What bad habits or small problems can you think of that need to be taken care of while they are little? (problems in friendships, getting behind in schoolwork, etc.) List the “baobabs” of our planet and/or country. How would you uproot them? What things in today’s society might be the roots of “baobabs” to come?

Our quick write for today led perfectly into our review of the first seven chapters of The Little Prince. After several students sharing their own quick writes and some lively discussion about the problems or habits that we all have that are easier to fix before they become big issues, we began looking at the following literary elements of the book.

POINT OF VIEW • The narrator gives a first-person account, although he spends large portions of the story recounting the little prince’s own story of his travels.
SETTINGS (PLACE) • The Sahara Desert and outer space. (TIME) • “Six years ago,” although the current date is never specified we are able to determin that it is sometime after the invention of air planes. The book is not set in a particular period or in one specific place. In the first chapter the narrator writes about his childhood experiences with drawings and about his low opinion of adults. In the second chapter the narrator starts narrating a particular series of incidents. He writes of the time when his plane crashed in the desert of Sahara six years ago. Most of the narrative after the second chapter is set in the desert. The other places that function as settings include the asteroid where the Little Prince has his home and the planets that the Little Prince visits, including asteroids 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, and 330. The last planet that he visits is the Earth, where he meets the narrator in the Sahara Desert. The story is really about the narrator’s friendship with the Little Prince and about the Prince’s own quest, which takes him to seven planets apart from his own.
Characters
The narrator is really the author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The reader hears his voice throughout the book as he relates the story of the Little Prince and of his own friendship with him. The narrator says plainly that he is a romantic who does not like adults, whom he finds too practical; instead, he prefers children, whom he finds natural and delightful. The narrator writes this story of his encounter with the Little Prince in order to deal with the sorrow of losing his precious friend. A lonely pilot who, while stranded in the desert, befriends the little prince. They spend eight days together in the desert before the little prince returns to his home planet. Although he is discouraged from drawing early in his life because adults cannot understand his drawings, the narrator illustrates his own story and makes several drawings for the little prince. The narrator is a grown-up, but his view of the world is more like a child’s than an adult’s. After the little prince departs, the narrator feels both refreshed and saddened.
The Little Prince The novel is named after the Little Prince, who is a mystical and loveable person. He is the sole inhabitant of a small planet, which the narrator refers to as B-612. The Prince leaves his planet to visit other places and finally lands on Earth. In the Sahara Desert, he meets the narrator and befriends him. The narrator tells of his encounter with the Prince and also relates the adventures of the Prince on the other asteroids that the latter has visited. One of the two protagonists of the story. After leaving his home planet and his beloved rose, the prince journeys around the universe, ending up on Earth. Frequently perplexed by the behavior of grown-ups, the prince symbolizes the hope, love, innocence, and insight of childhood that lie dormant in all of us. Though the prince is sociable and meets a number of characters as he travels, he never stops loving and missing the rose on his home planet.
The Turkish Astronomer The narrator mentions the Turkish astronomer in the fourth chapter. The narrator believes that the planet from which the Little Prince has come is the asteroid known as B-612. A Turkish astronomer first sees this asteroid through the telescope in 1909. The first human to discover the prince’s home, Asteroid B-612. When the Turkish astronomer first presents his discovery, no one believes him on account of his Turkish costume. Years later, he makes the same presentation wearing Western clothes, and his discovery is well received. The scientific community’s treatment of the Turkish astronomer reveals how what someone wears or looks like has an affect on whether people will believe them or not.
The Little Prince’s flower or The Rose On the Little Prince’s planet, the flowers are usually very simple; but one day, from a seed blown from afar, a new flower comes up that is very beautiful, but also very vain or conceited. The Prince begins to doubt the flower’s credibility and finally leaves his planet to escape the company of the flower. A coquettish flower who has trouble expressing her love for the little prince and consequently drives him away. Simultaneously vain and naïve, she informs the little prince of her love for him too late to persuade him to stay home and not to travel. Throughout the story, she occupies the prince’s thoughts and heart.
Baobabs, harmless trees on Earth, pose a great threat to smaller planets like the prince’s if left unchecked. They can squeeze whole planets to pieces with their roots. Although baobabs have no malicious opinions or intentions, they represent the grave danger that can befall people who are too lazy or indifferent to keep a wary eye on the world around them.

