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.