Monday, January 23rd

My apologies for the late blog.  The internet at work would not allow me to post today so I am doing it at home.  I am sure you understand.

First, parents.... please check the blog each day. Check in with your child to make sure that homework is done and they are engaged in learning.  Today many students showed up without homework and notes were sent home to be signed.

We started a new text today about famed worker's rights activist Cesar Chavez.  We focused on the parts of non-fiction and learning new facts about our new activist.  The students are able to make the connections between all the texts and all the activists and how they faced injustice and how they dealt with it.  They are not however reading closely and trying to remember what they read.  They need to take classwork and topics seriously and work hard to use the information and remember it.

We also read a short story called "Two Friends" about two other activists and took an AR test on that as well.

We looked at parts of a speech and then watched America Ferrera's speech from the Woman's Walk on Washington this weekend and talked about how she made the listener pay attention by using repetition and hand movements and by using her voice to make points.  We stopped the speech and talked about key points and how they should start to see a speech as more than an essay, but as a way to persuade people about a topic that they care deeply about.

We did some sharing of essays using the document camera.  We saw some good examples of essays and some that had bad information or were missing information and talked about how to really buckle down and make a strong case using a simple formula.

Finally, I passed back PBA's and we discussed grades and next steps through conferencing.  Three students still have not completed or turned in PBA's that were due before the holidays.

Homework:

• Read 45 minutes - log - only 3.5 weeks left in AR Contest
• Writing: One Opinion Paragraph "Should Cesar have quit school after eighth grade to help his family?"
• Reading Comp (4 questions)