Elements of Plot We have been use to just doing a plot summary on our AR summary forms, but next year our 8th grade AR summaries require us to break down the books we have read into the specific elements of the plot. We will need to know the exposition or introduction of the conflict, the rising action, climax, falling action and the resolution. This is something that we should be aware of as we read the book, but may not be able to clearly identify until we have finished reading the book.

After reading the first four chapters of The Little Prince, our thought provoking quick write for the day was:

Write your thoughts or a response to the quote, “Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be aways and forever explaining things to them.”

What a great quote! Several students shared their quick writes and a lively discussion followed. It seems that even in 7th grade many students do not feel that their parents or adults in general really try to understand things on their own.

Today was the last day for root word review, and the BIG test in tomorrow. Everyone finished their root word presentations.

We reviewed the requirements for our 4th grading period writing assignments yet again. Today our focus was on the narrative piece. We reviewed the necessity of a plot that follows a plot diagram in any story.

For our QW today we did a pre-reading journal activity for our first reading assignment in The Little Prince. Mrs. Scales had an example on the front board. It looked like a T chart with the word Adult written above one column and the word Child written above the second column. Our task was to think about the way adults and children think differently. We listed qualities or personality traits for adults and children on the chart and then had to write an example to describe how children and adults look at things in different ways.

Our homework reading for today is: Chapters 1-4 (pages 3 – 19) of The Little Prince.

We continued root word presentations and worked on our writing assignments for the remainder of class today.

What would your list look like if you were asked to make a list of the five most important things to have in life? That was exactly what we had to do in class today. Our QW was to list in order the five most important things to have in life. Lots of people shared their lists after quick write time. It was pretty interesting to see what everyone thought was most important. Then Mrs. Scales explained that we will be reading a book and then viewing a performance called “The Little Prince,” in which a young boy meets some adults who value power and money. The boy does not understand the world of adults and their priorities just like we didn’t understand everyone’s list of the most important five things.

As further introduction to the book, we reviewed five literary terms that we have had earlier this year:

Fantasy – a fictional genre marked by the use of imaginary characters (vampires, fairies, unicorns) or elements of the setting (red rivers, floating mountains, a chocolate forest). Our example was Twilight. We talked about the difference between Fantasy and Science Fiction as genre. If a vampire book is based more on the DNA or scientific issue of the blood it could also be considered Science Fiction. The big difference is that Science Fiction starts from a scientific idea that is depicted in a way that possibly created a world that is not real to us today.
Fable – a fictional genre in which a moral lesson is being taught. Many fables have personified animals as characters. We reviewed the Fable of King Midas that we had studied during the mythology unit earlier in the year.
Allegory – a story that has both a literal and a figurative or symbolic meaning. Our example was the short story we read earlier this year, “Rip Van Winkle”. The literal meaning of the story had to do with a nagging wife, while the figurative meaning of the nagging wife represented the King of England during the time leading up to the American Revolutionary War.
Satire – a critical humor than makes fun of someone – quick witty mocking.
Parody – created to mock, comment on, or poke fun at an original work by means of humorous imitation. A parody may use satire or irony. We talked about Saturday Nigh Live and Scary Movie being good examples of parodies.

Mrs. Scales explained that this book is going to be a fun example and review of all of those lessons. She told us that The Little Prince was first published in French in 1943 and translated into English that same year. At first glance (on the literal side), The Little Prince appears to be a children’s story with its imaginative plot and drawings. The story is of a young boy, the Little Prince, from a far away asteroid who arrives on the planet Earth after an interplanetary journey that has the markings of a pilgrimage. A pilgrimage is a journey to a specific destination for a specific purpose. In this story the boy is trying to find the meaning of life and love.

Mrs. Scales then ask, “What was going on in the world at the time this book was published?”

