Today marked the start of the last grading period for this school year. We have two students that have already earned all of their AR points for this last grading period: Aaron Buchanan and Brooklyn Herbert. Way to get off to a strong start!

Our root word today was mater, which means mother. The three example words we used were matriarchy, maternity, and mater-linear (from social studies).

Everyone reviewed the weekly lesson plans, learning that we have three W-R’s notebook homework entries to do this week. We haven’t had weekly W-R’s notebook homework in a while so Mrs. Scales reminded us that each entry should be about 1/2 of a page long or longer and must be labeled with a big H and the date written.

In class we continued on Day 8 of the Twain WebQuest. Each group is working to produce their presentation for the Kennedy Center. Today was the last amount of class time that will be given to work on the presentation (unless you are in period four – they get an extra day because of the party on Friday).

The last chunk of our literary circle books and the summarizer sheet are due on Friday. We can use our quick write time during this week to do our forum posts.

Today, after being given time to carefully read the lesson plans and blog, we had a pop quiz. This seemed like an appropriate way to end the grading period that has focused so much on reading comprehension. Mrs. Scales explained that we had started the grading period out working on reading comprehension of a classic novel, Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson. Then we moved on to reading comprehension of nonfiction work such as the ISTEP instructions and test questions. We even worked on studying specific and differentiated meanings for words that can sometimes be used interchangeably. Okay, those were some big words to say that we looked at exactly what different vocabulary words used on the ISTEP were actually asking us to do. Finally, we have been doing our Twain WebQuest which in a big part is about reading and comprehending the instructions for each step of the process. We also have read nonfiction information about both the Twain Prize and Mark Twain.

Third period did not have to take the quiz because there is currently no one in the third period class with an F for the grading period.

Fourth period won the AR party and didn’t have to take the quiz or do any of the assignments for the day. For the rest of us, we reviewed the requirements of the final task of the webquest.

By now you have completed all of the first three steps of the webquest and gathered a great deal of information about Mark Twain and the Kennedy Center Twain Prize. You are now ready to write and design your brochure.

Your small publications company has been invited to compete for the contract to write and design a presentation that will be available to Kennedy Center visitors throughout the year. It might be a brochure, a slide/multimedia project, a video, or a web site, but this product will explain why the highest award our country can bestow upon a comedian is named for Mark Twain.

Our root word for today was pac, which means peace and we used the words Pacific, pact, and pacifier as our example words.

Our root word for today was frater, which means brother. Our example words were fraternity, fraternize and fratricide.

After second period we were provided with a very good student sample of the essay due today. Debbie, Arial, Brian and Aaron did a wonderful job identifying the irony used to produce humor in Mark Twain’s “The First Writing Machine.”

“The First Writing Machine” is a story Mark Twain wrote that contains immense amounts of cruel irony. As we know today, new technology can have a lot of problems that, at the store, don’t seem to exist. So, you spend your hard earned money on a product, and find out that it didn’t really work the way it was suppose to. Well, back in the 1800’s, that happened to our very own Mark Twain, a story of irony at the cruelest.
Our first example of humor is when Mark Twain purchases the machine at the store, where a girl was typing at 57 words per minute, much faster than a person could write, the only other alternative at the time. So, the impressed Mark Twain purchased it, only to find that the girl had found a trick, typing the same thing over and over. Such irony in this sales pitch, as this happens even today. The second example of irony is when Twain hired a girl to type his letters, but the machine could only write in big, ugly capital letters. Would you like to receive a letter like that?

This is only the first two paragraphs of their essay. They did go on to give even more explanation and a summary paragraph. Great job and thanks for the student example.

While we were on the blog reviewing the information from yesterday, everyone had an opportunity to earn 10 extra credit points. In a well-written response we were ask to identify all of the countries that have visited our blog.

Tomorrow we begin the actual task of our webquest. For those students who had already turned in their essays, marking their completion of step 3 of the webquest, Mrs. Scales redirected groups to read over the specific task information of the webquest.

