As we wind down for the Thanksgiving break, we have wrapped up our discussion of the Drama Genre and are moving on to Mystery next week.  We will be reading the novel, Chasing Vermeer, and exploring the real life mystery surrounding the art heist at the local Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.  Students have received the vocab list for this novel and should be completing their ABC Order/Words in the Words assignment tonight.  The test on these words will be Friday, December 5.  A and B blocks have book reviews due tomorrow, and C and D block book reviews are due the following Wednesday.

An email was sent (I think…) with a link to be able to view the recordings of our news broadcast project.  These YouTube videos are set to private so only those who were invited will be able to see them.  However, since I edited the video so that the kids news broadcasts broke into an actual television program, they may not play fully.  I apologize!  We will have these available for viewing at our March parent-teacher conferences if worst comes to worst.

I wish you all a wonderful Turkey Day surrounded by friends and family!  I will be having a dessert of Mars One essays.  As I’ve been telling the kids, 100 essays at 10-15 minutes a piece adds up to 14+ hours of reading!  Students have a week from the time they receive their draft back to fix up their work and submit it for publication on their blog.

This week we have been exploring how different genres address the same topic: witches.  We explored:

a fantasy novel on the subject: The Witches by Roald Dalh

a non-fiction article: The Salem Witch Trials

a drama also about the Salem Witch Trials:  Deliver us From Evil

an excerpt from a historical fiction novel: Witch Child by Celia Rees

a folktale video:  The Three Ravens

Each genre tended to have a different approach to the subject, using a specific voice, tone, or mood to suit its purpose- whether it be to entertain, to describe, or to inform.  Furthermore, historical fiction and non-fiction pieces had very specific times and places for their settings whereas that of the other genres was more general.

To culminate our unit, students are showing their newly learned knowledge of the text features of the drama genre to create a script for an emergency news broadcast about the events of Roald Dahl’s The Witches.  They will be writing their manuscripts in class this week and next and then performing/filming these “news broadcasts” next Friday in class.   Students are encouraged to bring in costume or prop items from home to make their news broadcast more authentic and entertaining.  Bonus points for creativity!

Finally, by Monday afternoon, students should be completing the typing of their Mars One opinion piece drafts on their blogs.  They will receive edits in order to then finalize and publish their writing.