MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Location: file:///C:/CD288656/10 16.htm Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii" October 16, 2009

 

October 16, 2009

 

Good afternoon:

 

With the rains this week came a flood of learning in literature. Among the highlights:

 

In literature, we start= ed our first novel, Julie of the Wolves. We built background knowledge for the novel by reading non-fiction articles ab= out wolves. This coincided with a lesson about finding main idea in paragraphs. Students learned a two-step process for finding main idea: determine what t= he subject of the paragraph is by looking at key or repeated words, headlines,= and the first sentence. Once the subject is identified, figure out what the author says about the subject. What the author wants the reader to remember most is the main idea. We also watched a video about the Arctic tundra biome, and practiced taking notes while listening to informat= ion.

 

For the weekend, studen= ts have been assigned to read through the end of Part 1 = of the novel. While reading, I have asked students to identify character traits th= ey see in Julie, the main character. To help them, we learned about characteri= zation, or  how the author reveals information about the protagonist. In Reader’s Handbook (p. 340-341), we read about the ways authors often give info about the char= acters:

«Marie DiPietro<= /st1:PersonName>  driving= on October 27.

 

Conferences – Don’t forg= et that conferences are schedule for the week of November 2, with half days on November 4-6. Sign-ups will be posted soon.

 

Please let me know if y= ou have questions or concerns.  Enjoy = your weekend!

 

Jeff