Great job, students, on your endurance and focus to do your best on the ISAT this past week.

Genesis: In reading, we continued our word stem study and reading workshop.  We practiced inferencing skills through the reading and discussion of a riddle poem, “Metaphors.”  We also reviewed Socratic circle discussion strategies and read “Money Makes Cares,” a tale from China, to review these.  In writing, students worked on narrative drafting with showing details, run-on sentence correcting and editing.  They each had writing conferences to discuss revisions for their science fiction drafts.

Legacy: In reading workshop, students compiled a list of science fiction genre features.  They journaled on their current ethical, moral, and philosophical questions (which will inform their future science fiction drafts in writing workshop).  We held a fiction writers’ group to complete a craft study on our one-pagers “on details.”  The level of students’ interpretation and analysis was high and helpful to all authors.  Well done, Legacy!

Explorers: We reviewed ISAT reader response strategies (inferencing, investigating an author’s viewpoint on his/her subject) and narrative writing strategies (conciseness, use of dialogue and showing details).  We discussed Fahrenheit 451 in small groups and assessed our understanding of the novel.  A skill that students are working on is the use of fix-it comprehension strategies when encountering unfamiliar literary allusions (references).  We held our poetry celebration with readings and dedications of students’ patron poets, who included: Linda Pastan, Charles Bernstein, C.K. Williams, Robinson Jeffers, Frank O’Hara, Philip Larkin, Edward Lear, Kim Addonizio, Wendy Cope, X.J. Kennedy, Gertrude Stein, and Naomi Shihab Nye.  After a student envisioned the “censorship genre,” we compiled a list of features of the genre and applied our collection to both Fahrenheit 451 and Ha Jin’s “A Bad Joke.”

Genesis: Persuasive essay rewrites due and Caesar’s 4 quiz on 3/16.

Legacy: Graduation speech drafts due and SAT quiz on 3/16.

Explorers: Bring F451 and flash drive to class next week.