Genesis: Class was impacted by NWEA testing and District inservices this week.  We wrapped up our Socratic Circle discussions of “The Parsley Garden” and kept on reading our daily poems out loud.  Students learned a new vocabulary strategy with Ms. Moss.  All were introduced to and discussed the rules and expectations of reading workshop, and we continued reading workshop and reading conferences.  In addition, students completed their in-class essay preassessment, which will be used to guide planning/instruction for their letter-essay, students’ independent reading contract requirement.  We also preassessed part of speech grammar skills for our year’s grammar study.

Legacy and Explorers: Students received pull-out instruction for both reading and writing this week.  Our writing activities this week spanned memoir/autobiographical incident workshop and grammar practice.  We established our classroom norms as a combined group, and also found out about some of the connections we had not yet discovered about ourselves.  In Socratic Circle collaborative discussion, students practiced text analysis and discussed passages from Glen Pourciau’s short story, “Claim.”  In preparation for our novel study of Cry, the Beloved Country, students simulated the system of South African apartheid through an activity where a “privileged minority” possessed the majority of resources and space, and the majority of the population were confined to a limited area of the classroom until they were hired for “jobs” that the “privileged minority” determined.  In addition, students interacted with our new SMART board as a brainstorming/freewriting tool.  We will use the SMART board in myriad ways during our novel unit, which begins next week.

Genesis Reading Blocks 2 and 4: Read at least thirty minutes per day for your independent reading contract.

Legacy Reading Blocks 3 and 4: Read at least thirty minutes per day for your independent reading contract.  Block 4 has Word Cell 10-12 tests on Monday.

Legacy Writing Blocks 3 and 4: None

Explorers Reading Blocks 3 and 4: Read at least thirty minutes per day for your independent reading contract.

Explorers Writing Blocks 3 and 4: Continue polishing your memoir drafts.  If you are at the typing stage, you need to have your work typed this weekend so that you spend class time in conference.  Your memoir is due May 26.