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.