 40 out of 100), some students have wasted their time, not paid attention to the way the research and note-taking was supposed to be done, or were unorganized and lost things. So I really don't see how some students will be able to put a research paper together, especially one without plagiarizing. We reviewed on Wednesday about how to use parenthetical citation to distinguish between our own ideas and the ideas from our sources. If the students failed to document the sources as they took notes, something I reminded them every single day to do, they will most likely not be able to parenthetically cite. And if they can't parenthetically cite, they are plagiarizing. Luckily for them, it's still a learning process at this level. High school and college? They'll fail automatically and maybe even be expelled for plagiarism.

The research rough draft, by the way, is due next Tuesday. That's April 12th, the same day the students were supposed to turn a book project in. I went ahead and pushed the independent reading thing (probably a book report) to the following Tuesday.

We're continuing to take tests on our old vocabulary word part lists. We did List Five Thursday, and the students are still writing the ones they miss five times each and making a word part picture. Some of them are getting that work in; others are choosing not to do it.

Here are the word parts we've covered over the last two days:

emia is "blood" like anemia and leukemia
-ase is "enzyme" like a bunch of words that end in -ase that they'll never use
dys is "bad" like dyslexia, dysfunction, and dysentery
chlor is "green" like chlorine (the 17th element on the periodic table; it's named for its color) and chlorophyll
epi is "on" or "over" like epidermis, epicenter, and epidemic
-be is "life" like microbe and anaerobe (something that can live without air)
bon is "good" like bonbons (yum!), bona fide, the old-fashioned word bonny, bonus, and bonanza
exo is "out" (same as ex actually) like exoskeleton, exorbitant (like gas prices!), and exotic
erythro is "red" like erythrocytes (red blood cells)
im is "not" (like in and il) like in impatient, impolite, immobile and a bunch of other words

Five more to go for List Twelve. We'll test next Friday. That'll be a real test, and the students will have ALL the old tests with ALL the word parts and ALL their meanings and NO excuse not to study a little bit.

Monday and Tuesday

Word Parts--I'm giving a test (or two) a day over our old word part lists. As I graded the last word part test, I noticed that the students just aren't putting any time into the word parts at all. So we started with list one yesterday, and the students took a quiz over the 25 word parts from that list. They had five minutes. If they missed a word part, they had to write it ten times each with the definition. Today we did lists two and three. If they missed any, they had to write them five times each and draw a word part picture. A lot of the students have to finish that up for homework tonight.

Also, I'm collecting their spring break reading logs tomorrow. Their book report (or other project) is due next Tuesday (technically...I may change that).

New word parts! List 12! It's a lot of science word parts this time. Here's what we've gone over so far:

an means "without" like anarchy (without a government) and anonymous (without a name)
ab means "away" like abstain (keep away from), abolish (do away with), ablution (a religious washing away), and abbreviate (letters go away)
mel (according to the book) means "song" like melody and melodrama (originally a play with songs in it). According to my resources, mel comes from the Greek melos which had to do with arms and legs. I found about 70 words that had to do with arms and legs and about 7 that had to do with songs. Maybe I should write a book of my own!
alb means "white" like albino, albumen (white part of an egg), and albedo (having to do with reflected light like off the moon)
enter means "intestine" like dysentery (intestinal inflammation causing diarrhea) and enterozoan (intestinal worms)...pleasant stuff.
aden means "gland" like your adenoids and adenectomy (the cutting out of a gland)
aer means "air" like with aerobatics, aerobic, and aerodynamics. And malaria which is actually a mosquito-borne disease that people originally thought was from "bad air"
hum is "earth" like human (in the Biblical Adam and Eve story, Adam was made from earth), humble (down to earth), exhume (dig out of the earth), and posthumous (after a person's time on earth)
struct is "build" like construct, destruct (build down?), instruct, obstruct, structure, and infrastructure
cyan is "blue" like the color cyan (I'm a guy, so I don't even know this color), cyanide, and cyanosis where babies fingers, toes, and lips turn blue because of a lack of oxygen

We'll be returning to our regularly-scheduled research stuff tomorrow. I'm disappointed at the lack of effort a lot of students showed with the research before break. We had five days of research, and a lot of students turned in three or four note cards. It's unacceptable, and those students who didn't use their time wisely are way behind with the project and, according to my gradebook, failing the project so far.

Oh, we also made a trip to the library today. Mrs. East seemed excited to see us and talked like a person who had had coffee injected directly into her veins.

Wednesday and Thursday

It hasn't been a good couple of days. I've seen a lot of disrespect from the students and an overall lack of effort that really bugs me. The students took a vocabulary test today after reviewing a little bit all week, and the scores look mostly terrible. I don't think the students are studying at home. The ones who are putting some effort into it are getting A's though. The students also turned in their research work (the note cards, source sheets, topic categories) and a lot of them had almost nothing to turn in. I'm not sure what they've been doing the last few days, but it apparently wasn't researching. Or maybe it just wasn't keeping their research stuff organized.

I've got not much to say. I did pick up their reading logs finally and gave them another one for over spring break. Yes, I'd like them to read a little over break. It doesn't have to be 30 minutes per night, but I do think they can probably find some time to read and keep those young minds fresh.

Tomorrow is our team party day, so I won't write again until after break. Have a good one!

Tuesday 3/22

If you look up the etymology for the word "Tuesday," you'll find that it means something like the Day of Mars. Mars was the god of war in Roman mythology. So in a way, it's like a day of war. I think a couple of my students took that too literally today.

We spent most of our time with the laptops today. First, the students did some ISTEP preparation stuff with Acuity. I threw in some Acuity assignments for each student based on what they missed on previous Acuity tests. The students went through a little mini-lesson, answered some guided questions, and then did some questions on their own.

After that, they were free to research. A lot of the students are finding the Holocaust to be an interesting and very sad topic. Some of the students are doing an excellent job; others need to get on the ball.

On Thursday, I'll collect everything they've done with the research so far, the analysis part of the research project--the source sheets, the note cards, etc. I'll give them grades on what they've done so far, and then right after spring break, we'll be able to put that information together (the synthesis part of the research project) and share with our peers.

MONDAY!

The rest of the day, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. If I can get through those days and Friday's party day without having a nervous breakdown and/or going completely insane, I can have a well-deserved break. The students can have a well-deserved break, too, but I'm not as worried about them.

Today was another day of research. This time, most of them used computers to find their information. We talked about Google and other search engines a little bit--using specific keywords for our searches, using symbols (+, -, " ") to help narrow the searches, and using the advanced search features. We also reviewed CARS (Credibility, Accuracy, Reasonableness, and Support) to determine whether the sources we're finding are any good.

We also got a vocabulary review activity. It's a two-sided half sheet with a long and (I'll admit) completely pointless story. The 25 word parts from List 11 are in there 78 times if I counted correctly. There are other word parts, too. All the students need to do by tomorrow is underline as many as they can find and write what they mean above them. We'll review tomorrow and Wednesday for Thursday's vocabulary test.