We were correct in answering that it was during the time of World War II. Pleased that we seemed to know a little about world events Mrs. Scales went on to explain that on a different level (the figurative or symbolic level), The Little Prince is a tale told to the adult world. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote this book while he was in exile in America. So at this point we talked about how being exiled means that someone if forced to leave and not allowed to return. France had fallen to Nazi Germany and the author couldn’t stay in his home country for fear of death. Many see the story as a warning to adults who govern and live in this world. Saint-Exupéy condemned the appeasement policy that allowed Hitler to become powerful in the decade before the war. The tale told is one of responsibility and vigilance. Things of “consequence” cannot be ignored.

Everyone was given time to review the weekly lesson plans with the reading schedule. Mrs. Scales reminded us that even though there was no homework tonight, that it is our responsibility to make sure we stay up to date with the reading schedule. That means that even if we have track on Wednesday evening and don’t think we will be able to read Wednesday night, we have to have the required amount of reading done before we come to class on Thursday. This is another one of those responsibility issues that she keeps talking about. It is our responsibility to know what is due when and make what ever adjustments we need to make to get the reading done. Her suggestions were to read during our reading lab each day.

Most classes also continued root word presentations. The BIG root word test is Thursday.

With the 8th graders in Washington D.C. and the 6th graders taking a field trip, it was quiet around Selma Middle School today.

Our QW for today was: What helps you remember how to spell certain words?

Everyone showed Mrs. Scales their W-R’s notebooks to receive the homework participation points.

We reviewed the three writing assignments due this grading period and were given the due dates for each of them. Mrs. Scales explained that we have progressively been given more responsibility and more choice as the year has moved on. This is our last grading period and we can work on and turn in any one of the three writing assignments in any order. The first final draft for any one of the three writing types is due on April 29th. That means that one person may be turning in the final draft of their narrative while someone else is turning in the final draft of their expository piece. The second writing assignment due date is May 12th and the third is May 25th. Each of the writing assignments is worth 70 points.

Each final draft must be turned in on top, with all previous drafts and one of the colored checklists and parent letter on the bottom. Just like on the bulletin board: a purple checklist is for a narrative writing, an orange checklist is for a persuasive writing, and a yellow checklist is for an expository writing. Mrs. Scales read the parent letter on the back of the checklist and explained that each final writing assignment must be evaluated by a parent prior to turning it in for grading. She also warned us not to wait until the night before the due date and then use our parents being busy as an excuse for work being late or it not getting done.

The rest of the class period was used as a writing workshop. Mrs. Scales conferences with writers and everyone had about 30 to 40 minutes of time to work on their writing today.

Today everyone finally got registered on TweenTribune and we did our second well-written response to a non-fiction article.

The root word presentations continued.

Today was our first day using TweenTribune as a class. Everyone who had followed the directions and successfully registered with TweenTribune used their Quick Write time to select a news story to read and comment on. The comments had to be well written responses, so that meant no text abbreviations, good grammar, and a complete well developed thought.

Those students who had not gotten registered on TweenTribune had to read the paper copy of one of the news articles that Mrs. Scales had selected. As a consequence of not following the clear directions she had give us on Monday and repeated in the blog earlier this week, Mrs. Scales made sure the article she picked wasn’t the most interesting article. Everyone had time later in class to go through the registration process again. Tomorrow we will do another TweenTribune Quick Write assignment, so everyone must be registered in order to pick their own article and do their responses on line.

Mrs. Scales shared three bits of good news with the class today. First of all she attended the track meet last night and was very impressed with our runners. She said she wished she had taken her camera. That led her right into her second bit of good news. We received another Bell Grant. The grant will pay for 12 flash drives for the classroom, writable DVDs and materials to design and make covers for our whole 7th grade Language Arts class to do a really cool digital yearbook / portfolio. Every student will get to have a DVD to keep and remember all the cool things we did over the last year. The last but certainly not least appreciated bit of good news was that everyone had done such a good job on the Sentence Type homework assignment that we don’t have to do any more worksheets or homework on it. Mrs. Scales said that she was either a really good teacher, we were all extremely smart kids, or at least one of us was extremely smart and everyone else just copied. She was just kidding; she knows that we would never copy our homework.

We did review one of the sentences on the homework sheet that several people missed. It was number 4 on the Complex & Compound-Complex Sentence side of the homework.

