Week 6-- Day 22

Good afternoon!

Welcome to our new students! Andrea, Asia and Veronica have joined us at the midpoint! We're happy to have you study with us. Be sure to ask me or any of your classmates when you have questions. We want you to feel comfortable in class.

This morning's phrasal verbs were introduced with a cartoon-- to take apart, to put together, to think ahead. It was good to see that the meaning seemed clear to you. You were able to identify them and recognize that to take apart and to put together are antonyms (words with opposite meanings).

Then, we continued our work on adjective clauses. I gave you the Portland/Seattle chart + "fill in the blank" worksheet for a few reasons. I wanted to use a more meaningful context than what the book offers. I also wanted to see if you could figure out the adjective clauses. In many ways, this activity was a review that allowed me to see if you have been able to catch the gist of the rules up to this point. The worksheet also allowed you to look for the pattern relating to commas. Today, I emphasized that proper nouns always use commas and never use that. The commas are used to indicate that the adjective is not necessary to identify the noun being described. The second point is that common nouns usually don't need commas and can use any of the connecting words including that. The sentences you made at the end of the lesson showed that you could apply these comma rules in your own writing. Tomorrow will be a bit tricky as I show the meaning differences when commas are used with common nouns. Again, this lesson is especially important in formal writing.

After the break, we did one more brainstorm on global warming. When I get all the results tallied, as a class, we need to decide what we will do with our ideas.

We got to begin history (one of my favorite subjects as a student!). I had you sort the vocabulary to get you to think about the topic and share your knowledge with your partners. I didn't expect you to know all the words; I just wanted to introduce the concepts to you. Dictation is a great way to focus your listening and have spelling practice. I used the dictation to further introduce the general topics we will talk about: The Lousiana Purchase, Lewis & Clark, Native Americans and the Pioneers.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's class and I hope you are, too. I have a cartoon for you to start the class and a new song for the break-- requested by one of your classmates. Have a great night!