Week 3: This class rocks!

Whew! We packed, crammed, shoved and otherwise jammed a TON of information into yesterday's class. For those with me last year (whom I love and am so glad to have back) none of it was new -- and I could tell on many of their faces! Encourage them at home this week to look for the holes in their mastery of EEL Lessons 1-3. I realize they know a great deal of the information, but I also know they haven't mastered every piece. Challenge them! And let them know I need their participation in class even if they believe they've "been there and done that!" Please tell those sixth graders not to check out on me yet; we've got 21 weeks to go. :)

For my newbies, yesterday may have seemed overwhelming. But it blends beautifully at home, and if you'll spend a mere 30 minutes a day working together this week, much of it will begin to make sense and flow. Mastery will not likely come. But work diligently, memorize what you can, and you'll meet success.

Now, moving on to this week's EEL focus at home, please continue reviewing Weeks 1 and 2 Memory Work and charts, which should take less than five minutes daily, and add in Week 3.

Yesterday in class, I overviewed four things:

• simple sentences (our first sentence structure)
• nouns and pronouns
• S-Vi sentences (our first sentence pattern)
• EEL Task #3 (which guides us through sentence classification of structure, purpose and pattern).

The kids did really well in class, so spend time at home this week building and reinforcing. Use the memory work and charts to overview. Use the lesson in your guide to teach; it's detailed and helpful. And use the EEL Task Sheet to dictate, check mechanics for, and classify at least one simple, S-Vi sentence each day. Two to three sentences would be even better to reinforce the process through repetition.

For IEW, we began a report on "Summarizing References" (Unit IV) using Lesson 8, "Vikings." We will take three weeks to complete this assignment. I decided to take this much time for several reasons. First, by moving from Lesson 2 to Lesson 8, we skipped the introduction of titles and clinchers in Lesson 6. I covered this extensively in class yesterday, but I want to give them time to think these through. Second, our source texts for this lesson are significantly longer than Lessons 1 and 2, and they need time to learn how to successfully KWO this much information. (More on that in a minute...) Third, we learned two sentence openers: the -ly opener (#3) and the VSS, or "very short sentence," (#6). These are easily grasped; if you need help, see Lesson 8, but I don't believe the kids will have trouble.

The assignment for this week is to KWO Topic A: Fierce Warriors. Here's how:

1. Read the source text (p. 56). Identify the main idea of each paragraph (We did this in class, and I suggested they write it down in the margin, so they should have a clue. This main idea ID is not actually part of the assignment, but I think it helps the kids grasp the "bigger picture" of where their paragraph will go and thus helps as they choose facts.).
2. Re-read the source text, tentatively marking a couple of interesting or important facts from each paragraph. Note: The facts should be interesting or important to the student, not necessarily the parent!
3. Once 5 to 7 facts are selected, you may need to help select key words that will memorably condense the fact onto a single line. I say this because some of the "facts" (berserk, for instance) are 3 to 4 sentences long, and we're trying to capture it in 3 key words. Remember, symbols, numbers and abbreviations are free.
4. When the KWO is complete, ask your student to "tell" the paragraph to you from his or her outline. This will insure it flows and makes sense.
5. Then let them write a rough draft. Depending on the skill level, they may add in the dress-ups as they go or add them in after the basic sentences are written.
6. Please go through the "completed" rough draft with them to make sure they have a clear topic and clincher and the new sentence openers.
7. They DO NOT need to turn in their rough drafts on Tuesday, but I will award a ticket to each student who shows me a rough draft paragraph.

In class next week, we will spend more time reading papers aloud and playing games than we did yesterday. We will have ample time to do this because next week's IEW assignment will repeat of this week with Topic B.

This should be a great week of learning! Let me know if you need help. Thanks for sharing the kids with me. They rock!

Erin