Week at a glance October 24 - 28, 2011

Curriculum focus: determines meaning of words through knowledge of word structure (11.1.3.K3), generating writing based on personal experience (11.7.1.1), organizing and planning a written piece (11.7.1.3), shares a draft with others to elicit feedback (11.7.1.5), revises the draft (11.7.1.6), edits the draft (11.7.1.7), composes persuasive writing (11.7.2.1c), adapts writing by identifying, analyzing, and understanding audience (11.7.2.2), writes using one or more text structures when appropriate to a achieve a specific purpose or to address a specific audience: problem/solution (11.7.2.4d), develops clear and purposeful ideas with sufficient evidence and/or relevant detail to satisfy purpose using sufficient evidence, examples, anecdotes, quotations, expert opinions, and/or statistics (11.7.2.1d), organizes ideas in a logical structure (11.7.3.2), writes with energy and enthusiasm (11.7.3.3), selects and employs words to convey message in an interesting, precise, and natural way (11.7.3.4), creates text that flows easily with a variety of sentence structures (11.7.3.5), uses standard writing conventions effectively to enhance readability (11.7.3.6)

Root words for this week (root - definition - examples):

1. aud - hear or listen - audience, audio, audition
2. dict - say or speak - dictate, dictionary, diction
3. path - emotion - pathetic, sympathy, empathy
4. test - witness or declare - contest, protest, testify
5. logia, ology - science or study of - biology, psychology, etymology
6. -ist - one who does or practices - racist, terrorist, Buddhist, novelist

Mr. Ritchie gone Oct 26 - Oct 28: As students have heard, I will be gone for three days this week chairing the Centennial Conference for the Kansas Association of Teachers of English (KATE).  I am sorry to miss three days with my students; however, the conference is an excellent opportunity to meet and learn from some of the best and most passionate English teachers from across the state.  I will take on the role of President of KATE at the end of the conference.  For more details, visit the KATE link under the Recommended Links section.

This is our first full week of school in almost more than a month.  During this full week, we'll begin work on the Junior Research Essay.  In addition to analysis of a problem, writing this essay highlights two essential skills: summarizing information and integrating research.  Those two skills will be the focus of this week.  We'll start the week with a review and some practice of these skills by working with a simple two-page essay.  Students will then work with a much larger essay, the recent cover story "Beautiful Brains" published in the October 2011 National Geographic.  By the end of the week, students will answer guiding questions to help them decode the essay, summarize it, and then respond to it while integrating citations.  In addition to our usual Friday root words quiz, students will also complete a topic proposal highlighting what they propose to analyze over the next two - three weeks.

• Mon: New root words; quiz on Friday.  Junior Research Essay - Come to class on Friday prepared to write about a topic.  Summarizing information.  Integrating and citing a source in a paragraph.  Practice with a sample essay.
• Tues: Go over lesson plans for the next three days.  Begin reading/discussing sample research essay: "Beautiful Brains."
• Wed: Junior Research Essay - answer questions over "Beautiful Brains," due by the end of the hour.
• Thurs: Junior Research Essay - create a summary and analysis of "Beautiful Brains," due by the end of the hour.
• Fri: Root words quiz.  Any work not done earlier should by in the box today.  Junior Research Essay - Topic proposal due by the end of the hour.