Good morning! I am up bright and early today! As you all know, my husband and I have been using a lot of elbow grease for the last month or so to get our house ready to put on the market. Well, the house has been up since Wednesday night and 4 people have looked at it so far and 2 more are looking at it today. My realtor said we should have at least 1 offer by Monday. Wow. My husband and I are shocked. I'll keep you posted.
Thursday was our 3rd guest speaker, chosen by you. Dolly is a wonderful resource. She sincerely wants you to contact her if you have further questions. In my opinion, she gives an organized, informational and relevant presentation. I saw her in the fall, too, and I learned new things since then! We will have a listening assessment on Monday to check your comprehension. These quizzes are important to check to see if you can follow the speaker and if you can pick out the important points. This is my way of beginning to prepare you for future lectures in college classes. However, even if you are not moving on to college classes, all of us (native speakers included) can use practice in focusing our listening skills.
After that, I snuck in my idiom-- 2 peas in a pod and the song of the day. We had lots of great discussion at this point about the idiom. (Thank you for your questions. I learned something new,too. I didn't know all the details of the idiom.) You also learned the word, goon. Please continue to ask questions on slang/vocabulary you heard-- this is the most meaningful and relevant way for me to help you with the vocabulary you hear in your daily life.
We did get to our writing assessments. I will return them to you on Monday. The homework for the week will be to rewrite them. The only way to improve your writing is by writing (and rewriting). If you are thinking about transitioning on to GED at Town Plaza or a college program, I strongly recommend that you work on your writing skills in our class. You will save yourself time and money because you will place higher on the placement test.
I hope all of you are still snoozing and will have a wonderful weekend. See you on Monday.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Week 6-- Day 23
Good morning!
Yesterday's class was a busy one. We began with the accounting cartoon-- some new words, but it wasn't exciting as others. I promise today's will be better!
We did a dictation to see if you could hear the pauses (commas) when I read the sentences. Of course, this exercise gives you practice in listening for specific sounds and spelling. Basically, you use commas with common nouns when the information isn't necessary to recognize/identify the noun. It is difficult to recognize this is our own writing. Here are two examples. My dad, who lives in Michigan, will turn 72 in September. I don't get to see my cousin who lives in Myrtle Beach very often. My dad needs commas because we know that I have one. My cousin doesn't need commas and the information is necessary to identify my cousin in Myrtle Beach instead of my cousins in Michigan, Ohio, or Kentucky.
After that, we started to organize our group projects again. Fortunately, it seems that all the activities have worked out. A few students still need to do their activities, but they will be able to finish them early next week. I hope you will find the group project to be a good experience to learn outside of the classroom and have the opportunity to speak in front of others. We will talk more about the speaking/presentation rubrics next week.
We returned to history with our scanning activity on the Lousiana Purchase. I timed you to give you the time pressure to have you answer quickly. The questions in the activity were all comprehension (detail) questions. You could find all the answers in the passage/on the map. On the other hand, the follow-up activity on the NYC-sized ice focused much more on inference, a much more difficult reading skills. Even though they are both reading activities, they work on very different skills.
We finally finished the error correction from the journals. As I said at the end of class, if your biggest grammar difficulties are articles and prepositions, that's a good thing. I find them to be the most difficult grammar topics to teach and learn because there many, many exceptions to the basic rules. We will be following up on these topics with lessons in the coming weeks.
See you very soon.
Yesterday's class was a busy one. We began with the accounting cartoon-- some new words, but it wasn't exciting as others. I promise today's will be better!
We did a dictation to see if you could hear the pauses (commas) when I read the sentences. Of course, this exercise gives you practice in listening for specific sounds and spelling. Basically, you use commas with common nouns when the information isn't necessary to recognize/identify the noun. It is difficult to recognize this is our own writing. Here are two examples. My dad, who lives in Michigan, will turn 72 in September. I don't get to see my cousin who lives in Myrtle Beach very often. My dad needs commas because we know that I have one. My cousin doesn't need commas and the information is necessary to identify my cousin in Myrtle Beach instead of my cousins in Michigan, Ohio, or Kentucky.
After that, we started to organize our group projects again. Fortunately, it seems that all the activities have worked out. A few students still need to do their activities, but they will be able to finish them early next week. I hope you will find the group project to be a good experience to learn outside of the classroom and have the opportunity to speak in front of others. We will talk more about the speaking/presentation rubrics next week.
We returned to history with our scanning activity on the Lousiana Purchase. I timed you to give you the time pressure to have you answer quickly. The questions in the activity were all comprehension (detail) questions. You could find all the answers in the passage/on the map. On the other hand, the follow-up activity on the NYC-sized ice focused much more on inference, a much more difficult reading skills. Even though they are both reading activities, they work on very different skills.
