Thursday, January 26/12

Give yourselves a hand!!

Today was a day to celebrate! This was our last class together so we had a celebration breakfast. Everyone helped prepare …

Great waffles ala Noah!

Jennifer’s speciality -  scrambled eggs!!

Anita & Nick on toast and fruit and dishes!!!

Oh … I did the bacon.

Very yummy! Thanks for being such great workers.

I want to thank you all for working hard and being so respectful this semester. I really enjoyed working with you and will miss our morning classes. I hope you take some of the literacy skills we worked on and use them in your classes next semester. I know you will all work hard and do well. Stay in touch!!

Mrs. P

Wednesday, January 25/12

What’s the Reward?????

Well …….. the reward for having spent time doing REWARDS this semester is that we should have better skills for figuring out challenging words (and how to spell them!) Remember the steps:

• Look for prefixes and suffixes
• Look for vowels (every word part will have a vowel)
• Put the word parts together
• Voila!!! A new word!!!

Try to remember this method in the future and it will be very helpful as you learn new vocabulary.

Tomorrow is our last class together. We will celebrate our semester by preparing and enjoying breakfast together.  Bring you appetites!!!

 

Tuesday, January 24/12

The Gentle Barn … home of Ellen’s cow “Holy!”

This morning we had a “review.” We worked with an article based on a teen who volunteers at The Gentle Barn – a home for abused animals. You had BEFORE READING, DURING READING & AFTER READING activities. Then you finished up with a comprehension quiz. Hopefully you were able to use some of the reading strategies we’ve been practicing this semester.

Tomorrow we will do REWARDS 15 . Whew, we made it!

Celebration breakfast on Thursday!

Monday, January 23/12

Essay writing …

This morning we edited and finished up our persuasive essays on the subject of “When, if ever,  lying is acceptable.” This has been a valuable exercise on how to organize our thoughts and put them on paper. Gppd work.

Be sure to finish up any assignments that are due this week.

Last week of class for us. : (

Friday, January 20/12

Who’s who???

Readers’ Theatre today and we did a short play based on the TV show above.  Great job AND great job answering the INFERENCING questions after we finished the reading.

We continue to tie up loose end with outstanding class projects. One week left! Have a great weekend!!

Wednesday, January 18/12

Heavy Reading???

That is quite a stack of books! Note they are all science textbooks and we have had/will have science textbooks to deal with in high school. We also know that we can sometimes struggle with the content … difficult terms can throw us off. A good reason to focus on improving our strategies for figuring out new, difficult words. That is what we are doing as we work with the REWARDS program. Today we finished Lesson 14 which contained reading from a science book. good work.

Remember … tomorrow your Family Life Scrapbooks are due. Put the finishing touches on these tonight. I will be anxious to see them tomorrow.

Tuesday, January 17

Use you time wisely …

We are nearing the end of the semester and those project due dates are getting closer. (like Thursday!!!)  We need to be making good use of our time so we don’t let things pile up too much.

Today we worked on our Persuasive Essay … writing our “hook” and “thesis” in preparation for putting our opening paragraph together. Good job on coming up with a hook that will grab your readers’ attention right away.

We also allotted time for project work  as we are trying to be sure we are meeting deadlines.

Friday, January 13/12

Wow … small group today but we accomplished lots of great work. We continued to work on our upcoming major assignments. Be sure to spend some time on the weekend working on these. Don’t leave it until the last minute!!!

Thursday, January 12/12

When is it due?

That is a question we need to be asking ourselves this week. We are nearing the end of the semester and several projects are coming due. No time to waste or lose. Be sure you are clear about what assignments you have left to complete and when they are to be handed in. Stay on top of your work!

That being said, we took today to work on scrapbooks, projects etc. We need the extra push to the finish line. You will all probably need to spend time on the weekend completing things.

Wednesday, January 11/12

Today we spent our entire class on REWARDS – Lesson 13. This was a longer lesson than usual as it involved sentence and passage reading. The goal of the REWARDS program is to help us learn skills/strategies in how to figure out those longer words we don’t know.They will trip us up if we come across them when we are reading more challenging text. We especially run into words like these  in textbooks for many of our courses – Geography, Law, Science etc. In doing this,  we are working to improve our Content Area Literacy.

By the way, you all did great today. I was pleased with your ability to figure out all the new vocabulary. Back to essay writing tomorrow.