Week of September 20-24

This week was a bit crazy, due to a late start on Tuesday and a half day on Thursday. Regardless of that, we got a lot done! We got into groups and had fun making videos for "The Lottery" vocabulary words. Continuing in the same vein, we tried using Glogster to make posters for what our version of "The Lottery" movie would be like. Unfortunately, it seems that the school's computers aren't too keen on Glogster, causing us a multitude of problems. Ms. Nickow gave us an option to make an actual poster if Glogster wasn't working. On Friday, we had our vocabulary tests on "The Lottery" and root words. After a hectic week at school, everyone was excited for the weekend!

Week of September 13 -17

This week we focused mainly on a story titled "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. The story begins with a small village, of about 300 people, and every June 27th the same tradition will be held. What this tradition holds? A wooden box, a black mark, and one death.
On Monday, we talked about each classmate's article, or idea, of a connection to The Lottery. For homework we were assigned to pick one paragraph from a critique's article of The Lottery that we found most interesting. The next day, we did an activity that let each person share their paragraph and the others would have 1 minute to explain why the person chose that paragraph separately. Later in the week we discussed some words from The lottery, that we were unfamiliar with.
Apart from The Lottery, we learned, or recapped, on the 3 types of irony (Verbal, Dramatic, and Situational). We also took a look at some prefixes and suffixes such as per, co, trans, and plex.

This week began as we turned in our Venn Diagrams about our villains and how they compare to Zaroff, the main villain in The Most Dangerous Game. We then proceeded to write a paragraph on our villains and why they are villains. While we did this, we did two interesting things in class. First, we learned about what makes a good paragraph, to help us along with our villain paragraphs. Second, we read the shortest story ever; "For sale. Baby Shoes. Never worn", and got into a great class discussion about weather or not this is a story. We even extended this story into our own. Then on Friday, we read The Lottery, a chilling story about a town whose tradition was to kill someone every year.

Picture for week of August 30 - September 3

For our discussion of "Most Dangerous Game", we tried an activity called penny for your thoughts.  Each student got three pennies to use throughout the discussion.  We were encouraged to use at least two pennies, but could use no more than three.  It was difficult because we really had to think about when the best times were to contribute.

Week of August 30 - September 3

Our week began with introductions to the characters in our classroom.  We each created a collage about our setting, motivation, favorites and words that others would use to describe us.  It was great to get to know unique and suprising things about each other.  After reading "Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell, we gave a penny for our thoughts during class discussion.  We each had three pennies and had to think about when we wanted to use them to share our ideas or to respond to another student.  The conversation was going so well that Ms. Nickow had to stop us because class was going to end!  On Friday we visited the Fremd Media Center to hear about some great books and choose one for our independent reading projects (if we didn't already have one).