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.