Genesis: Reading Workshop–Students practiced multiple active reading strategies simultaneously with reader response logs during independent reading. Three of these logs are due on the Friday of each week. Writing Workshop–Students practiced revising text for connotation through an activity focusing on how authors depict character through action. They additionally explored characterization through an activity that helped them analyze character and action through adjective character traits. We concluded the week with grammar practice and a story starter from an edited excerpt of David Sedaris’s “SantaLand Diaries.”

Legacy: Reading Workshop–Students practiced purposeful connecting and visualizing strategies during reading workshop. Writing Workshop–We focused on transitions in editorials and individual conferencing regarding students’ editorial wikis. We continued our work on characterization using contemporary art images to explore narrative writing. Students interpreted and evaluated works with a special focus on Edward Hopper. Study of these paintings resulted in individual narrative drafts and group narrative monologues. We began SAT vocabulary. Our first exam is Tuesday, January 6.

Explorers: Reading/Writing Workshop: Students continued their independent reading and writing. We focused on transitions in editorials and individual conferencing regarding students’ editorial wikis. We continued our work on characterization using contemporary art images to explore narrative writing. Students interpreted and evaluated works with a special focus on Edward Hopper. Study of these paintings resulted in individual narrative drafts and group narrative monologues. We began SAT vocabulary and assessed Lesson 1.

Homework over Winter Break for All Classes: Independent reading and writing. Use your writer’s journals to reflect on snippets of stories, images, and conversations from break. I found this excerpt from the journals of poet William Stafford for you to smile about in recognition as you get into the reading zone!

The Trouble with Reading

When goats like a book, the whole book is gone,
and the meaning has to go find an author again.
But when we read, it’s just print–deciphering,
like frost on a window; we learn the meaning
but lose what the frost is, and all that world
pressed so desperately behind.

So some time let’s discover how the ink
feels, to be clutching all that eternity onto
page after page. But maybe it is better not
to know; ignorance, that wide country,
rewards you just to accept it. You plunge;
it holds you. And you become a rich darkness.