L.A. 8
We are continuing to read Romeo and Juliet this week, and should be nearly done with Act 1. We've added lots of pages to our Interactive Notebook, including a journal entry and notes on Act 1 Scene 1 (1.1). We will also do a small art project this week - creating masks similar to the ones Romeo and Juliet would have worn on the night we met. During this time, we will discuss various symbols in the play, such as stars, and how we can represent them on our masks. Homework includes Main Idea Paragraph #2. These Main Idea Paragraphs are part of the school wide initiative to help students understand complex texts and increase literacy scores on state testing. With weekly practice, students will become pros at recognizing the main idea of any text.
Contemporary Literature
We are over halfway through Macbeth. This week, we are finishing up Act 3. We have discussed the roles of ghosts in literature, the role of guilt in our lives, and the motif of deception and truth in the play. As part of the latter motif, we created masks that explored the idea of lies revealing truths about certain characters. We also read about the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare's authorship - did William Shakespeare really write the work attributed to him, or was it Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford?
Writing Lab.
It's a new session of Writing Lab.! We're off to a great start this trimester with our new cohort. We've begun by discussing the challenges we face that keep us from writing - anything from distractions and difficulties with spelling to feeling insecure and tackling bad memories. We also talked about various strategies we could use to combat these difficulties. Before we begin our "Gift of Gratitude" scrapbook, the project that will be the focus of the entire class, we are practicing various writing skills, such as Significant Details and Show, Don't Tell.