Also, I'm collecting the students' reading log tomorrow. That'll finish off the first week of reading, and I'll have to give them another one for the rest of the week and spring break.

Ahh, spring break. Right around the corner.

3/19 Friday

Today's mostly a research day. I have two sets of encyclopedias. The students, for whatever reason, just look at those with disgust, almost like they think they're diseased. I had one student pick up one of the encyclopedia volumes and ask, "How the heck do you even turn this thing on?" I also have over 50 books from our library and the Indianapolis Marion County Public Library and some folders with printed off website sources. They want to use computers and something they keep calling "The Internet" but they'll have to wait until next week for that.

They're busily taking notes, keeping track of their sources on a source sheet (I hope--or their plagiarizing!), and answering those research questions.

We finished off our word parts for List 11, and I collected their notes to give them their easy grade. Today's word parts:

ag and act both mean "to do" like in agile, agency, aggressive, action, activate, and react.
nounce means "tell" like pronounce, denounce, announce, and renounce. Those are all telling verbs.
And to finish it off, we had pro which means "forward" like with proceed, prognosticate, project, and promotion.

3/17

Word parts for the day:

bas means "low" like with bass and base, two homophones, as well as the verbs debase and abase.

log can mean "word" or "reason" like with neologism (a new word) and a monologue or logic and illogical. Or, to attach this to something we learned about a while back, logos (not pathos or ethos).

reg means "rule" like in the words regulation, regular, regal, or interregnum. I didn't know what the last word meant, so I just looked it up. I guessed (since I know what inter means and it has part of the word number) that it had to do with the time between rulers, like a transition period between two kings. I should have trusted my knowledge of word parts because that's what it is! To put it in an American context, it's what we have with a lame duck president, when the guy in office knows he's on his way out.

And finally, sess means "sit" like with obsessed and insessorial. The latter adjective describes a bird's talons since that's what is used by a bird to "sit" on a branch. Also, the word sessility which describes barnacles or other animals that don't move around. They just sit there.

We dove headfirst into our research today. I gave them note cards, and some of the students used them to jot down notes (in their own words, I hope!) for their topic categories. Some of the students are doing well; some are not doing so well.

Wednesday, 3/16

The last two days have nicknames. March 3rd is Pi Day because, as all math nerds could tell you, 3.14 is pi. And March 15th is the Ides of March which, as all English nerds could tell you, has to do with Julius Caesar in the Shakespeare play named after him. March 16th is just March 16th, and that's boring.

But class today sure wasn't boring! We did a little sentence combining review to start things off. We've moved on to entire paragraphs of short, choppy writing. The students are kind of like superheros actually except their super power is even cooler than flying or jumping really high or being strong or having x-ray vision or climbing walls like a spider. And they don't have to wear tights! No, their superhero power is the ability to sentence combine so that their writing has clarity and fluency! Faster than a speeding bullet!

We also officially kicked off the research project. The students got a chance to peruse some websites I printed off, some books that I borrowed from the public library, and some encyclopedia articles. Their ultimate goal today was to narrow their topic and come up with their research questions. Some of the students have started the note-taking process. The rest will be there tomorrow.

I will say this--there were a lot of students who did not use their time wisely today. They're off to a bad start, and that's a bad sign.

Due tomorrow: 30 minutes of reading and the reading log (I should copy and paste this to use for the next dozen or so blog entries). They also need to turn in the sheet that tells me what their reading project is going to be. Book report? Poster? Dress up as the main character and give a speech? A rap song about the book? As I wrote yesterday, any student with a parent who reads this blog can write down "I'm just going to read the book and turn in the reading logs instead of doing a project at the end," and I will be just fine with it.

Tuesday on Tuesday!

Blog-reading parents! Make sure you read the very last big paragraph for a special offer...

We read (or in the case of my first class, reread) Terrible Things by Eve Bunting. It's a picture book, but one that is probably a little too intense for children. Terrible Things is an allegory where some forest animals and these mysterious amorphous Terrible Things represent the Holocaust. That was our launching point for our Holocaust unit which will consume a lot of the rest of our school year. The students jotted down some ideas about what the parts of the story could represent (they had interesting ideas about racism, people who are apathetic to problems that don't affect them, and intolerance) and wrote a speech from the Little Bunny's perspective.

We watched a Brainpop video that gave a pretty good overview of the Holocaust and looked at some definitions--prejudice, persecution, anti-Semitism, Aryan, ethnicity, Nazis, pogrom, and genocide.

I gave the students two things today. First, I gave them a research proposal half sheet. On that, they will narrow down their research topic (form the too-big Holocaust to something smaller and more manageable) and come up with some research questions or topic categories for it. They'll also write about their overall purpose and their audience. Some of them got a chance to look through some Holocaust materials. They'll continue to do that tomorrow as they look for topics.

Secondly, they got their independent reading stuff. That's a very small (1/3 sheet of paper) reading log that they can use as a book mark and a half sheet about the book they're choosing to read and what they are going to do with that book in order to get credit for reading it. As always, they are to read 30 minutes a night. It should be a very easy part of their grade.

The students did make a trip to the library to return and get books today.

In fact (and let's keep this a secret between me and you blog-reading parents), if your student just wants to read the book and make sure the reading log is filled out correctly, I will have no problem with that. The ultimate goal is reading, and if I'm seeing reading taking place, I'll be happy and have no problems giving them their points for the independent reading grade. So, blog-reading parent students only--read, show me your reading log every day, and don't tell anybody. We'll let those students who didn't bother sharing my blog address with their parents do the book reports.

Monday on Tuesday

Quick note: You can expect a lot more belated blog entries for a while. If I don't get to it during the day some time (yesterday, I was busy with finalizing those grades), I likely won't write until the next day. I'll do my best to write each day, but with softball starting and chess team activities still going on, it might be difficult some days.

Yesterday, we did some more research review stuff. I swear that we're starting actual Holocaust-related things Tuesday. The students completed a worksheet using the textbook. They also took their benchmark assessment on research which should have been very easy for them.

I also gave the students a grade reflection sheet for the third nine weeks. I'm going to look those over, add a few things, and give it to them to show parents Wednesday.

Hopefully, I'll have a Tuesday entry later today.

Friday

Gosh, I'm tired. And it's strange that I'd be tired since Mitch Daniels and a lot of the Indiana congress people keep telling me that I don't really do anything.

Today's vocabulary word parts:

sol means "alone" like solo, solitary, and the game Solitaire
fic means "to make" like fiction, specific, and personification
surg means "rise" like surge, resurgence, and insurgence
gram means "writing" like with telegrams and epigrams. And pangrams, a sentence that contains every single letter of the alphabet. (The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.)
potent means "power" like potency, potentate, and omnipotent
and the suffix -i means "plural" like octopi, nuclei, and fungi

Speaking of which, I've always considered myself to be a fungi. Fun guy. . .get it?

