Labor Day Weekend

I hope you're enjoying your 3-day weekend. I went to the movies yesterday (A Walk in the Woods), but then spent the rest of the day sneezing - not fun. I'm still not feeling well, but at least the Aggies, the Irish, and the Texas Rangers all won yesterday.

In our first two weeks together, we have focused on ways of analyzing text, focusing on The Giver and our 2nd book of choice from the Summer Reading Assignment. We specifically practiced ways of responding to important passages from the text:

• Put the passage in context (tell what's going on when this passage occurs)
• Explain the passage (paraphrase it into other words)
• Show the significance of the passage (what makes it important)
• Connect the passage to a similar experience from another work of literature (what does it remind us of)

We also talked about ways to select which passages to analyze, based on importance. The passage should be something surprising... something unexpected... something plot-changing... an "aha" moment.

In addition to responding to literature, we wrote our first personal narrative of the year, a prelude to next week's 3 Week Assessment, which will also be a personal narrative.

In the area of grammar, we are learning to identify prepositions and the prepositional phrases they start. We have done many practice sentences together, as well as a Group Practice (with corrections) and an Individual Practice (with corrections). Next week we will review prepositions and then take a test over them. The test will be formatted just like the Group and Individual Practices.

Next week also will include our introduction to poetry.

So rest up. Have fun. READ something!

See you Tuesday.