Students should complete their practice essay- which they started in class- and submit the completed essay on the next day we have school.  Their essay should prove the statement “Lois Lowry makes masterful use of suspense in Number the Stars.”  In class, we went over how they should set up their T chart to organize their ideas, and we went over how to turn that T chart into their well written paragraph.  This will be a test grade.

A, B, and D block also received back their spelling and vocabulary tests and should complete corrections for all their errors.  Words that were spelled wrong are circled and should be written correctly five times.  Definitions that were matched incorrectly have the letter circled.  For these, students should write both the word AND its definition three times.  This will help them better know the words when they see them again on a cumulative spelling and vocabulary test in the near future.   C block will receive their tests back on the next day we have school.

Students have been using their blogs to keep a reading response journal about the book Number the Stars.  All blogs are listed to the right of this post under the owl.  Feel free to visit your student’s blog and see how they have been doing with their predictions.  They can give you the password that will allow you to gain access.  🙂

We start 2015 in ELA exploring the world of WWII through the historical fiction novel, Number the Stars.  In order to build background knowledge of the historical setting of the book, we watched a video that briefly details the events of this part of history. While reading this story, students will complete a reflection journal on their blogs where they make predictions about each chapter prior to reading it, then reflect on the accuracy of their predictions afterwards.  They will also be assigned a classmate’s blog to read and respond to in comments.  Students should keep in mind the “Posting Guidelines” described in the tab at the top of this blog.

Current Spelling and Vocabulary words related to Number the Stars can be found on Quizlet.com using the link to the left of this blog.  The test on these words will be Thursday, January 22.  The ABC Order and Words in the Words assignment is due tomorrow, January 8, and students should create a Madlibs type story using at least fifteen of the words (placing a blank with the part of speech written under it for each vocab word) by next Thursday, January 15.  As always, assignments should be completed within students’ ELA Composition notebooks.