We spent a lot of the period with a review activity and our textbook. We looked again at the research project steps, reviewing things like taking notes on note cards, paraphrasing to avoid plagiarizing, parenthetical citation of sources, bibliographies, and the difference between primary and secondary sources.

My first class read Terrible Things, a children's Holocaust allegory by Eve Bunting. There wasn't much time to discuss it, so we'll finish up with that on Monday before diving headfirst into the Holocaust stuff. My other two classes will read and discuss that on Monday.

Have a lovely weekend! I'll be spending most of it figuring out my students' grades. If you have any questions about those, give me a call or send me an email.

Thursday 3/10

Yes, we've pushed the research stuff back another day. I'm ready to go, but I was missing some band students today and just didn't feel like starting things.

I forgot to mention the word parts we went over yesterday, so here's a list of those with the ones we went over today:

jus means "law" like with justice and unjust
lum means "light" like with luminous and bioluminescence
annu (also anni and enni) means "year" like annual and anniversary
mob means "move" like an automobile or mobile phone
rogat means "ask" like interrogative sentences or a surrogate
parl means "speak" like parliament (or parliamentary procedure) and parlance
cant means "sing" like an incantation or a canticle
apo means "away" like an apogee, an apology, or an apostle
sen means "old" like senile and senior
andro means "man" like an android or polyandry
gyn means "woman" like gynecologist or a misogynist

We went over appositives in greater detail and looked at a practice worksheet. We also took our vocabulary quiz (the students said it was more difficult than Tuesday's test; 48% of the students in my first class got an A on that first one, by the way) and had some time to work on things.

We will review research stuff and start looking at the Holocaust tomorrow. I promise!

Wednesday

Well, I intended on starting the Holocaust unit today. I just didn't feel ready, and I am running to the public library (downtown and Wayne Township branches) this afternoon to get some materials for the students to use on their research. Unfortunately, I just found out that a bunch of my students will be out of class tomorrow for some band rehearsing which means I might have to put it off at least in that class for another day.

We graded yesterday's vocabulary test, so the students know what they got. The scores aren't bad on this one, and there were a lot of 90%+'s which made me happy. Tomorrow will be another 50-point vocab. review test. Remember, that vocabulary chain assignment is due by the end of the week.

We reviewed our sentence combining and took a very short quiz. I also introduced another sentence-combining tool for their writing toolboxes--the appositive. They're tricky at first, but once the students get comfortable with them, they can really help their writing fluency.

Book reports due by Friday! As I'm getting more and more make-up work, I'm seeing those grades go up and up. Hopefully, this last little piece of the grade puzzle will put them where they need to be.

Tuesday

Quick reminder: Friday's the big day. Check the last blog entry for the stuff I need from my students this week, including the book report. That book report will be a big chunk of their independent reading grade for this nine weeks.

We did some sentence combination practice today, both together and individually. I think we're ready to move from compound and complex sentences to another sentence combining technique--appositives.

Vocabulary test one (50 word parts) was given today. Some of the students seemed pretty confident about this one. I hope they did well!

A lot of the class time was used for work time. It was a great opportunity to get some things finished up, to work on book reports, or to ask me about missing work. I wish more students would have taken advantage of it.

Big big Holocaust unit starts tomorrow. This will involve a lot of work, including some research.

Monday

Because of what can only be described as a crippling depression, I did not post anything Thursday or Friday. Sorry for the inconvenience.

While I'm thinking about it--if anybody would like to buy me a mini-van, let me know.

Here's what is due by the end of this week:
>>> all make-up work (obviously, since this is the end of the nine weeks)
>>> a book report on the 2nd book the students read this nine weeks (they got a half sheet about this today)
>>> the vocabulary "chain" assignment (preferably, they should do that by tomorrow since the first of four vocabulary review quizzes is tomorrow)
>>> the "The Tell-Tale Heart" writing (we started it last week; they should be done by tomorrow, but if they're not, I'll accept them until Friday)

We reviewed sentences (compound, complex, etc.) today since it had been a while. We'll continue to work with that this week. There will be some grammar stuff on the next round of ISTEP, so we have a lot to cover before then.

Let me know if you have any questions as we end this nine weeks.

Wednesday

As promised, there's not a whole lot going on this week. We're reviewing vocabulary with some little game-type things and continuing to focus on ISTEP.

Reminder: The students have a vocabulary assignment (a word chain!) that is due some time next week. Next week, they will have a 25 word part test Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. If they do their chain before Tuesday, it'll be a good review activity for them. I'd strongly recommend they spend a little bit of time every night with their old word parts.

We went over the Howard Hughes constructed responses, and I gave back two extended responses, one which they wrote last week (I think--the one about "reading") and one that they wrote all the way back in November. I think a lot of the kids saw improvement which is good since that's exactly what we're shooting for.

Speaking of ISTEP, they had their big 55 minute writing today. The group I was with didn't do great on it, and I was heartbroken and irritated. As the day went on and I talked to more and more of my students, I grew a little more optimistic though. From what they tell me, it seems they maybe did pretty well. Either way, I get paid the same.

At least this year. . .

Monday/Tuesday

Tomorrow's the big day--L.A. ISTEP time. The students will be doing a 55 minute ISTEP prompt. Thursday will be their constructed response/extended response day. Despite a whole lot of students failing my class right now, I have to say that I'm 100% confident that every student I have can do well on this thing. We've worked hard on this on-demand writing stuff, and I know they can impress.

We spent some time with our novels the last couple days. We also did some last-minute ISTEP prep stuff. I gave back some older on-demand writings for them to get some feedback on. Yesterday, the students read about Howard Hughes and did some constructed response work (Block Three read about an entomologist instead.), and we'll go over those answers tomorrow.

Vocabulary--they do have an assignment for this week. They're making a vocabulary chain, trying to find things the word parts have in common to link them all together. If they can make a 250 word part vocabulary chain, they will have the new world record. Here's an example:

sacro links to sanct because they both mean "holy"
sanct links to biblio because they can both make places that are quiet (sanctuary/bibliotheca)
biblio links to leg because "books" are "read"
leg links to ocul because you use your "eyes" to "read"
ocul links to spec because you also use your "eyes" to "look"
spec and scope link because they both mean the same thing
scope links to tele because it makes the word telescope
tele also links pathy because it makes the word telepathy
pathy links to son because one is "feeling" and one is "sound," two of the five senses
son links to phone because they both mean "sound"
phone links to caco because it makes the word cacophony, bad or harsh sounds
caco links to eu because they're opposites--"bad" and "good"
eu and bene link because they both mean "good"
bene links to mal as opposites since mal is "bad"
mal links to cide because "killing" is "bad"
cide links to mort because "killing" makes things "dead"
mort links to cad because cad makes cadaver, somebody who is dead
cad links to rupt because when something "falls" it might "break"
rupt links to fract because they both mean "break"
fract links to osteo because a "bone" is something you could break
osteo links to man because you have "bones" in your "hands"
man links to ped because "feet" are like "hands" for the legs
ped links to ambul because you use your "feet" to "walk"

Honestly, I don't know how they'll do with this. It forced me to use my mind to make connections, and I know that making connections is good for learning. If they have trouble making one giant chain, they are allowed to break their chain up and do 10 25-link chains or something like that. They should be asking me, asking each other, or looking the word parts up on the Internet if they don't know or have forgotten some.

