This week in class we have been reading from and acting out the book, A Raisin In The Sun.
This is Amy, Surina, Mary-Kate, and Betriz acting their parts in this Fridays class!

week of 12.6.10-12.10.10

This week we started reading "A Raisin in the Sun" by Lorraine Hansberry. This book is written in the form of a play, and each student in the class has signed up for a scene to read a character. This book is about many of the important issues of America during the 1950's. This week the class is reading up to Act two scene two. We were assigned a project with this book worth 30 points. Ten points comes from reading one scene and the other 20 come from being the prop master, vocabulary finder, dramaturge, or reading a main role in one of the scenes. We will finish reading "A Raisin in the Sun" by winter break!

Picture for Week of 11/22-11/26

During this three day week, we learned about symbolism and concrete vs. abstract nouns. We also had to start writing a story from looking at pictures of forests.

Week 11/15 to 11/20

This week we went over our "of Mice and Men papers". On monday we talked about self editing and how to improve our papers. Then on tuesday we decided to play a word game (it was very fun). Wednesday we went over each others papers while peer editing, it helped us make a stronger and smater paper. When thursday came we were sopposed to go to the art fest but it was not open so we played games instead. And finally on Friday we spent time in the computer lab to type our paper

Week of 11/8-11/14

This week we focused on comparing Of Mice and Men by looking at the differences in the book and the movie. Then we spent Wednesday typing our rough draft for our Of Mice and Men essay that is due tomorrow.

Week of November 1 - November 5

This week we finished reading the book and started watching the movie Of Mice and Men.

- Rogelio

Week of Nov 8-10

This short week we finished watching the movie Of Mice and Men after reading the book.

Picture for Week of November 1 - 5

Of Mice and Men  (1992)

Celeste

week of 10/25 - 10/29

This week wasn't a very exciting week, Monday through Thursday we read the book "Of Mice and Men". This book is about two men trying to make a living, they go from ranch to ranch to make money to live their american dream. Their dream is to live in a small house with chickens, rabbits, and some cattle, then they could live their lives without the worry that they could loses their jobs. For homework we usually have to complete the pre-reading vocabulary or the post-reading questions. On Friday though we played a game, the game is played by 5 people, each person gets a card with words on them. Only one person has the right definition of the unknown word, and the other 4 have to make up definition that seem plausibly. The object of the game is to convince the class that you have the correct definition. It was a great game.

Week of 10/18-10/22

What makes someone an artist? Is it just their artwork? Or is it a masterpiece? This week in English, we started "Of Mice and Men" and discussed how John Steinback was an artist. We also, worked on vocabulary for each chapter (One and Two). Our quick write was to put, there, their, they're, your, and you're in our own story and use them correctly! To go with our class book, "Of Mice and Men," in our small groups we looked for nouns, adjectives, textures, and colors in Chapter One.

Week of October 11 - 15

This week was a busy week. On Tuesday and Wednesday, we had a short story test. The short stories include, "The Necklace", by Guy De Maupassant, "Marigolds", by Eugenia W. Collier, "Thank You Ma'am", by Langston Hughes, "The Lottery", by Shirley Jackson, and "The Story of an Hour", by Kate Chopin. On Thursday, we made predictions for our class novel that we are going to read next week. The title of the book we are going to read is called, "Of Mice and Man", by John Steinback. In class, we made predictions by observing the book covers. Many students in my class made fun and interesting predictions, and this activity made us motivated to read this novel. On Friday, we went to the auditorium to see a part in the Cinderella Musical. The musical was phenomenal, and it made us want to go see the whole entire musical. That was how our week went. 

Hiroki

Picture for Week of October 4 - October 8

This week we did some Vocabulary skits so we could remember some more difficult words that we have read in our short stories. We also read the short story "Marigolds" in class and discussed it.
Mary Sarah 

Week of October 4-8

Our week started off with vocabulary skits. We each had one word per group to act out. Furthermore, we read the short story Marigolds by Eugenia W. Collier in class. After reading, we had a class discussion about it. To conclude our week we had played Jeopardy in class with questions based off our vocabulary, literary terms, short stories, and character quotes.

The Lottery

Who knew winning the lottery was a bad thing. This week in English we read the short story "The Lottery", written by Shirley Jackson. In this story if you won the lottery you were stoned to death by your friends and family. After reading this story we got the chance to watch the 1969 and the 2007 version of the movie. After watching, reading, and doing worksheets for the story of "The Lottery", we all learned an important lesson. If we know is something wrong, we shouldn't go along with it instead, we should stand up for ourselves and say something. Overall, we learned a vaulable lesson and had a fun time doing it. That's what we did during this week in English.

Week of September 20-24

This week in Miss Nickows first period class we read the short story "Story of an Hour". In the short story we learned about irony. Irony is when you expect one thing to happen and the opposite happens. As a class we also went down to the book fair to check out some books. That is what we did this week in class.

Scott

Picture for week of September 13-September 17

This week we played a "Musical Chairs" writing game to help our transitions from ideas. We also learned about people who have and do not have integrity and the difference between an inference and an observation.

Week of September 13 - September 17

Can you imagine being arrested for giving water to thirsty people?  This week, we read an article about someone who was arrested for littering after leaving bottles of water in the desert so that people immigrating into the United States wouldn't die of thirst.  This is an example of a situation in which it is hard to decide if a person has integrity or does not have integrity.    Each student then found their own example of a news story that exemplied someone with a great deal of integrity or very little integrity.  Our text for this week was the short story "Thank You M'am" by Langston Hughes.  It told the story of a young boy with little integrity and the woman who  helped him learn right from wrong.   We learned the difference between observations and inferences, which is something that many of us are also discussing in our science classes.  Our class also became authors when we played a musical chairs writing game to work on transitioning from one idea to another. 

Week of 9/6-9/10

This week we covered the use of Mel-Con paragraphs. The Mel-Con organization is used to properly quote evidence from text as support for a topic. We used a graphic organizer to put together a paragraph using quotes from “The Necklace” by Guy De Maupassant, and typed it up. On friday,we discussed the meaning of integrity. We agreed that a good definition is people have integrity when they are able to distinguish right from wrong, and able to make good decisions.

Picture for week of 9/6-9/10

This week we learned the proper use of quotes and wrote a characterization paragraph. The paragraph is based on a character from the short story

"The Necklace" by Guy De Maupassant. To help us with this paragraph we used the T-Charts that we made. An example of a quote from my paragraph is, "'I'll retrace our steps on foot', he said, 'to see if I can find it'" (167).

Picture for week of August 30 - September 3

We used "My Life in a Paper Bag" as a way to get to know our classmates. Each student brought in, and presented, three items that they felt described them. We learned about hobbies, childhoods, families, cultures, and more. It was great to see that we have things in common with each other that we didn't even know about.

Week of August 30 - September 1

Our week began with presentations of "My Life in a Paper Bag" from each student in class.  It was a great way to get to know some unique and surprising things about each other.  As the week went on, we wanted to be able to summarize events in a story, but we weren't sure if we were including too much (or too little) information, so we learned a quick and easy way to formulate our summaries! Following the Somebody, Wanted, But, So format (used in the previous sentence), we summarized the events of the short story,  "The Necklace", written by Guy De Maupassant. On Friday, we visited the Fremd Media Center to hear about some great books and select one (if we hadn't already) for our independent reading projects.