We finally finished the error correction from the journals. As I said at the end of class, if your biggest grammar difficulties are articles and prepositions, that's a good thing. I find them to be the most difficult grammar topics to teach and learn because there many, many exceptions to the basic rules. We will be following up on these topics with lessons in the coming weeks.
See you very soon.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
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!
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!
Week 6-- Day 21
Good morning everyone! I was dead tired last night and crashed when my daughters went to bed. I think I did too much cleaning over the weekend-- :).
Well, yesterday we began class with the slang, broke-- not having any money. Ruslan introduced us to another meaning of broke (ugly) that he showed me on in an on-line dictionary. He has a good method of increasing his vocabulary. I'd like him to explain to you what he does sometime this week.
We moved on to adjective clauses-- reviewing the basic forms and then introducing whose/where/when. The difficult part about whose is remembering that whose is for both people and things. I'm sure that you are already using where/when in your writing/speaking. You seemed to breeze through the exercises, so I will start the work with commas this morning. The comma work is confusing, but it is very important if you are planning to move on to classes at Clark. Comma placement is very important when you get to English Composition courses.
I returned your assessments and gave you a chance to reflect on them in your journals. Overall, the class seemed to perform as I expected on the assessments. Be sure to check off your assessment scores on your Accomplishments page (green paper), so you can easily see your progress in the class so far.
We are basically done with the environmental unit of our class (except for voting) after finishing yesterday's news article (NYC-sized ice...). This lesson was very interesting to me. I realized how rich the activity became because I had asked you to create questions based on the headline. By answering the questions yesterday, you had a fantastic opportunity to work on inferencing. Inferencing is when you have to draw your own conclusions or guess about the topic. We do this all the time in our daily lives, but don't realize it. I don't think I could have come up with better questions on my own.
Thank you for a very exciting 5 weeks. We've had lots of interesting discussions and opportunities to reflect on the environmental issues and our own actions. I'm looking forward to better weather, so I can begin riding my bike to work again. I've also decided to change my cleaning habits and be greener. What will you do?
My homework for this week and next is to prepare lessons on articles/prepositions/infintive-gerund (meaning change). I promise to fit them in this quarter. Be sure to tell me what you need. I sincerely need your input to put together the most relevant and meaningful class for you.
I hope you are having a relaxing morning-- perhaps you're still snoozing or enjoying a cup of java? My house is still peaceful and quiet. The girls will wake up around 7.
See you in a few hours.
Well, yesterday we began class with the slang, broke-- not having any money. Ruslan introduced us to another meaning of broke (ugly) that he showed me on in an on-line dictionary. He has a good method of increasing his vocabulary. I'd like him to explain to you what he does sometime this week.
We moved on to adjective clauses-- reviewing the basic forms and then introducing whose/where/when. The difficult part about whose is remembering that whose is for both people and things. I'm sure that you are already using where/when in your writing/speaking. You seemed to breeze through the exercises, so I will start the work with commas this morning. The comma work is confusing, but it is very important if you are planning to move on to classes at Clark. Comma placement is very important when you get to English Composition courses.
I returned your assessments and gave you a chance to reflect on them in your journals. Overall, the class seemed to perform as I expected on the assessments. Be sure to check off your assessment scores on your Accomplishments page (green paper), so you can easily see your progress in the class so far.
We are basically done with the environmental unit of our class (except for voting) after finishing yesterday's news article (NYC-sized ice...). This lesson was very interesting to me. I realized how rich the activity became because I had asked you to create questions based on the headline. By answering the questions yesterday, you had a fantastic opportunity to work on inferencing. Inferencing is when you have to draw your own conclusions or guess about the topic. We do this all the time in our daily lives, but don't realize it. I don't think I could have come up with better questions on my own.
Thank you for a very exciting 5 weeks. We've had lots of interesting discussions and opportunities to reflect on the environmental issues and our own actions. I'm looking forward to better weather, so I can begin riding my bike to work again. I've also decided to change my cleaning habits and be greener. What will you do?
My homework for this week and next is to prepare lessons on articles/prepositions/infintive-gerund (meaning change). I promise to fit them in this quarter. Be sure to tell me what you need. I sincerely need your input to put together the most relevant and meaningful class for you.
I hope you are having a relaxing morning-- perhaps you're still snoozing or enjoying a cup of java? My house is still peaceful and quiet. The girls will wake up around 7.
See you in a few hours.
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