Friday, ISTEP Eve

It's not actually ISTEP Eve for 8th graders though. Their testing starts Tuesday. And since Tuesday is only a math test, I don't know if I really even count that either.

By the way, I've said it before and I'll say it again--changing the schedules of your typical middle school student is like changing the feeding times for a monkey. They just go nuts. The two-hour delay turned your sons and daughters into lunatics. Lovable lunatics, sure, but nevertheless, still lunatics.

For what I think might be the last time, I talked about constructed responses. I used a couple analogies (dirty windows and toilet paper) to keep the important (but easy) things they need to remember about doing well on constructed responses in their heads. They had a chance to finish (or in some cases, rewrite) their "Ransom of Red Chief" constructed responses which I'll grade over the weekend before determining if they need any more last-minute practice before ISTEP.

We had our vocabulary quiz. It was only 25 questions. I've graded two classes, and I'm not too happy. I really thought this would be a lot easier and that there would be a lot more high scores. And I do have a ton of 92, 96, and 100 percents. Unfortunately, there are a lot in the 20-40 percent range, too. Very few students get C's on these tests. They're either working and paying attention and studying a little bit and getting A's or they're doing next-to-nothing and failing.

These next couple weeks, we're reviewing the word parts from lists 1-10. I didn't want to give them new word parts over ISTEP week because I want their focus to be on impressing the ISTEP people. They do have a sheet with all 250 (can you believe it's that many? wow!) word parts from this school year. Their job is to go through it and circle the ones they need help with.

Make sure they're reading this weekend! I have had a handful of students already finish their book. I gave them the option of reading something else or reading Hunger Games, a book that I've never read but want to find out more about. They're going to fill me in and let me know if I should teach this novel next year.

Have a great weekend!

Belated Thursday Post

Sorry about the lack of blogging yesterday even though I'm pretty sure I just apologized to 1 1/2 people. It slipped my mind. This week has been stuffed with meetings, talks with parents, ISTEP stuff...they had me in three places at one time yesterday.

We reviewed vocabulary some in preparation for our short test Friday.

We did a test prep activity where we broke down a writing prompt using the I-chart. We also looked at paragraph organization, and I stated the importance, once again, of writing at least 5 paragraphs on the ISTEP 6-point rubric prompt.

And we finished the O. Henry story, "The Ransom of Red Chief," after a quick review of the three types of irony. Next week, we'll look at another genre of short story (horror) to see how irony works when the author isn't trying to be funny. The students had three O. Henry constructed responses to do, but two of my classes might not have been able to finish.

Speaking of constructed responses, those are next week on ISTEP. And I'm still concerned that some of my students aren't using the text enough to get a 2 out of 2 on those bad boys. I want them to imagine themselves as cranes, lifting words from what they've read to plop down in their 6-line, 1-paragraph answers. If they do that, they should be successful.

Wednesday

The students have a vocabulary review sheet. There's an assignment for Friday (pictures or "invented" words or a combination for each of the 25 word parts), and a worksheet thing that we'll go over tomorrow.

The vocabulary quiz is Friday. This one is different because it's only going to have the 25 new word parts. That should make it easy for them to study and very easy for them to get a good grade on it.

Tonight's reading focus: style and voice--what kinds of things is the author doing to make the novel fun or interesting to read? We used O. Henry (see below) as an example.

Speaking of O. Henry, a pseudonym, we started a story called "The Ransom of Red Chief" about a 10-year-old boy who is kidnapped by some men wanting 2,000 dollars. It's a hilarious story! No, really. It is, mostly because of O. Henry's style. He uses a lot of irony in his work, so we took some notes on the three different types of irony--verbal, situational, and dramatic. As we read O. Henry's story, we'll look for all three examples.

Tuesday

We had Acuity testing today with the laptops. It took a lot of the students almost the entire time, so I just had them read their novels (which some of the students failed to bring with them) after they were finished Acuitying.

Today's novel focus: conflict
--What is conflict?
--What conflicts do you see in the story you're reading?
--Predict: What conflicts do you think will pop up later?
--Predict: How do you think the conflicts of your novel will be resolved later?

Friday Haiku Entry

Word within a word--
The building blocks of our words.
List ten is complete.

Iso means "equal"
In math, there's isosceles
with two equal sides.

Convert and revert
both contain the word part vert
and that one means "turn"

-ate is a suffix
that makes "cause" verbs like create,
dominate, placate

when you encourage,
you strengthen somebody's heart,
and that's what cor means.

What's the difference
between a prince and princess?
The -ess is female!

What is a mutant?
It's something that means "change."
Hey, muta means change!

Finally, there's fug,
like fugitive or refugee--
A word part that flees.

ISTEP is coming,
But we'll be ready to go
thanks to our practice.

Extended response--
The students wrote an essay
all about reading.

Block 3 did C.R.'s
about Howard Hughes today.
1 and 2 did not.

They looked at sources--
How does a researcher know
If a source is good?

Classes on Tuesday
Are Acuity testing
with trusty laptops.

I hope students read
for at least ninety minutes
this three-day weekend.

Wednesday and Thursday 2/16 and 2/17

Yestersday's word parts:

luqu means "talk" like loquacious ("full of talking") and eloquent and soliquy
sacro means "holy" (just like sanct) like in sacrosanct (holy holy?), sacred, and sacrifice
uni means "one" like the words uniform, unicycle, united, unique, and unibrow
-ness is a suffix that means "quality of" so that happiness is the "quality of being happy" and laziness is why this blog entry wasn't typed up yesterday
alt means "high" (just like acro) like with altitude and alto
-ics is a suffix that means "art" like in the words calisthenics and acrobatics and politics

We'll go over the rest of the words tomorrow.

The students spent Wednesday doing some research on the Chicago fire of 1871 using four sources that I gave them. It's kind of like a quiz. I'm looking at their ability to write down the source information like we've discussed and taking note cards using their paraphrasing skills.

I also introduced twelve books to them. Details about them are below. On Thursday, we made our trip to the library and each student checked out one of those twelve books. They'll do some in-class reading (so bring your book every day!) but I do expect them to spend 20-30 minutes a night reading at home. I gave the students a reading log thing (that's what I named it--Reading Log Thing) where I'm having them focus on one thing each reading day. They need to reflect on the day's focus and answer some questions.

Thursday's reading focus: They're looking at the novel's point of view and the tone of the story. I know--that's two things.

