Anyone who scored 16 or less on Friday’s vocabulary test may take a make up test Monday during AL. Stop by Mrs. Scales room and pick up your pass for AL prior to the start of school or between first and second period on Monday.

Our first week in pictures. We had some great week 1 metaphor posters.
These posters represent our working with one of the 16 Habits of Mind that we will be studying this nine weeks. How do we each think about ourselves as readers and writers. Metacognition – Thinking about Thinking and using metaphorical language to express our feelings.

Students practiced class room rules by being in their seats working on the bell ringer by the time the bell rang. Everyday the day and date are written on the front board along with instructions on exactly what they need to be doing when the bell rings. This is an important aspect of our philosophy of being totally engaged for 47 minutes each day in what ever we are doing in English class. This means that as long as class time is being used appropriately students should be able to get most if not all of their work done in class. Homework will be reserved for those students who need a little more time to complete something, or those students falling behind.

Weekly Vocabulary

We also had our first weekly vocabulary test. Students were give 8 words and it was explained on Monday that students needed to know how to spell the words, understand the denotive and connotative definitions of each word, understand what part of speech each word is and be able to use the proper form of the word in sentences. Students were reminded each day of the week that the vocabulary test would be on Friday and that they should be studying the words. A link to Vocabualry.com was provided for additional support. Thursday students were told that the Friday test had been opened up on Canvas and they could take it twice as practice and to help them understand the type of questions that would be on the test. On Friday, I read the entire test to all classes, explaining what each question was looking for. This will not be the regular procedure for Weekly Vocabulary. There will be a test every week, but I will not typically be reading the questions aloud. Students were reminded that next week’s test words are already on the blog Weekly Vocabulary page and they could get a head start by working on the words over the weekend.

Any student who took the first weekly vocabulary test and scored a D or F grade, will have the option to retake the test during Academic Lab on Monday.