In the spirit of the NCAA Basketball finals, students’ ELA homework this week consists of a Vocabulary Bracket battle which is due Thursday.  Students should put the 8 bulleted words (listed on the upper right corner of the worksheet) in random order to the left of the brackets so that they can face off against each other in pairs.  Students then write a sentence using BOTH words and declare which word seems to be more powerful in the sentence and thus the winner (completely up to the student’s discretion).  They do this for all four pairs, and then two pairs of winners face off again until a winner is declared.

This worksheet is double-sided with the nouns battling on the first side and adjectives from our list battling on the back.  Students who declare the same winner as the majority of the class will receive hillbills.  An example is provided below:

For the last four days in class, students have been working on their “Poetry Magic Books.”  If they did not complete these in class, their job is to put the finishing touches on over the weekend.  This will be a test grade and is due Monday.  Students projects should have:

Cover- A poem about poems (bonus points if they write their own)

Inside Far left “door”-  Their favorite poem, copied correctly and giving the author credit

Center 6 Boxes- definitions of simile, metaphor, alliteration, rhyme scheme, onomatopoeia, personification

Far right “door”- An original poem (their own writing) that has each of the six literary devices from the center section (color-coded and identified)

Hidden “Magic” pages- an example of the six literary devices mentioned earlier from six different authors. Students should copy at least two lines from the poem where they found the example; a minimum of four lines is required for the rhyme scheme example.  For rhyme scheme, students should put the correct letter at the end of each of the lines of the poem to show the rhyme pattern.  We practiced this in class.

All Magic Books should be decorated/ illustrated with color and neatness counts.  Next week they will all present to the class either their favorite poem or their original poem.