Friday/Weekend's focus (for those who like to think ahead): The protagonist and his/her traits as well as what the protagonist is going to want in the story. All protagonists want things. Conflicts in our novels occur when something is keeping the protagonist from getting what he or she wants.

Here are the novels they picked from:

Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan, a story of a girl whose life is turned upside down when she immigrates to California and has to start working hard instead of living the rich life on a Mexican ranch

The Watsons Go to Birmingham by Christopher Paul Curtis--a story about a family in 1963 that moves from Flint, Michigan to the segregated South

Bud, Not Buddy, also by Curtis--a 10-year old orphan goes on a journey to look for his father

Tangerine by Edward Bloor, a guy with a terrible last name--this is all about Paul, a kid who just wants to play soccer, and the problems when his family moves to Tangerine County in Florida. There's lots of soccer in this one. In case you don't know, soccer is kind of like a sport.

The Young Landlords by Walter Dean Myers--some kids don't like their neighborhood because of an ugly apartment building that makes their street look like a "ghetto dump"; they decide to ask the landlord about fixing up the place and he sells it to them for a dollar. So they're suddenly young landlords which I guess is why the book is called what it is.

I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier--this ones a psychological story that a lot of the students would probably find boring. It's a real thinking book. A kid is riding his bicycle to find his dad. Juxtaposed with those chapters are chapters where he is being interviewed by a psychologist. It's deep stuff.

The Body of Christopher Creed by Carol Plum-Ucci--Torey, the main character, has his life turned upside down when the geeky guy who's always picked on turns up missing. Note: This book does contain some bad language.

Romiette and Julio by Sharon Draper--it's like Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare except it takes place in modern times and is about a young black girl and a Mexican boy who people don't want to be together

Heat by Mike Lupica--it's a baseball book; Michael is a Cuban immigrant in New York City who has all kinds of problems trying to survive with his older brother. All he wants to do is play ball, but things are getting in the way.

The Giver by Lois Lowry--it's a science fiction novel, a lot like Uglies. It's about a futuristic society that has tried to eliminate emotions in order to have a "Sameness"

The Pushcart War by Jean Merrill is the humorous account of a war between fruit and flower vendors in New York City and truck drivers

And The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton is about a guy named Ponyboy. A lot of students have told me that they've already read this one. S.E. Hinton, by the way, wrote this book when she was only 15.

In other news, I think I was bitten by a brown recluse spider last night, and I'm afraid my leg is going to rot off. Stay tuned for further details.

Tuesday, 2/15

Today's word parts:

nat means "born" like in nationality, natural, and native
paleo means "old" like paleontology or paleolithic, a word to describe the oldest people to start using rocks as tools
curs, just like curr from a couple months ago, means "run" like with cursive writing and discursive words
crypt means "hidden" like an encryption or cryptic language
cad means "fall" like a cascade or, more depressingly, a cadaver
capit means "head" like with decapitate (ouch!) or captain (Spanish: capitan)

The students started the day reviewing the ISTEP 6-point rubric and using that to reflect on their own writing. Then, they got the 20-25 minutes (depending on which class) to finish their ISTEP writing from yesterday. After that, they graded a peer's writing with the ISTEP rubric and then graded their own. We talked about the difference between objective and subjective grading. For example, if a student writes in their essay that Lynhurst students should have three hours of language arts a day, a grader shouldn't lower their grade because they disagree. Hopefully, the ISTEP people grade our work objectively.

We scratched the surface of some research review stuff we're going to be doing for the next couple days. The students are using four sources (encyclopedia, website, book, and magazine article) to practice taking notes. The subject is the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, a fire which destroyed 17,450 buildings and cost over 200 million dollars in damage. That's 200 million 1871 dollars! Only (only?) 300 people were killed though.

The students will work with the sources tomorrow and will be graded on taking notes on the note cards properly and keeping track of their source information.

Monday

I promised a student I'd type this first: There is no homework for tomorrow.

We went over six of our word parts:

ped is a weird one because it means two things--"foot" or "child"--Think centipede or pediatrician.

mort is a depressing one because it means "death" like the words mortal and immortal or mortician. Or rigor mortis.

carn is kind of gross because it means "flesh," meaning that if you're a carnivore, you're an eater of flesh. And that makes you kind of creepy.

psyche means "soul" or "mind"; a psychologist examines your mind and a psychic can read it.

ethno means "culture" or "race" like ethnicity.

And gen means "origin" like genesis, ingenuous, and genetics.

The students got their ISTEP work back from last Thursday. A lot of students did very very well, but I know we can do better. Because I'm a big nerd, I did some stat figurin':

82% got a 2 on the first question. 15% got a 1 and 3% got a 0. That's really good. I wish all the questions were answered that well!

Question two was the toughest--Only 33% got a 2 with 63% getting a 1. 4% got a 0.

Question three was kind of in between. There were about the same amount of 2's and 1's with 3% getting a 0.

Students need to work on quoting specific text to back up their ideas. Most of them read and understood; it's just a question of being more clear and specific with our answers.

We looked at the example answers the ISTEP people send us. My students, as always, are harsher graders than they are.

They also got their extended responses back. Those are graded with a 4-point rubric. 21% of my students scored a 4, 49% scored a 3, 25% scored a 2, and 5% got a 1. As I told the students, I'm a tougher grader than ISTEP with extended response.

I gave them another ISTEP writing--a 6-point rubric prompt about school changes. They had some time to work on it today, but they'll have to finish tomorrow.

One last note: I've got the Fever 1793 book reports in, and they really helped out some of the grades. I have some grades to put in the computer tonight, and then the grades should be accurate. As always, let me know if you have questions.

Friday's Class (An All-Haiku Entry)

Vocabulary--
We reviewed and then turned in
Yesterday's worksheet.

Easy, easy grade!
All they had to do was sit
And fill in answers.

Then it was test time.
Students who studied did well.
The others? Not good!

List ten word parts notes--
I think it's an easy list.
But what do I know?

Started a short story--
"The Lady or the Tiger?"
We'll finish Monday.

The weekend is here,
And I'm going to grade stuff
And sleep a whole bunch.

Thursday

I gave the students one more vocabulary review sheet. We did part of it together, but they'll need to finish it at home. If they use that and the worksheet from earlier, it will help them on the test. They will need to bring the worksheet to class tomorrow. We'll go over it together, and then they'll turn it in. If they can't get an A+ on that, I don't know what else I can do for them.

Sixty minutes of today's class was for ISTEP practice. They read about a border collie named Rico and answered three constructed response questions. Then, they read three quotes about dreams from Eleanor Roosevelt, Walt Disney, and the poet William Yeats; chose the quote that is most meaningful to them, and wrote an essay. I'll use the 4-point ISTEP extended response rubric to grade that one.

If they didn't like the nonfiction text about border collies or the essay, they can blame the ISTEP people. This was exactly what the test looked like last year, and they had the same amount of time to finish it up. Some of them learned that they need to pace themselves a little better because they were not able to get done.

