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Tuesday, June 03, 2008

The Watsons Go to Birmingham II

Students are required to read one chapter in the book each night and, of course, complete a well written chapter summary. We are up to chapter six as of today.

I have noticed some students are indeed making the effort to correct punctuation and capitalization errors. Well done! These skills need to be a habit! However, awkward phrasing and sentence structure continues to be a problem. Students are aware of the strategies for fixing grammatical errors, not the least of which is to read their writing aloud where possible, whisper or mouth the words where reading aloud may be a distraction to others and, finally, to develop an 'internal voice' to identify where improvements are needed.

Of course, this skill will not correct nonstandard verbal habits that find their way into writing. Students need to apply their knowledge of the rules of grammar and, at last, ask for editing assistance.

Due to the Social Studies State Assessment, I will not see period three until Thursday. They need to keep up during this time and expect a quiz.

The first spelling/vocab review list was copied down yesterday. Students were told that defintions, completed by Thursday, would result in 25 extra credit points added to their last quiz. List one is as follows:

REVIEW LIST #1


against
believe
occurred
embarrass
familiar
envelope
language
jealous
weight
similarities
article
enough
characteristic
commitment
independence
mathematics
privilege
parallel
immigrant
beautiful