Task – Your small publication company has been invited to compete for the contract to write and design a presentation that will be available to the Kennedy Center visitors throughout the year. It might be a brochure, a slide/multimedia project, a video or a web site, but this product will explain why the highest award our country can bestow upon a comedian is named for Mark Twain.

Day 5 of our Twain WebQuest began with a review of the elements of humor we took notes over yesterday. Then Mrs. Scales pulled out an old college paper she had written on the Twain story we had all listen to last week, “The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”. She showed us how she had analyzed and written a response to the story pointing out different literary devises Twain had used. She had a very good example of how to use supporting details from the text of the story. After reviewing the elements of comedy that Twain had used in “The jumping Frog of Calaveras County” each group had to pick one of the other short stories by Twain to read and review.

Mrs. Scales point out that the writing assignment for Day 5 and 6 of the webquest is an essay and therefor has one topic. The topic for this assignment is to review the type of humor used in the Twain story we selected to read as a group. It was explained that the assignment does NOT ask for a plot summary or review of what happens in the story.

Once again, we reviewed the parts of the essay that we will be graded on:
Ideaswill be evaluated based on the correct identification and explanation of the types or elements of humor used.
Organization will be graded on our essay having a strong Introduction, Body, and Conclusion.
Voice will be evaluated on how the tone or voice of the authors come through.
Word Choice the use of precise, accurate, varied, and rich words to communicate will be scored.
Sentence Fluency how the writing flows together in well structured, correct, well flowing sentences will be evaluated.
Conventions will be graded based on the mechanical correctness of the spelling, grammar, punctuation, and English language rules. This includes the title of the short story and the author’s name being written properly in the essay.

Following are guidelines for punctuating titles according to Modern Language Association (MLA) standards.

There is a trick to remembering how to treat titles, and it works well enough that you can commit most types of titles to memory.

It’s the big and little trick.

Big things and things that can stand on their own, like books, are italicized. Little things that are dependent or that come as part of a group, like chapters, are put into quotation marks.

For example, a CD or album are major (big) works that can be divided into smaller parts, or songs. The song names (small part) are punctuated with quotation marks.

For example:

•The Sweet Escape, by Gwen Stefani, includes the song “Wind It Up.”

Underline any published collection, like a book of poetry. Put the individual entry, like a poem, in quotation marks. However: a long, epic poem that is often published on its own would be treated like a book. The Odyssey is one example.

Punctuating Titles of Works of Art

Creating a work of art is an enormous task, isn’t it? For that reason, you can think of art as a big accomplishment. Okay, that might sound corny, but it will help you remember! Individual works of art like paintings and sculptures are underlined or italicized:

•Michelangelo’s David
•Mona Lisa
•The Last Supper
•The Pieta
Note: A photograph, which is much smaller than a work of art, is placed in quotation marks!

Titles and Names to Italicize

•A novel
•A ship
•A play
•A film
•A painting
•A sculpture or statue
•A drawing
•A CD
•A TV Series
•A cartoon series
•An encyclopedia
•A magazine
•A newspaper
•A pamphlet

Titles to Put Into Quotation Marks

•Poem
•Short story
•A skit
•A commercial
•An individual episode in a TV series (like “The Soup Nazi” on Seinfeld)
•A cartoon episode, like “Trouble With Dogs”
•A chapter
•An article
•A newspaper story

More Tips on Punctuating Titles

Some titles are merely capitalized and not given additional punctuation. These include:

•Religious works, like The Bible or The Koran
•Buildings
•Monuments

We put notes on the big and little trick in our W-R’s notebooks to refer back to when needed.

Our root word for today was fac, which means to make or do. We used factory, faculty, and facilitate as our three example words.

As a whole 7th grade we are at 57% of the students having all of their AR points for this grading period. Fourth period is still in the lead with 71%.