I will be grading those this weekend so that we can learn from them early next week.

Reminder: The vocabulary test is tomorrow! I've already got it printed out and everything.

Wednesday

The more I think about it, the more I wish I would have just done my own research paper instead of working with what they were working on in Mr. Day's class. As we started some book research today, I noticed that a lot of students have no idea what their topic for their group even is. A lot of them have topics (sagging pants) that, even though it might seem like an important issue to them, is not going to be easy to research. I was very disappointed in what a lot of students were able to accomplish today because they were struggling with poorly-chosen topics. I may need to reevaluate the final project (the book, brochure, or poster) for my class. I think the experience, at the very least, is a good lesson in the importance of organizing information and starting with a narrow topic. Racism, the topic a lot of them picked in Mr. Day's class, is too big for one research topic. Narrowing it down to current immigration issues and the discrimination of Hispanics is much better.

So to be completely honest with you guys, I'm a little depressed about the research project.

Nevertheless, we did learn some stuff today. We reviewed note cards, and I emphasized the important of those topic categories--those research questions that will help give shape to their overall topics. We visited our favorite media specialist Mrs. East (she's our only one, but she's still our favorite), and she taught us about the book resources that are available. The students started taking some notes and using their bibliography sheets to keep track of their sources.

In the next few weeks, we've really got to dig in and look at ISTEP writing. Did you know that the writing portion of ISTEP is less than three weeks away?

Reminder: Vocabulary quiz is on Friday.

Tuesday

We completed the 2nd half of the vocabulary review sheet. Again, those words are on the test, so it would benefit the students to use that as a tool as they prepare for Friday's test.

We looked at more research stuff. We started by looking at the process, especially the planning part of any research project. I compared it to a vacation because the first steps are to figure out who's going with you on vacation and what purpose the vacation should serve. Will kids be going or is it just a couple married people? Will it be romantic, adventurous, relaxing, or just really far away from your mother-in-law?

Research is the same way. You can't really start without knowing what you want. We looked at narrowing their topic (something they should have already done with Mr. Day) and coming up with topic categories or research questions. This will help them have some focus to their research and hopefully not be overwhelmed with all the information that is out there.

We also looked at how to take notes on note cards. Each note card has three pieces of information: 1) the topic category the note goes with at the top; 2) the note (summarized/paraphrased/appropriately quoted); 3) the source and page number if available

The students had some time with an encyclopedia (I can thank Jiminy Cricket for knowing how to spell that word! Anybody know what I'm talking about here? "Ennnnnn-cyclopedia. E-N-C-Y-C-L-O-P-E-D-I-A.") article about the Declaration of Independence to practice taking notes with topic categories.

Tomorrow, we'll make a trip to the library to do some book research.

Here's a link to the youtube video if you want to hear Jiminy Cricket sing about where to go when you're curious: Encyclopedia song

Second Monday in a Row

Two Mondays in a row. That doesn't happen a lot.

The catICEtrophe (I'm so proud of that one) messed everything up, so here's an updated list of due dates, etc.:

1) The next vocabulary quiz will be this coming Friday.
2) The Fever 1793 book report needs to be turned in some time this week. I've gotten a few; I'd like a lot more.
3) We'll be researching in the library on Wednesday. I don't have a due date for the language arts part (children's book, poster, brochure) of the research project yet.

Today, we did half of a vocabulary review sheet. The words I included on the review sheet are the ones on the test, so this can be a valuable tool for the students as they study this week. We'll do the second half tomorrow and some other activities later in the week to hopefully get those vocabulary scores up.

We spent some time reviewing and practicing our sentence combining. I think the students are finding complex sentences easier than compound sentences. You'd think they would be more...well, complex.

Finally, we took a little quiz with the orange dinkers on paraphrasing. I know it's been a week, but this was a painfully easy quiz. We reviewed paraphrasing, talked about the difference between paraphrasing and summarizing, and looked at a few examples. Tomorrow, the students will practice a little on their own before we get into the heavy duty research stuff.

I finished my progress reports about thirty minutes ago. Sadly, the grades aren't very good at all. If you have any questions, give me a call or send me an email.

Manic Monday

It's that time of the 8th grade school year when language arts teachers are supposed to be working on research papers. Coincidentally (or is it?), Mr. Day's students are working on their PBL which involves a lot of research. Since I'm a fairly lazy guy without my own ideas, I thought it'd be a good idea (Note: it was Mrs. Butler's idea actually; I don't have my own ideas.) to piggyback on that already existing project and cover the research stuff that I need to:

> narrowing topics; coming up with research questions
> keeping track of sources on bibliography sheets
> taking notes with notecards
> paraphrasing
> avoiding paraphrasing
> crediting sources
> good sources vs. bad sources
> bibliography pages

Today, I went over the bibliography sheets, and we spent a lot of time with paraphrasing. Ask your student what it means to paraphrase and why it's so important to learn how to do it well. We also went over what research is (analyzing and synthesizing). Tomorrow, we'll get more into notes and how to know if a source is a good one. On Thursday, we'll spend some time in the library researching from books. Not the Internet. Books.

We also finished up the word parts for this group. Ask your student what the following mean:

-ine like in porcine and feminine
-ar like in stellar and circular
platy like in plateau and platypus and plate
fin like in final and infinitesimal (or infinite if you want to be less fancy)
The mathy hedron like in polyhedron and octahedron
ambul like in somnambulism, funambulist, and perambulate
-ous like in glorious, vivacious, and scandalous
And topo like in a topographical map or the word topiary

Finally, we went over our sentence quiz from last week, the one about compound subjects and verbs and compound sentences. The students got those back, and they're out of 20. A 14 would be the lowest score they can get to pass, but a lot of the students were in the 18-19 range on this one. If they missed 3, 4, and 5, by the way, you need to have a talk with them because those answers were on the chalkboard. If they didn't know that, they weren't paying attention a few minutes before the quiz when we were reviewing.

We looked at complex sentences today, too. A complex sentence is made up of an independent clause and a subordinate clause. A subordinate clause is a sentence with a subordinate conjunction (words like because, if, when, after, before, since, while, that) added to the front of it. We did some practice sentences and will do some more tomorrow.

Man, that looks like a busy day! More busy-ness tomorrow unless we're all devoured by the approaching ice monsters the meteorologist keep talking about.

Wednesday and Thursday (Two Entries in One!)

If there's going to be a day of the week that I don't write anything here, it'll more than likely be Wednesday. For whatever reason, this blog slips my mind on those days. I'm sorry.

Yesterday and today, we spent a big chunk of time looking at the ISTEP writing rubric. We looked at six actual student ISTEP prompt writings (narrative) and graded them with grade sheets. Then, we talked about what grades we'd give them, and I told them how the ISTEP people scored them and read their thoughts. Most of the students seemed to be harsher than the ISTEP people actually.

