Weekly Objectives for 3/3/14 - 3/7/14

Overview - The focus this week will once again be on reading "paired passages."  Students will learn how to extract vital information from fictional and non-fictional texts.  The overall emphasis will be placed upon "deep reading."  Various types of responses are expected: multiple choice, short response and extended essay.  As usual, we will work in collaborative groups to break down the information and to process the answers in a manner that meets the overall objectives.  
       Monday - 3/3/14 - Students will be given time to read independently toward their book goals, or to catch up on on "the Boy in the Painted Cave.  Our Monday meeting went way over its allotted time.  Classes were cut very short today.
       Tuesday - 3/4/14 - We are back at it.  Today we introduced two new reading passages to the students.  I reviewed the strategies for "deep reading," and also how to attack multiple choice questions through the eyes of a poor test-taker.  Students are learning how to find the answer before even looking through the options.  They are also expected to take notes as they read.  In those notes should be: gist, vocab, author's purpose, theme, similarities and character traits.
       Wednesday 3/5/14 - The focus turned toward the short response answer today.  Students continued to focus on the same paired passages, but were expected to use notes taken from the day before to answer the responses.  We reviewed how a short response needs to be clear, concise and to the point.  It must have evidence from the text to support any claims made.  The biggest issues we addressed were using correct grammar, capitalization, spelling and sentence structure.  These are areas that drastically need to be cleared up to move to the next stage in the writing process.
       Thursday 3/6/14 - We move forward in our "paired passages'" lessons today and focus on the extended response.  Here students learn how to carefully organize their notes into paragraphs.  They learn to create meaningful topic sentences and then justify them with warranted evidence from the actual passages.  Today's activity requires the students to select a "word" that has special meaning to them.  They must then create a story that studies the origin of the word.  They then must compare two vocabulary words from separate passages by finding the similarities.  As usual, they must use supporting evidence to support their claims.
       Friday - 3/7/14 - In class, we worked on finishing our extended response questions.  We reviewed how to support claims with text-based evidence.  Many students were not able to complete the task in the allotted time.  Time management will be the focus next week when we get right back into paired-passages.