Because mangroves have complex root systems, the trees only thrive in very watery conditions, such as wetlands, and slow-moving rivers.

We reviewed the foldable we made for the definition of each type of sentences. While a complex sentence has one independent clause and one dependent clause, there must be at least two independent clauses in a sentence to make it a compound-complex sentence. The only independent clause in the above example sentence is the trees only thrive in very watery conditions. There are two other clauses in the sentence, but they are both dependent clauses.

After finishing the sentence modeling and review, Mrs. Scales reminded everyone that the purpose of the root word presentations is to help everyone remember the root words and meanings for the big second semester root word test. That test will be given next Thursday.

Poetry Island essays were returned today and used as mentor text for our lesson on sentence fragments and run-on sentences. Mrs. Scales explained that of the 90 possible points on the essay, 60 came from the writing score, 10 from the use of the rubric, and 20 from following the directions of the assignment. Some students lost points in the later because they did not use the correct font or formatting that we have been required to use all year. Mrs. Scales pointed out that this is information that can be found on the yellow handout in the front of our English binders and has not changed since the first day of this school year.

Back to the lesson: A run-on sentence is two or more complete sentences written as though they were one sentence. Run on sentences can be corrected in one of three ways:
1) joining the complete sentences with a semicolon
2) joining the complete sentences with a comma and coordinating conjunction such as and.
3) breaking the run-on into separate sentences.

Example: Whitman was a poet, his poems depict American life.
1) Whitman was a poet; his poems depict American life.
2) Whitman was a poet, and his poems depict American life.
3) Whitman was a poet. His poems depict American life.

A.J. allowed us to use the following example from his essay:

What I have learned about Edgar Allen Poe is that he likes sad and Gothic types of poems that are dark and a little disturbing, he was a raging alcoholic and died from alcohol, he was spy but no one knows for sure what type of spy which I thought was very interesting and weird since he was a poet.

What I have learned about Edgar Allen Poe is that he likes sad and Gothic types of poems that are dark and a little disturbing. He was a raging alcoholic and died from alcohol. He was spy, but no one knows for sure what type of spy, which I thought was very interesting and weird since he was a poet.

A sentence fragment expresses only a partial thought and can not stand alone as a complete sentence because it is missing the subject, the verb, or both. We found plenty of these to also fix in our writing.

Mrs. Scales reminded us that our root word review presentations begin tomorrow, and that everyone must be ready if their word is called out.

Anyone who wants to order books for April must bring the order in this week.

The rest of the class time was used as a Writing Workshop day and everyone worked on one of the three pieces of writing that has to be completed this grading period.

Today was a big day in English. Everyone had to turn in their Poetry Island Essay with the rubric. Any essay not turned in today will have a 5% deduction in grade for each day it is late.

Everyone logged into the blog and had to follow the directions on the TweenTribune page to register on the TweenTribune site. It was pretty easy if you read the instructions as you went along. Any student who did not get registered must come into Mrs. Scales classroom before or after school or use their home computer on their own time to get registered before Wednesday. There will be an assignment during QW time on Wednesday using the TweenTribune site and everyone must be registered.

We also selected root words from an envelope. There were no new root words. All of the root words selected were from the second semester root words that we have already been given in class. That means that everyone should already have a root word card for each root word and it should be listed in their glossaries. Starting Wednesday we will begin giving root word presentations. We have to present in any way we choose (rap song, jingle, repeating activity, visual examples) the root word we are responsible for in 3 to 5 minutes. In a couple of weeks we will have our big second semester root word test and extra credit will be given to the student who presented the word review presentation based on how many other students get that word correct on the test. This is our turn to teach. Lets see how good we are at it.

The lesson today was on Grammatical Sentence Types, but when we looked at the first definition Mrs. Scales realized that we needed to review some vocabulary in order to really understand what we were doing. So we backed up a little and reviewed what a clause is, the two types of clauses and what a predicate is.

A clause is a group of words with a subject and a predicate. There can be main or independent clauses, which are groups of words with a subject and a predicate that can stand alone. The other type of clause is a subordinate or dependent clause, which as the name indicates is a group of words with a subject and a predicate that can not stand alone.