I gave them back their "Favorite season" personal narratives and had them grade their own. Then, they compared their grades to the grades that I gave them. We'll practice some ISTEP writing again soon.

Yesterday, we had a grammar quiz (a real one this time) over our sentence combining. As we were reviewing the grammar stuff right before the quiz, I caught a lot of students not paying any attention. That probably won't be good for their quiz scores.

Word parts--hold on tight because here's a bunch of them from the last two days:

sci means "know" like science, conscience, and omniscient narrators
graph means "write" like biography, autograph, polygraph tests, and bibliography
lat means "side" like bilateral agreements and lateral fins on fish
lith means "rock" like paleolithic, neolithic, and megalith
tract means "pull" like a tractor (I had to explain to these city kids what a tractor was), contraction, and attract
in means "in" or "not" like include (close in) and inscribe or insane and insomnia
co means "together) like cooperate, coordinating conjunctions (our FANBOYS), and coauthor
phile means "love" like a philosopher (a lover of wisdom), a bibliophile, and philanthropy
hexa means "6" like a hexahedron (a dice is a hexahedron), a hexagram, and a hexapod
fract means "break" like fracture and infraction. And fractions if you like math.
And theo means "god" like atheism, monotheism, and theomania, a psychological disorder where one believe he is a god

Some students have not turned in their work for the school uniform writings. I will grade those over the weekend, so they need to be turned in by tomorrow.

Tuesday

It's a lovely wintry day outside. We found that out during third block today when we had a fire drill. I hate losing that time, but it was nice to get a breath of fresh air.

We took a sentence quiz today. Only it's not even a real quiz! That's right. I lied to the students. I find that the students will take a grammar activity more seriously if I lie to them and tell them it's a quiz. It was practice with sentence combining, and I'll have some feedback ready for them tomorrow. Later this week, we're going to be adding complex sentences to our sentence combining toolbox.

We went over six of our new word parts today after going over last Friday's test. Here they are:

path means "feeling" like in sympathy and empathy.
a is a prefix that means "not" like in amoral or agraphia, a psychological disorder where people can no longer write.
nomy means "law" like in astronomy (the laws of the stars), economy, and taxonomy.
fid means "faith" like fidelity and infidelity and confidence.
caco means "bad" like cacophony, the antonym for euphony.
hetero means "different" like heterogeneous and heterosexual.

Speaking of the word part test from last Friday...I told the students today that if they don't like their score, they need to do something about it. First, they need to work with the words a lot more. But for their grade, I've told them they need to come up with something they can do with the words they missed that can earn those points back. It might involve drawing a picture, writing the words, making flashcards...something. They need to run their idea by me, and I will tell them whether or not it will work for a little extra credit to make up for points they missed on the test.

We worked on the school uniform article work some more today. We also looked at some propaganda techniques that advertisers and persuasive authors use, a lot which the students can find in commercials they see on the television. Tomorrow, we're going to be reading a really offensive article that uses a lot of the propaganda techniques.

If the students did not finish their school uniform work, they will need to finish that tonight.

Monday

First off, I'd like to apologize for my handwriting on the progress reports that I sent home today. I write like a small child. Not even a regular small child. No, I write like a small child who has broken both of his arms falling out of a hot air balloon. It's not pretty. As always, if you have any questions, please let me know by calling or emailing. Those progress reports need to be signed and returned by Wednesday, by the way. There's some grade information all the way at the bottom of this entry.

We took a quiz on the weekend novel reading. It wasn't a very good quiz, and I'm not proud of it. We discussed some of the stuff that happened in the book very quickly. They will need to finish the novel by Friday. We'll be turning it back in soon because there's another teacher who wants her students to read it.

We spent some time reviewing sentences with compound subjects and verbs and the three ways to make compound sentences. There are a few of my students (a lot of the same ones who have low grades on the progress report I sent home today) who don't believe me when I say that this stuff is important. They aren't paying attention or giving it their best effort. Things will not end well with them.

Finally, we reviewed a lot of the terms from our persuasion unit last semester and started work with two conflicting articles on school uniforms. Students are looking for the authors' use of logos, pathos, and ethos as well as the elaboration techniques (the D.R.A.P.E.S.). They will also be completing three constructed responses over the readings.


The progress reports:

We'll have more writing grades soon. The story was an in-class ISTEP writing graded with their 6-point rubric. The effort on that wasn't great for a lot of the students.

The reading--that's mostly in-class work. Some of the students lose things that they're working on or don't get things finished and turned in. There are really no good excuses for not having an OK "reading" grade.

Indy read covers the at-home reading stuff. It seems that a lot of the students think they can do well in my reading/writing class without doing any reading. I hope this progress report convinces them otherwise.

And the vocabulary...the first grade is just if they took good notes. That should be a 25/25. The quiz from Friday is on there. I have a lot of students getting A's and B's and a lot of students getting very low F's. The more they put into it, the better those grades will be. My recommendation hasn't changed--they need to spend a little time with the word parts every night.

Here's a picture of a cat with something on its head:

Two Hours Less Than a Normal Friday

Shorter classes today. We kept things simple. They had their vocabulary test. I'll have that graded and back to the students on Monday along with some progress reports for them to take home.

We went over the new 25 word parts--List 9. I think it's an easy list this time.

And if they finished their test early, they got some time to read. They need to get to page 209 by Monday. We should finish the book on Wednesday.

Have a great weekend. Try to stay warm!

There's Snow Messin' Around on Thursdays in My Class!

Just in case there's another almond mishap later (or somebody tries to kill me because of that terrible pun up there, one that I stole from the CNN Kids News guy we watch in some Lynhurst homerooms every morning), I thought I'd get the blog entry finished early.

We had a short quiz over chapters 18-20 in Fever 1793. The grandfather dies after a fight with some robbers in these chapters. Matilda is left alone after burying her grandfather. There's a little girl with a broken doll. So much excitement, action, and emotion in these chapters! If they didn't do well on today's quiz, there's one explanation--they aren't reading. And that makes me as sad as a girl with a broken doll.

We reviewed more word parts today. Today I actually used the words (without telling them) that are on tomorrow's test. Hopefully, that will help. They should spend some time studying tonight! By the way, my third block class was not cooperating as we reviewed the word parts. I was tired of talking over them and decided to just start them on their other work. They, I guess, can study the word parts on their own.

We finished (maybe) the work with Martin Luther King's speech. Today, they wrote King a letter about what the speech means to them and about whether they think any parts of his "dream" have become a reality today. Hopefully, they were able to make some connections.

Tuesday

Sorry for the late entry. I nearly died after choking on an almond, and with all the excitement, it slipped my mind.

We took a very short quiz over the weekend's reading. There was one question--what happened in the book during the part you read over the weekend. If they missed that one, they didn't do their reading.

We reviewed some of our older word parts. The quiz is still Friday.

Finally, we looked at Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. We looked at the context of his speech--what was going on in America--before breaking the speech apart paragraph by paragraph. We did some highlighting and summarizing. Thursday, we'll write letters to Martin Luther King about what the speech means to us and whether or not we think his dream has come true.

