Each group began their posters today in class. Along with working on the posters, each group had to start their planning sheet. Everyone was given the following information about how the group will be graded.

Poet Poster
Poet’s Full Name 10
Dates Lived 5
Symbols or Graphics 25
Artistic Appeal 10
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50

Finished Poet Posters are due on Thursday. 5 points will be deducted for each day the poster is late.

Mrs. Scales explained that when we did our mythology projects we could just go to the internet and look up our God or Goddess and find lists of the symbols associated with that God or Goddess. Finding the symbols or graphics to use on our Poet posters will not be like that. There is no right or wrong answer but rather we have to pick symbols for our poets based on what we have learned about that poet and the poems we have selected to present.

Knowing your poet: Along with constructing a well-planned and nice looking poster to represent your poet, you must learn enough interesting facts and details about your poet to teach the rest of the class during your daily presentations. Each day you will introduce your group, the poet and specific poem you are presenting and one interesting fact or detail about that poet or poem. Everyone in your group will earn the same grade (unless otherwise discussed with Mrs. Scales). Your points will be earned each day in the following manner:

Introduction of team 2
Introduction of poet 3
Introduction of poem 3
Explanation of one interesting fact/detail 5
Quality of daily presentation 7
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20

You will be writing an individual essay on the five poets presented during Poetry Island. Your essay will be graded on writing as well as your ability to show what you have learned about each poet during the week. Knowing that should encourage you to take notes each day about each poet.

Welcome back from Spring Break. It was great to see everyone again.

We began by reviewing the introduction to Poetry Island and National Poetry Month on moodle.

The final literary circle assignment was explained and everyone was given time to print off the copies of all their literary circle forum posts. The assignment has two parts. For the first part, the print outs have to be proofread and corrected. This is worth 15 points. The second part of the assignment is to write a cohesive review of the book. This is not to be a plot summary, but a personal review of the book based on the literary circle forum responses. This assignment is due on Wednesday.

Unfortunately several students were assigned to the lunch study table for having 3 or more missing assignments. Everyone was given a chance to turn in any missing work, but if they still had three missing assignments they had to go to the lunch study table starting today. Those students with two missing assignments were reminded that if they do not turn the literary circle assignment in on Wednesday they will be sent to the lunch study table starting Wednesday.

Then each group selected their poet for Poetry Island.

Today marked the last school day before Spring Break. There were a few students already gone on their family trips. We turned in homework, checked our progress and performed our reader’s theater.

Our root word was sequ, secu meaning to follow. Our three example words were: sequence, sequel, and consecutive. This was the last new root word we will have all year. When we come back from break we will work on all of the root words we have had this year, but we won’t have any more new ones.

Everyone has turned in their Twain WebQuest project and WOW, there were some great presentations!

Today we did a rehearsal run through of “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” reader’s theater. Tomorrow is our last day of school before Spring Break, and it is sure to be a fun one, with the performance of our reader’s theater.

The root wort for today was soph, which means wisdom or knowledge. The example words used were, sophomore, Philosophy, sophisticated.

Our root word for Tuesday was psych, which means soul, spirit, mind. The three sample words were: psychology, psychobiography, and antipsychotic. We pointed out all of the previous root words that make up the example words such as log – study of, bio- life, and graph – to write or something written.

Today our root word was sci and means know. Not no, but know. Of course we all suggested science as our first example word. Mrs. Scales played around with confusing words using conscience and conscious as the other two example words. Conscience means knowing wrong from right while conscious means knowing what is happening.

We had time in class to review the lesson plans and work on our literary circle third chunk forums. Our Twain projects were turned in today.

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.