Week 5-- Day 19

Hi again! Here's today's recap-- I don't like to be behind in my work!

We started class with Pomp & Circumstance-- a classic that is played at graduations. Every time I hear it, I get goosebumps thinking about my own graduations. From there, we moved on to our idiom of the day "We're not in Kansas anymore." I introduced it with a photo from Kansas for you to get an idea of what Kansas is like. Then, I showed you the clip and meaning from an on-line dictionary. The Wizard of Oz is full phrases that we commonly use. Another famous one is "There's no place like home". I've also seen several bumper stickerss related to the movie. Anyways, next time you're feeling a little lost in the grammar lesson, you can say "You know, Sara, I'm feeling that we're not in Kansas anymore" :)

We did the game to make adjective clauses for a few reasons. I wanted to do a different kind of grammar activity than what the book has. I think all of you learned at least one new vocabulary word. This also gave us a chance to practice some pronuciation that you asked about yesterday: litter, little, leader, liter. Plus, it's a good brainteaser to figure out what the words had in common. Overall, I thought you did quite well, so I didn't feel that I needed to rewrite the rules on the board again. Your success on the grammar exercises also showed me that you are ready to move on to the next section. Your homework will be on the next section even though we probably won't have time to do grammar tomorrow. Our schedule is going to be a little bit strange in the morning. We will begin class with our song and idiom. Then, we will have our green cleaning presenation and reading assessment. I have to go with the dates that the speakers have open. Even though this isn't the best day, I didn't want to wait for a couple of weeks when we have finished all of the environmental lessons.

After the break, we finished going over the answers to the reading on the effects of global warming. I thought it was the perfect lead-in to the article, New-York sized ice collapses off Antartic. When I saw this article last week, I knew I had to use it in class. It directly related to Marguerite's comments on the glaciers/sea level when we began our work on the environment. I mixed up the headline for you to unscramble to catch your attention and get you to think about the grammar (where is the verb? subject? etc.) Then, I had you write down questions that you wanted answered to get you to think about the article some more. We'll answer those questions on Monday when we finish this lesson. You can definitely identify the main ideas in a new article quickly and accurately. I was impressed by your list of adjectives that you chose to describe your feelings on the article. When I was in high school or college (I can't remember which-- maybe both?), my teachers never wanted us to use words like good, bad, or nice. They wanted us to stretch our vocabulary. This is exactly what I wanted you to do, too.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow. The green cleaning presentation should be fun, interesting and informative. I'm confident you'll do well on the reading assessment, too.

I hope you are all enjoying your evening. See you in 13 1/2 hours! How time flies!