Good evening. Guess what my daughters just put in the dvd player?? The Wizard of Oz. For some reason, Anna decided to dress up as Dorothy (Anna was Dorothy for Halloween) and Emma put on a fancy sundress. They will definitely be disappointed when they have to turn it off as soon as this post is published!
We began class with Think outside the box. Go to Taco Bell's web site: http://www.tacobell.com/ and you will see Think outside the bun. Remember, in this case, bun means bread for hamburgers. There area lots of other meanings, including hot dog bun (bread for hotdogs).
Then, Jen arrived before we could go over the error correction that we haven't gotten around to finishing. I'll find a way to finish it Monday for sure! Everyone seemed to be able to follow Jen's presentation. You asked good questions and seemed engaged. You chose a great topic-- I thought it was an excellent way to wrap up our environmental work. Our last day on the environment will be Monday. Then, we will move on to history: The Movement West.
Then, you took your first reading assessment. The assessment is testing your reading skills; it's not a memory test (like the vocabulary quiz). I'm excited to see how you did because you have been doing well on our in-class activities over the last 5 weeks. We've worked on reading in many different ways-- timed readings/news articles/internet/charts/ged readings/test prep/main ideas-details-vocabulary-opinion, etc.
Have a great weekend!
p.s. I will buy my first box of Borax tomorrow. I'll let you know if it really works on water marks/stains on Monday!
p.p.s. I thought of all of you on the way home when I saw a bright orange sign saying Litter crew. A group either will be or had already picked up the trash on the street.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
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!
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!
Week 5-- Day 18
Good evening!
Here I am, a day late, in recapping Tuesday's class. I have no good excuse. I was procrastinating and then I blanked on it completely-- I completely forgot!
Anyways...Tuesday was fun. I took Ken's idiom to get out of Dodge to begin class. I found the youtube clip from Gunsmoke, a classic western TV show, to show you the roots of the idiom. Then, I showed you the headline about "The Big 3" (Chrysler, GM & Ford) to demonstrate how it is used in present-day English. We also did get to hear the rest of our song of the day, Stand By Me, and see photos of Jane's granddaughter's graduation. (Those photos prompted me to mention how much I like graduations and Pomp & Circumstance to become Wednesday's class song.)
I have one request for all of my students. If you graduate from Clark College &/or a university here in the United States, please let me know. I promise that I will do my best to attend (of course, Clark is NO problem) if at all possible.
After that, we went back to our grammar: adjective clauses. I had different students read the example sentences with the clauses to correct for a few reasons. It gives individual students a chance to speak loudly and practice pronunciation. Everyone is listening carefully, so I can analyze your speech more easily. Also, the other students need to focus their attention one of their classmates and understand their pronunciation. Of course, it's very important to understand native speakers of English, but it's also very important to understand people whose native language is not English. It is a reality of today's society that so many residents in this area speak English as their second language. I noticed that you seemed to do well with the basic rules. I saw this when we went over the examples and the exercises in the text. I believe that adjective clauses are key to advanced writing skills. If you start looking for them, you will find them all over, especially newspaper articles.
After finishing the grammar, we took the assessment on Ken's visit. You did extremely well. Actually, I wasn't sure how you would do because he spoke fast, has an East Coast accent and didn't write very much on the board. Since you were able to pass the quiz, this shows me that your listening skills are strong!
We finally finished up recycling with the short quiz and writing down your list of ways to support recycling (you'll be voting again tomorrow). We transitioned into global warming by refreshing our memories with the meanings of global warming and climate change. The scanning that we did was based on An Inconvenient Truth's website. I timed you to give you the pressure of a test-taking situation. Though we didn't finish going over the answers, I was ok with that because I thought a lot of good questions and points (especially on pronunciation) were brought up.
Every day, by participating, asking questions, and making comments, you contribute to the evolving curriculum of our class. Thank you!!
I must go now...I have Wednesdays' post to publish!
Here I am, a day late, in recapping Tuesday's class. I have no good excuse. I was procrastinating and then I blanked on it completely-- I completely forgot!
Anyways...Tuesday was fun. I took Ken's idiom to get out of Dodge to begin class. I found the youtube clip from Gunsmoke, a classic western TV show, to show you the roots of the idiom. Then, I showed you the headline about "The Big 3" (Chrysler, GM & Ford) to demonstrate how it is used in present-day English. We also did get to hear the rest of our song of the day, Stand By Me, and see photos of Jane's granddaughter's graduation. (Those photos prompted me to mention how much I like graduations and Pomp & Circumstance to become Wednesday's class song.)
I have one request for all of my students. If you graduate from Clark College &/or a university here in the United States, please let me know. I promise that I will do my best to attend (of course, Clark is NO problem) if at all possible.
After that, we went back to our grammar: adjective clauses. I had different students read the example sentences with the clauses to correct for a few reasons. It gives individual students a chance to speak loudly and practice pronunciation. Everyone is listening carefully, so I can analyze your speech more easily. Also, the other students need to focus their attention one of their classmates and understand their pronunciation. Of course, it's very important to understand native speakers of English, but it's also very important to understand people whose native language is not English. It is a reality of today's society that so many residents in this area speak English as their second language. I noticed that you seemed to do well with the basic rules. I saw this when we went over the examples and the exercises in the text. I believe that adjective clauses are key to advanced writing skills. If you start looking for them, you will find them all over, especially newspaper articles.
After finishing the grammar, we took the assessment on Ken's visit. You did extremely well. Actually, I wasn't sure how you would do because he spoke fast, has an East Coast accent and didn't write very much on the board. Since you were able to pass the quiz, this shows me that your listening skills are strong!
