Today we took the test over The Little Prince. The whole test was just filling out an 8th grade AR Summary. The difference between the 8th grade AR Summary and the 7th grade AR Summary is that the you have to identify the specific elements of the plot, not just summarize the plot. We had already talked about the conflict, climax, themes and resoultion during class discussion. We had also done a packet in class last Friday that covered all of the information asked for on the test.

Mrs. Scales reminded us that with our returned summary we can take the AR test over The Little Prince. The AR test is a reading comprehension test and worth 2 AR points. We talked a little about the difference between a reading comprehension test in which you have to know what happened in the story and the kind of literary element identification test that we just took.

Anyone who did not score a 40 or higher on the test can turn in the completed packet with a corrected AR Summary to recieve some of the points they lost on the test.

After the test, we went back to the K-W-L charts we began last week in our packets. The K colum had already been completed. Today we brainstormed ideas for the W colum, what we want to know about operas. Several questions were explored, including:

Do they sing everything?
Why and/or how do they sing so loud?
What is the difference between a musical and an opera?

Finally, Mrs. Scales asked who had ever been to an opera before. Only one person in the 7th grade said they had ever been to an opera. So then we began watching our first opera together.