Everyone was given time to review the blog and lesson plans from yesterday. QW time was used to complete any Literary Circle chunk 2 forum responses that had not already been completed. Then we did the root word for today, which was dynam, meaning power. Our example words were dynamite, dynamic and dynameter ( an instrument used to measure the power of a telescope).

We reviewed several elements of humor and took the following notes in our W-R’s notebooks:

Elements of Humor

Literary devises used to produce humor include:

Hyperbole – an extreme exaggeration such as “I’m so hungry, I could eat the whole cow!”

Irony – using words to express something completely different than the words literal meaning. An example would be – The old man was so lucky that he won the lottery the day before he died.

Satire critical humor that makes fun of someone – mocking.

All three of these literary devices can be used in a Parody – created to mock, comment on, or poke fun at an original by means of humorous imitation. An example would be Scary Movie or the Saturday Night Live skits about the daily news.

Five additional terms as they relate to humor are:

Wit – sudden sharpness or quick perception.

Bull – based on outrageous contradictions, totally untrue – as in someone is feeding me a line of bull.

Blue Humor – humor based on easily offensive subject matter such as bodily functions.

Banter – good natured teasing back and forth.

Wise Crack – cleaver remarks.

Before we returned to group work on the webquest, we also made a progress graph in our W-R’s notebooks for the 4th grading period writing assignments. The graph is just like the one we did for the 2nd grading period. It has three columns and five rows. Just as before the rows are labeled in progressive order: Prewriting, Draft, Revision, Edit, and Publish. The three columns are labeled Expository, Persuasive, and Narrative.

One hundred years after his death we are still learning so much about Mark Twain and his wholesome brand of comedy. Today most students began or continued working on the three worksheets following the February 8 Scholastic Scope article entitled, The Year of Twain. The first worksheet focused on something we did a lot last year in sixth grade, reviewing a nonfiction article. We have to review the article and find the three main ideas and list supporting details for each. The second worksheet has to do with interpreting text by reviewing some of Twain’s most famous quotes, what they mean and if it is humorous, why? The final worksheet is a Mark Twain treasure hunt, which reminds many of us of our research strategies rotation class.

We reviewed the lesson plans for this week and talked again about using the information from the lesson plans, the blog, and the webquest to know what needed to be done when. Critical Thinking Skills that we will need the rest of our lives, was about what Mrs. Scales said about being able to pull information together and think about what it was telling us. She sure expects a lot from a seventh grader. She just knows we can do it.

Chunk 2 of the Literary Circle books needed to be posted on the forums by the end of school today.

Our root word today was corp, which means body. It is from Latin and our example words included: corpse, corporation, and corpuscle.

Oh, I almost forgot, we had a fire drill today and got to go outside. It was very nice, so sunny and bright.

Day 2 of the Twain WebQust focused on the essay each group must write on the Twain Prize. As a class we reviewed the writing genre – Essay. Our working definition of an essay is: A short, nonfiction piece of writing about one topic. In step one of the webquest the assignment is to write a summary essay about the Twain Award and its past recipients (our one topic for this assignment). An essay is a structured form of writing and always needs to include an introduction, body, and a conclusion.

Mrs. Scales made us some sticky note checklists for our essays. We have to review the essays and then staple the Twain WebQuest Group Grading Sheet to the front of our essays before we turn them in. No one in the group may move on to the second step in the process until the essay for the first step has been turned in.

It was explained to us that there are really three components to the Twain WebQuest.
1. Content Information (What we will learn about Mark Twain, Humor, and the Twain Prize.
2. Working together in cooperative learning groups.
3. Being able to follow written directions from multiple resources. (Twain WebQuest instructions in process and time line sections, lesson plans, blog recaps.) Critical Thinking Skills

Our root word for today was chrome, which means color. Our three example words were, chromosome, polychrome, and bichrome. Chromosome is a word we use often in science, so Mrs. Scales expected us to know that it has to do with hereditary traits that may determine the color of our eyes, hair and even skin being passed on. Poly is a root word that we have had earlier this year. Poly means many so polychrome means many colors and bichrome therefore means two colors.

