And We're Back. . .

I love feeling completely rushed on the first day back from a long break. If I could plan better, maybe I could figure out how to not stuff too much into one class period, but that always seems to be what I do. Better too much than not enough, I guess.

We started off 2011 with a little spelling quiz. It wasn't for a grade in my class, but all the language arts classes had to have a spelling bee to determine who's invited to Thursday's school-wide spelling bee. I gave the kids a few words to spell and will be calling the winners later today.

I gave out the note paper for the next 25 vocabulary word parts, and we went over all the word parts/definitions. We looked specifically at the following:

sed means "sit" like in the words sedentary or supersede (to sit over). There's also an older word, sedan, an old-school device used to carry kings or emperors or somebody else important enough to be carried around by subordinates. Here's a Turkish one:

leg means "read" like in legible and illegible. However, it also seems to mean "law" a lot like in legal and legislative.
anim means "mind" or "soul" like with unanimous, of one mind.

tort means "twist" like distort or contort or torture.

We also looked at the following poem by Robert Frost called, "The Road Not Taken":

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

We looked at the poem on a literal level, a surface-of-the-orange reading, before digging in and looking at the extended metaphor or symbolic meaning. This is poem about decisions in life, and about how the best decisions aren't necessarily the ones that make things easier or that everybody else has made. My students are at a time in their lives where some important decisions will need to be made.

They do have homework tonight: They have a constructed response and some other writing to do about the poem. That'll be the first grade for the second semester.

Finally, I did send home a letter with this blog address and a place for some information to send back to me. I'm just trying to update my phone numbers and emails so that I can reach you parents when I need to.

Note: No Turkish people were harmed in the typing of this blog entry.