Today we got our graded project assignments back. There were some really good project and Mrs. Scales used some as examples. She was especially proud of the overall work that Daxton S. did on both his painting and his newspaper assignments. There were some other great projects turned in and Mrs. Scales started a “Wall of Fame” along the hallway for the best work turned in.

We talked about how each of us learn in different ways or have multiple intelligences. Some people see and remember things better if they have a picture to go along with it, while others are mathematical or number oriented learners. That is why we have so many options on assignments, like the 12 different options to pick from for the final project over, The Call of the Wild. It doesn’t make any sense for someone who isn’t artistic to pick an assignment that requires them to paint a scene from the book, or for someone who doesn’t work well with numbers to pick an assignment that requires them to graph numerical information, when there are so many other options available to them. We have to learn about ourselves and what our strongest learning styles are, so that we can use our strengths and make good decisions when we are given choices in how we show what we have learned.

We were also asked to read the lesson plans and summarize the most important things that we will be doing this week. That wasn’t too difficult; we are going to be working on our essays and focusing on the root words this week.

Everyone received their essay drafts back today. We looked at our introductions. We listened to Mrs. Scales read the introduction of a model essay, and then went to work revising our own essay introductions. Remember that the introductory paragraph of an essay must hook the reader by using catchy language or strong craft and describe clearly to the reader the reason or purpose of the essay to follow. Use your Guide to Writing a Basic Essay handout to make sure your revised essay introductions are complete.

We also walked step by step through how to set the margins and select the font and font size for our writing assignments in Open Office. We reviewed how to save our work in a .doc file to a flash drive. These are very important basic computer skills that we must understand so that we can focus on the writing tasks. The steps we covered again in class today can be found in our English Binders.