There is no class tomorrow because of a field trip to Ben Davis University. BDU is awesome, so make sure you ask your child about our trip tomorrow night. I don't think I'll have a blog entry tomorrow.

The End of Another Week

With every week that passes, I'm reminded at how much closer high school is approaching. And that worries me when I think of some of my students. With the effort some of my students are giving me, I don't think they'll be ready. Others are working hard and doing very very well though.

Vocabulary review--short and sweet. Reminder: Their invention words are due Tuesday. Some of them will forget and have to turn them in Wednesday.

Sentence review--we reviewed the stuff we talked about earlier in the week and went over the practice they did for homework. They also worked on another half sheet of sentence combining practice.

We took a very short and very easy Fever quiz and discussed what we'd read in the last few chapters. There's some gross stuff in that book. They need to read to page 130 by Tuesday.

Grade explanation:

The Frost poem, the Fever half sheet for chapters 1-4, and the sentence combining worksheet were all homework things. The WwW notes and the Plague chapter one work were in-class assignments. The quizzes were from the reading. There's been nothing difficult so far this semester, and no student should have a low grade at this point. If your student does, it's simply because he or she has not done the work.

Thanks for reading. Have a great three-day weekend!

Thursday's Class

We spent some time reviewing our vocabulary word parts from List 8. I also gave the students an assignment--they have to make 25 new inventions for the word parts. They need to name their invention (with the word part in the name) and write a brief description of what the invention does. Hopefully, what the invention does will have something to do with the word part's meaning. You want an example?

A Sensomatic 5000 (because inventions sound cooler when they have numbers after them) is a thing you wear on your head. It will start vibrating to let you know when somebody is about to TOUCH you.

Ok, that's dorky. But doing this will help the word parts stick in their heads. I hope.

Oh, important announcement: I'm moving the next vocab test to next Friday instead of next Wednesday.

We had some discussion over the novel and the nonfiction text we read earlier in the week. Things are getting good in Yellow 1793! New conflicts are popping up, and we're really getting a chance to see what our characters are made of! The students answer three constructed response questions, and they graded a peer's C.R. using the ISTEP rubric.

I collected the grammar homework. We'll review the sentence stuff from yesterday on Friday.

1/12/11

I'm so glad that SNOWPOCALYPSE 2011 didn't take away any of my class time. And I bet the students feel the same way!

We spent most of our time today with grammar, something I'm sure the students were also glad about. We started to look at sentence types and sentence combining. It's important for three reasons:

1) The state of Indiana tells me I have to teach it
2) There are ISTEP questions every single year on it
3) It can help them with their writing style, giving them an idea how to write with more variety and fluency

I care most about #3. Today, we looked at fragments, run-ons/comma-splices, sentences with compound subjects and verbs, and compound sentences. There are only three ways to make a compound sentence: a semicolon, a comma and coordinating conjunction, or a connective adverb with a semicolon.

There is a worksheet that is due tomorrow. They had some time to work on it in class, but most of the students had some to work on at home. Look over it with them and have them explain what they're doing, even if you already know. Having them reteach what they learned is a great way to get it stuck in their heads.

We also had some time to look at constructed response. I showed them lots of examples of 2-point constructed responses that they had written (over the Robert Frost poem from last week) and we talked about what they need to do to get that 2 out of 2. Almost all of them just need to use the text. I've said that many times before, and they'll hear it many times from now until ISTEP.

Fever 1793 reading: They only have to read one chapter (chapter 9) tonight. I told them to focus on forming opinions and making inferences as they read this chapter. Looking at quiz scores, it seems that a lot of students are not caught up with the reading despite our really slow pace.

My spell checker tells me that SNOWPOCALYPSE isn't a word. Neither is ISTEP apparently.

Tuesday's Class

Due today: Chapters 5 and 6 of Fever 1793. And yes, there was a very easy 10-question quiz.

We started the day with MAZE testing. I don't remember what MAZE stands for, but I think it's an acronym. It's a very short standardized test that involves some reading and choosing of right words. Stress free. They took the test during the first semester, and I believe the school will make me do it one more time before the end of the year.

We went over the rest of our vocabulary word parts for List 8. Our next test, by the way, isn't going to be until next Wednesday. That'll give them some extra nights to study and me some extra time to review in class. Here were today's word parts:

tact like in the words contact and tactile. What do you think it means, parents?
voc like in vocals, invocation (a prayer), convocation, and vociferously (adverb meaning "in a loud, boisterous way")...Can you guess what that word part means?
rid like in ridicule, ridiculous, and riddle. And speaking of riddles, what is brown and sticky? Ask you students for the answer. Also, ask them what the word part rid means.
nym like in acronym (used up there), pseudonym, and homonym. Can you guess this one?
meta like in metamorphisis (remember that "morph" means "shape") and metabolism (what changes our food into energy). How about that one, parents?
Finally, oid like in the word humanoid or xyloid. Xyloid is an adjective that means "resembling wood" and bigfoot would be a humanoid, not quite a human but looking like one.

Ask your son or daughter what the word parts mean if you're having problems. They learned them today while making fun of my artwork.

After the novel quiz (very easy), the students finished reading chapter one of An American Plague and did some work searching for sensory details the nonfiction author used, things that remind them of what's going on in the novel, possible causes for the rapid spread of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia, and signs that something was wrong in the summer of 1793 in our nation's temporary capital.

I'm putting grades on the computer tonight. I'll explain exactly what those mean in tomorrow's blog entry. Until then, try to survive the snowpocalypse that is going on outside right now!

Late Monday Entry

Not the best of days today. I don't like it when I work much harder than my students.

I gave the students a pretest thingy over sentence combining and using compound sentences, complex sentences, and sentences with compound parts. We'll start hitting that bit of grammar really hard in the next couple weeks. It's been on ISTEP traditionally, and it's also something that can help them with their writing fluency. Whenever I can kill two birds with one stone, I do it!

Word parts for today:

ocul means "eye" and is used in the word binoculars.
cur means "care for" and is used in words like cure and curator.
ultra means "beyond" and is used in words like ultraconservative and ultraviolet.
gest means "carry" like in gestation, digestion, and ingestion.
And apt means "fit" like, well, apt. And aptitude.

We discussed the first four chapters of Fever 1793 and turned in the half sheet that my substitute gave them on Friday. Some of them aren't reading and are going to find it difficult to pass this nine weeks. They need to read chapters 5 and 6 tonight, and there will be a short quiz tomorrow.

Students started reading chapter one from a book called The American Plague. This nonfiction text will give them some more historical context from the novel. They looked at the nonfiction author's use of imagery and good diction to create mood and experience just like a fiction writer would. They're also working hard at making connections between the nonfiction text and the historical fiction novel.

And in case I've not made it clear earlier, I would never ever do anything to hurt a bird.