Sheltered Period Five: Characterization Presentations!

Today, we finished our characterization charts and presented them to the class.

Homework is to revise your mood "quote sandwich" paragraphs.

-Mrs. L.

Theme and Symbolism

Happy Monday everyone! I don't know about you, but this is what I felt like doing when my alarm went off this morning:

Today in class, we talked about theme and symbols. Pairs identified symbols and thematic concepts in the poem "Wild Asters" by Sara Teasdale:

In the spring I asked the daisies
  If his words were true,
And the clever, clear-eyed daisies
  Always knew.

Now the fields are brown and barren,
  Bitter autumn blows,
And of all the stupid asters
  Not one knows.

Homework is to write a half-page response in your journal to answer these questions:

o   How can a person know what is most important to focus on in life? What might happen if someone focuses on the wrong thing? 

-Mrs. L.

Back to School Night!

Hey Parents,

I hope to see you all at Back to School Night tonight!

-Mrs. L.

Sheltered Fifth Period: Characterization and Peer Feedback

Today, we looked at the mood paragraphs of a partner, and circled and labelled for:
1. Context
2. Quote
3. Commentary
4. Signal Phrase

We also talked about what characterization is:
It can be direct or indirect
There are 5 elements:
1. Appearance
2. Speech to Others
3. Inner Thoughts
4. Actions
5. Others' Reactions

We practiced talking about these elements by looking at Belle from "Beauty and the Beast" in the scene below.

Homework is to read through the bottom of page 4, and look for new words, literary devices, and make predictions.

-Mrs. L.

Characterization

Today we looked at the five elements of characterization:
1. Appearance
2. Speech to Others
3. Inner Thoughts
4. Actions
5. Others' Reactions

Groups worked on creating characterization charts for M. Loisel, Mme. Loisel, or Mme. Forestier from "The Necklace."

Homework: revise your mood paragraphs if I specifically asked you to. Otherwise, no homework, and see you tomorrow!

Sheltered Fifth Period: Last Friday and this Week So Far

I'm a little behind on these posts, so here's the catch-up!

We have continued to read through "A Sound of Thunder," annotating for:
1) New words
2) Literary terms
3) Making predictions

We also discussed the elements of plot, which look like this:

We have also started working on paragraph writing, using the "quote sandwich" method:

Homework due Thursday is to write a "quote sandwich" paragraph about the mood of "A Sound of Thunder" so far. You should decide what you think the mood is (scary, worried, adventurous, etc), then select a quote as evidence, and then write your quote sandwich paragraph as we outlined in class.

-Mrs. L.

"Evaluation" and the New Story!

I loved seeing all the paragraph revisions these past two days- you all seem to have really given a lot of thought to the feedback you received, and put it into practice by making some really strong revisions. Keep in mind that these revisions are a great example of one of the most important pieces of the writing practice! We'll continue to revise our work all year, to move toward that goal of mastery that we discussed at the beginning of school.

We also watched some video clips, and did some thinking at the highest level of Bloom's taxonomy, which is "evaluation." Those levels are:
Evaluation
Synthesis
Analysis
Application
Comprehension
Knowledge

If you want to watch the video clips again, you can check them out below.

Homework is to read through page seven in "The Necklace" and to create three double-entry journals in your notebooks for the reading so far.

(The Simpsons one can be found here.... beware of spam/viruses/popups though!)

-Mrs. L.