A predicate is a verb or a verb plus something. Some examples of predicates include:
She dances. (verb-only predicate)
Ben reads the book. ( verb + a direct object)
Ben’s mother, Felicity, gave me a present. (verb + an indirect object without a preposition)
She listened to the radio. (verb + a prepositional object)

After getting an understanding of the terms we were going to use, we started looking at the four types of sentences:

A simple (S) sentence has one main clause and no subordinate clauses. It can however, contain a compound subject or predicate.

A compound sentence has two or more main clauses.

A complexsentence uses both main and subordinate clauses. A complex sentence has one independent clause and at least one dependent clause.

A compound-complex sentence is a combination of the compound and the complex sentence structure. It has two or more independent clauses and at least one dependent clause.

We made a foldable with the definitions of each type of sentence. Then broke several example sentences down as a whole class to practice finding the clauses, determining if the clause was independent or dependent and then labeling the sentence as simple, compound, complex or compound-complex. We did a few of the sentences on the homework assignment together to make sure everyone understood how to finish the assignment.

Surviving Poets – for the first time ever we have had a tie on Poetry Island. In Mrs. Scales’ 1st period class, Edward Lear and Edgar Allen Poe tied as surviving poets on Poetry Island. The 2nd period surviving poet was Walt Whitman, 3rd and 4th periods were both Emily Dickinson.

All of the groups did a wonderful job representing their poets this week. The poets covered in each period were:

1st Period
Dickinson
Lear
Shakespeare
Poe

2nd Period
Browning
Cummings
Dickinson
Poe
Frost
Whitman

3rd Period
Cummings
Frost
Shakespeare
Poe
Dickinson

4th Period
Shakespeare
Whitman
Dickinson
Poe
Lear
Browning

During our Poetry Island celebration Mrs. Scales read “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop. Mrs. Scales admitted that she wasn’t very good at writing original poetry but she really liked poetry appreciation classes in college. “The Fish” is one of Bishop’s poems that has stuck with her over the years because it is so vivid and has wonderful imagery throughout. Bishop, like many of us goes fishing either for the pleasure of the activity, or maybe because she wants to eat some fresh fish, however she changes her mind because of the condition of the fish she catches. Mrs. Scales likes how through personification and descriptive reflection the poet demonstrates the change in how she feels towards the fish.

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn’t fight.
He hadn’t fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
–the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly–
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
–It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
–if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels–until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

After finishing the Poetry Island celebration the final essay writing assignment was reviewed again and discussed further. Today we focused on making sure we read all of the instructions completely and how to use the rubric. It was explained that this is a lengthy assignment that will take most students three hours or more to complete. All of the five steps of writing will be used: Pre writing (notes from W-R’s notebook), Draft (write the essay), Revision (read the draft and make the big changes, add more, rearrange, take stuff out), Edit (read again and fix convention errors), Publish.

After the editing stage each student will still need to read their essay at least six more, separate times. This is where the rubric comes in. Looking at one writing trait at a time, read the essay and make notes on the rubric for that specific trait. For example in the word choice section of the rubric a score of five is determined by having picked just the right words to express your ideas and feeling about each poet. Every word seems exactly right, especially for each poet. We used examples as a class for what the means, such as words for Poe might be scary or dark, Gothic sounding words, while words for Lear would be much more whimsical and playful sounding. In after reading the final draft of the essay for word choice “some slang words” are found, a note needs to be made on the rubric and the essay revised to bring that score up to the 5 point box. The rubric is not just used as a scoring sheet, but rather to show the writer what needs to be improved upon in their essay. There are six writing traits on the rubric that need to be evaluated with notes taken on the rubric and revisions made to the essay before turning the essay and rubric in on Monday.

Today each period was given another 20 to 30 minutes of class time or more to work on the essay assignment. Mrs. Scales said this was important work time to have in class to get a good solid start on the assignment because she was right here where we could ask any questions we needed. She also reminded us that if we have questions over the weekend while we are working on the assignment we could use our assignment instructions handout, our rubric or read the blog entries from this week. If all else failed and we really needed her help, she said she is fine with us calling her at home.