Week of February 22 through February 24

Study the helping verbs. This Friday, students will take a test in which they will have to recognize the linking verbs. In other words, they will not have to pull them out of their head from memory. Instead, they will have to do something like circle the helping verb out of a list of other verbs.

Here are the helping verbs:

may, might, must
be, being, been, am, is, are, was, were
do, does, did
should, could, would
have, has, had
will, can, shall

Do You Need to Retest on Figurative Langauge or Conjunctions?

Students:  Do you need a retest on the Figurative Lanugage Test or the Conjunctions Test? If so, have you turned in your relearning work to Ms. Jackson?  On Tuesday, February 14 Students that need to take retests will be provided the opportunity to do so in class.  Please come prepared.  Thanks!

"Flipping the Classroom" ***UPDATED 2/8/12***

Due to technical issues beyond my control, the "flipping the classroom" video project has been back-burnered. Unfortunately, the speed of the FCSS server is slower than I had hoped and that issue combined with the variable speeds of students' home internet connections made viewing the video impossible for many students. Therefore, students will NOT be held accountable for the assignment I had originally proposed.

First: Don't forget to study for your quiz tomorrow on coordinating and subordinating conjunctions!  You must be able to list them all on a sheet of paper (see yesterday's post below).

In class today, I discussed that I had recently read some research regarding a practice called "flipping the classroom." It is a technique in which teachers deliver lessons during homework time, and students partake in assignments during classroom time hereby "flipping" the times we are generally accustomed to using for teaching and classwork.  In order to make this possible, students will be required to watch instructional videos of me teaching from home. Students reacted very positively to this concept in class today when I showed a sample video in class.  It may take a little while for the video to load on yoru computer, but here is a link:  CLICK HERE.


Assignment:  DUE THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9
1-Add Kinds of Sentences to your Mead 5-Star Table of Contents
2-Watch the video.
3-On your Kinds of Sentences page in your Mead 5-Star, copy (from the video) down the definitions for each type of sentence.
4-Regardless of what the video says: Copy the down all of the practice sentences at the end of the video, but only write down the sentence types for numbers 1-5. We will do the remainder in class on Thursday.

Week of February 6 through February 10

On Monday, students were presented with a list of coordinating and subordinating conjunctions. These must be memorized for a test on Wednesday. The rest of this week will be spent reviewing for the Language Arts Benchmark Test which will be on Monday!

Coordinating Conjunctions (Remember FANBOYS):  For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, and So
Subordinating Conjunctions (Remember: O N  A  WH I T E   B U S: only if, now that, after, although, as, when, whereas, while, whenever, wherever, whether or not, in case, if, though, even though, even if, before, because, until, unless, since, so (that)

Exception: On Wednesday's test, students may write only ONE of the WH subordinating conjunctions and still earn full credit for the WH portion of the subordinating conjunctions (since there are so many). 

Don't be a Pack Follower...

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/national-geographic-channel/specials-1/unlikely-animal-friends/ngc-the-orangutan-and-the-hound/