We started class out reading again today.  We had 10 minutes of uninterrupted reading time at the beginning of class.
Good thing everyone had their book today.

We read the blogs from yesterday and Wednesday.  Mrs. Scales passed out the lesson plan for next week and we read it too.  She waited for people to ask questions and got a little mad when no one did.  Then she started calling on students asking them what different words from the blogs or lesson plans meant.  I guess you can’t blame her because everyone read the word inference, but no one was able to tell her what it meant when she asked.  You could tell that it was really frustrating for her that everyone just read over it and didn’t really think about what they were reading or if they understood what they were reading.  Well, that led into a lecture about us, “becoming progressively more independent learners.”  I guess her point was that we can’t become responsible for our own learning if we aren’t willing to, “actively listen, read carefully, think about what we have heard or read, and ask questions about anything we don’t understand.”

To drive the point home, we are having a test on Tuesday about class room procedures.  It will cover things we have been told or read about how to do thing in class.  We have to read the class syllabus again and really think about what it says.

Our root word for today was geo, which means earth, ground, or soil. The example words were:

Geography : GEO graphy (jee og’ ra fee) n. The (written) science of the earth and its life.

Geology : GEO logy (jee ol’ o jee) n. History of the earth as recorded in the rocks.

Geocyclic : GEO cyclic (jee o sie’ klik) adj. Relating to the rotation of the earth.

Finally we did our group work by continuing our craft review.

• Craft Review:
• Striking Verbs and Proper Nouns
• Looking for striking verbs and proper nouns in
  literature
• Adding striking verbs and proper nouns to your own
  writing—show don’t tell