We have one more week to earn AR points. Right now in seventh grade as a whole 51% of the students have earned all of their AR points for the third grading period and 4th period is in the lead with 67%.

The first round of ISTEP testing for Spring 2010 is finished. We were able to get back to our normal routine in English class today.

Literary Circle Chunk 2 Forums are due by the end of school on Monday. Mrs. Scales reviewed some of the posts already submitted. As a result we reviewed the importance of NOT using unclear pronouns such as she, he, they when writing our responses. This is a formal writing assignment and all of our posts must be well-written responses that include the name of the book(written in italics if typed: underlined if hand printed),author (full name the first time used and last name only after that), and a complete explanation of who we are talking about when we answer all of the chunk questions. Remember that you must make your own original post and then reply to at least 2 other student’s posts who are reading the same book. This is your time to talk about what has happened so far in this book. Remember that Mrs. Scales will be reviewing your chats. Show that you have read the required portion of the book and what you like or don’t like about it so far.

Once you have finished this third chunk forum you may complete the back side of your Literary Circle Lesson Directions sheet. Please read all of the directions on the Summarizer sheet and complete each section completely and as neatly as possible. Turn your final assignment in to the basket for grading. You may check your book back in with Mrs. Scales one you have turned in the final assignment.

The root word for today was aud, which means sound some example words include;auditorium, audible, audiologist, and audiotape.

We listened to “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” by Mark Twain and then got into our cooperative learning groups and began our Twain WebQuest. Everything is spelled out on the web pages of the webquest but we have to work together as a group and read the instructions carefully to make sure we accomplish the task. Did you know that Mark Twain is considered by many people to have been the first stand up comedian? He was definitely the first American stand up comedian.

Today every group should have read ALL of the Introduction, Process and Time Line webquest pages. The first step in the process is to review and then write a summary of the Mark Twain Award. No one can move on to the second step until they have completed all of step one.

The final 7th grade writer has been selected to attend the Selma Elementary School Young Author Conferences on March 16, 2010.

Dougy Burgess will be joining Drew Smith, Olivia Buffin, Jayden Pfleeger, Tanna Riggin, A.J. Zeiger, Keeley Cherry, Chris Cooper, Katelyn Buchanan, and Ryan Ritchie as readers at the Young Authors Conferences at SES. Kiley Lingenfelterhas been selected as the first alternate. If any of the 7th grade authors are absent on the 16th, she will fill in for them.

Each author will read a piece of their own original writing and talk about writing tips to a group of about 15 students at the elementary school. Those going will leave SMS shortly after 4th period. Mrs. Flatter will have an informational meeting when they arrive at SES.

Congratulations to all of the authors taking part in this fun and exciting event.

Nine of the ten available guest author spots for 7th grade have been filled. Drew Smith, Olivia Buffin, Jayden Pfleeger, Tanna Riggin, A.J. Zeiger, Keeley Cherry, Chris Cooper, Katelyn Buchanan, and Ryan Ritchie will all be reading a piece of their original writing to a group of about 20 grade 2 through 5 students on March 16th at Selma Elementary School. There is still one 7th grade spot available. Mrs. Scales will read all of the final submissions tonight and the final spot will be awarded tomorrow.

In a final review for the English portions of the ISTEP we talked about those tricky words in the English language that are easily confused. Examples included:

presents – gifts versus presence – being there
there – place versus their – possession versus they’re they are
allusion – indirect reference versus illusion – false impression
cite – quote an authority versus site – location
lay – past tense of very lie versus laid – past tense of past participle of lay
to-location versus too – also versus two – the number 2
and several other examples.

ISTEPs start tomorrow. Get plenty of rest tonight and eat a good breakfast in the morning.