We finally finished up recycling with the short quiz and writing down your list of ways to support recycling (you'll be voting again tomorrow). We transitioned into global warming by refreshing our memories with the meanings of global warming and climate change. The scanning that we did was based on An Inconvenient Truth's website. I timed you to give you the pressure of a test-taking situation. Though we didn't finish going over the answers, I was ok with that because I thought a lot of good questions and points (especially on pronunciation) were brought up.
Every day, by participating, asking questions, and making comments, you contribute to the evolving curriculum of our class. Thank you!!
I must go now...I have Wednesdays' post to publish!
Monday, May 4, 2009
Week 5-- Day 17
Good afternoon!
Today was not a typical class. We started out with our song, Stand by Me, (which we'll have tomorrow, too because we didn't have a "normal" break time). I invited Porter's students to join us because 1) his class was going to join us for the guest speaker anyway 2) the students would have the chance to have class since they came all the way to Clark for class.
We started adjective clauses with a short dictation to give you spelling practice with reductions. As we discussed today, adjective clauses function like adjectives. They describe nouns. Just like a noun clause, they need a subject + verb. Unlike an adjective, an adjective clause will come after the noun being described.
We were able to finish most of the rules: That is for both people and things. Who/whom is only for people; which is only for things. When the noun being described is the subject of the adjective clause, you need to use that/who for people; that/which for things. The teacher who/that has an office next to mine is Priscila. The purse that/which is on the floor is mine.
When the noun being described is the object of the adjective clause, you need to use that/who/whom/[nothing] for people. You need to use that/which/[nothing] for things. The person that/who/whom/ [nothing] I saw on the bus is over there. The coffee that/which/[nothing] I had this morning was too strong.
When the noun being described is the object of a preposition, you have 1 more option: preposition + which (things)/whom (people). The friend that/who/whom/[nothing] I talked to over the weekend lives in Portland. The friend to whom I talked over the weekend lives in Portland. The museum that/which/ [nothing] I went to was interesting. The museum to which I went was interesting.
We'll be going over these rules tomorrow and practice them too. We'll also have our listening assessment for you to check how much you could understand from today's presentation. Ken spoke quickly with a bit of idioms/slang. I decided to use one of his phrases for tomorrow's class-- go to the class web site for a preview.
See you in the morning!
Today was not a typical class. We started out with our song, Stand by Me, (which we'll have tomorrow, too because we didn't have a "normal" break time). I invited Porter's students to join us because 1) his class was going to join us for the guest speaker anyway 2) the students would have the chance to have class since they came all the way to Clark for class.
We started adjective clauses with a short dictation to give you spelling practice with reductions. As we discussed today, adjective clauses function like adjectives. They describe nouns. Just like a noun clause, they need a subject + verb. Unlike an adjective, an adjective clause will come after the noun being described.
We were able to finish most of the rules: That is for both people and things. Who/whom is only for people; which is only for things. When the noun being described is the subject of the adjective clause, you need to use that/who for people; that/which for things. The teacher who/that has an office next to mine is Priscila. The purse that/which is on the floor is mine.
When the noun being described is the object of the adjective clause, you need to use that/who/whom/[nothing] for people. You need to use that/which/[nothing] for things. The person that/who/whom/ [nothing] I saw on the bus is over there. The coffee that/which/[nothing] I had this morning was too strong.
When the noun being described is the object of a preposition, you have 1 more option: preposition + which (things)/whom (people). The friend that/who/whom/[nothing] I talked to over the weekend lives in Portland. The friend to whom I talked over the weekend lives in Portland. The museum that/which/ [nothing] I went to was interesting. The museum to which I went was interesting.
We'll be going over these rules tomorrow and practice them too. We'll also have our listening assessment for you to check how much you could understand from today's presentation. Ken spoke quickly with a bit of idioms/slang. I decided to use one of his phrases for tomorrow's class-- go to the class web site for a preview.
See you in the morning!
Week 4-- Day 16
Happy Monday. Here is my late recap.
Our idiom for the day was poker face-- when you don't show any emotion on your face. I also decided to add music at Kim's request. Thursday's song was "Don't worry be happy," specifically chosen because of our vocabulary and grammar quizzes.
Results for both quizzes were strong-- you'll get them back today. If you want an extra quiz to take home for practice, please ask. You're definitely ready to move on to our new grammar section, adjective clauses, today!
A little after 10:00, we'll be having our first guest speaker, Ken Pacheco, come to our class and talk with us about personal safety and campus security. Take notes during the presentation to use while you take the listening assessment. We'll take the assessement today if there's time. Remember the only way to really check your understanding is by taking an assessment of some kind.
See you very soon!
p.s. Here is the link to the Oregon Coast Aquarium: http://www.aquarium.org/ . This is where I went with my daughter for her overnight trip with her class. It's interesting. You might want to check it out if you get a chance!
Our idiom for the day was poker face-- when you don't show any emotion on your face. I also decided to add music at Kim's request. Thursday's song was "Don't worry be happy," specifically chosen because of our vocabulary and grammar quizzes.
Results for both quizzes were strong-- you'll get them back today. If you want an extra quiz to take home for practice, please ask. You're definitely ready to move on to our new grammar section, adjective clauses, today!
A little after 10:00, we'll be having our first guest speaker, Ken Pacheco, come to our class and talk with us about personal safety and campus security. Take notes during the presentation to use while you take the listening assessment. We'll take the assessement today if there's time. Remember the only way to really check your understanding is by taking an assessment of some kind.
See you very soon!
p.s. Here is the link to the Oregon Coast Aquarium: http://www.aquarium.org/ . This is where I went with my daughter for her overnight trip with her class. It's interesting. You might want to check it out if you get a chance!
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