April 7: In RTI (half-hour period Wednesday morning) all of the students were working on the homework of the week article, "Presidential Pets and Kids." We will finish this one next Wednesday morning in class. We are up to the beginning of chapter 6 in Anne of Green Gables.
March 27: This week's homework (due April 3) is "Driving Through Time." Today we are beginning Anne of Green Gables. Click here for a few vocabulary words and questions on the first few pages.
March 20: This week's homework (due March 27) is "Yo-Yos are Forever."
March 13: This week's homework (due March 20) is entitled "Life in the Comics." Today we will begin a short story by Bel Kaufman entitled "Sunday in the Park." Click the short story title for the text and questions. Click here for a short exercise on sentence combining.
February 27: This week's homework (due Friday, March 3--before March Break) is "Triathlon."
February 20: This week's homework (due Monday, February 27) is "What's it Like to Live in China?"
February 15: There will be no homework of the week sheet this week. Today we began Kurt Vonnegut's short story, "The Lie." Here are some questions we will be covering in class. We have been doing a lot of work on making predictions, developing inferences (not quite the same thing as predicting), and on the three levels of questioning: literal, inferential, and personal/critical/evaluative. Here are two graphics that we've used in class to help:
February 6: Click here for this week's homework assignment, "The King's Things." It is due February 13. Click here for a practise sheet on inferencing.
January 30: Click here for this week's homework assignment: "A Bridge to a New World."
January 25: Click here for Patrick Waddington's short story, "The Street That Got Mislaid." The questions at the end of the story should be answered by Monday. We spent time in two classes working on them, so most students will have very little left to do. Please make sure that all answers are in complete sentences and that the answer is written in such a way that it is clear what the question was.
January 16: This week's homework assignment, entitled "Collectors Strike it Rich!", is due Monday, January 23. Do not do the "Write Now" section.
January 10: Click here for an article on offshore drilling. You are being asked to read the article carefully, and then come up with the main idea from each section. Finally, you will write a 1/2 - 3/4 page (more or less) summary of the article in your own words. Make sure to ask questions about unfamiliar words or confusing ideas as you read through the article.
This week's homework assignment is entitled, "Americans Discover TV." Make sure you do the "Write Now" section this time. I will help you get started Wednesday. This homework is due Monday, January 16.
December 23: Merry Christmas!
December 12: This week's homework is "One Cool-Looking Cowhand." It is due Monday, December 19. There will be no homework of the week during the last week before Christmas.
December 6: Today students will begin writing their own fable. The requirements are: 1. It must be short (1/2 page minimum, full page maximum double-spaced); 2. It must use animal characters rather than human; 3. It must contain a moral or lesson (click here for examples). Here is an example of the sort of thing we are attempting: "The Robin's Perch."
December 5: This week's homework is entitled, "Rain-Forest Medicines." It is due Monday, December 12.
November 30: Today we are beginning to look at fables. Click here for a definition. Here is an animated version of "The Tortoise and the Hare."
November 28: This week's homework is "Astronauts Walk on the Moon." Click here for page 1, 2, 3, and 4. It is due Monday, December 5.
November 21: This week's homework is "Long Ago in Timbuktu." It is due Monday, November 28. Click here for a definition of "setting."
November 14: This week's homework is "Giants of the Earth." It is due Tuesday, November 22.
November 7: This week's homework of the week is "Kids Help Pass Safety Laws." It is due November 14.
November 3: Click here for the Simpsons version of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven."
November 2: Today we will work on an article about the right of women to vote in Canada.
October 31: This week's homework is entitled "Quiet Creatures." It is due Monday, November 7.
October 26: We are beginning Isaac Asimov's short story, "The Fun They Had." We will work together to fill in this worksheet.
October 25: Today students will be given their first "homework of the week" assignment, entitled "Rocket Man." They are asked to do all parts except the "Write Now" section at the end of the last page. This assignment is due Monday, October 31. Today we'll begin by looking at two cartoons: The first makes use of the "Mary had a little lamb" nursery rhyme; the second requires some background knowledge of the Noah's ark story. The point is to practise making meaning from all available text features.
October 20: Click here for an article on solar power from NewsELA as well as a couple of questions. We are working on making predictions from text features such as titles, illustrations/diagrams/pictures, and captions. Also, for each article we cover, students are tasked with identifying unfamiliar words and unfamiliar ideas, and then as a group we piece together meaning through such strategies as breaking words into their simpler components (root, prefix, suffix), reading words in context (how is it used in this particular sentence?), and activating prior knowledge (How does what I already know fit or not fit with what I'm reading now?).
October 18: Today we will look at rhyme in Robert Frost's poem, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."
October 17: Take a look at Raymond Souster's "A Man Who Finds That His Son Has Become a Thief." We have been learning about how poems sometimes follow a variety or rules (rhyme patterns, rhythm, stanza length, etc) and sometimes follow almost no rules at all. Our focus with this poem is on the range of emotions felt by the father when confronted by an accusation against his son.
October 3: Click here for an article on the difficulties of recycling.
September 28: Summary of "Charles" due at the beginning of class today.
September 26: Click here for Shirley Jackson's short story, "Charles." Over the next couple of days we'll use "Charles" to learn about the things which go into writing a short story.
September 19: Click here for Robert Currie's poem, "My Poems."
September 15: Today students are writing a paragraph or two about their fictional summer vacation. The end product should be roughly 1/2 to 3/4 of a page, double-spaced. The idea is to write about something that they could have done last summer, with a few creative exaggerations. For instance, maybe they actually did visit PEI, but they probably didn't get asked to perform the lead role in "Mama Mia" at the Confederation Centre in Charlottetown. They could have visited Canada's Wonderland in Toronto, but they probably didn't get stuck on the top of the highest rollercoaster and have to fix it with only a paperclip and a piece of gum. The draft is due Monday.
September 14: Click here for a link explaining the Epic of Gilgamesh, the story of a king from ancient Mesopotamia. We are learning about this, in part, to prompt discussion about how written languages evolve and, in part, simply because it is an interesting story that few students learn about in school.
September 12: Click here for today's handout, entitled "Short Vowels." We will work through this together over the next couple of classes.
September 8: Today we read Alden Nowlan's poem, "An Exchange of Gifts," and began working through an exercise on comma usage.