11/5/09 Homework

Hey there all you Smarties!

Apologies for the late posting, unfortunately there was a feline death in the family on Friday. I was called to my mom's house in the morning and spent the day doing kitty hospice for Emmitt Anderson who was 15. Emmit was from the 24th and Mission SPCA in San Francisco and was adopted a couple months after my college graduation from San Francisco State. He came back to the East Bay with me after a couple of years and took up residence at my parents house. When I moved out to get married my dad said that I could go, but the cat was staying. I am the youngest child, so I thought it was a fair tade. My dad, stoic man that he is, has never been able to handle the loss of pets well, and Emmitt was his football and news buddy. He stayed away until the mobile vet had come and gone, and then he came home to do "dad duty" (you know- he dug the kitty hole in the gladiola garden). :(

So this was a short week in school, with a minimum day on Thursday and no school on Friday. In class we read a little farther in You Don't Know me by David Klass, and we did most of our oral presentations for the American Invention project (except for period 2, which will be doing them this week). Over all, the projects were much improved this time around. This week we will begin to go over the parts of an essay, so that we improve again next month!

We also watched the television production of "The Landlady" a short stroy by Roald Dahl, which we had read last week. Interestingly, Roald not only wrote the story, but he wrote the television adaptation. This coming week students will be writing about some of the similarities and differences that they noticed between the two types of writing, and discussing why they think Roald whould make these changes to his work.

On the Homework front, students were assigned this month's research project, which is on Native American tribes. This is already up on the teacherweb site under 8th grade materials, and students got a hard copy in class (exept period 3, who I inadvertantly skipped- they can download it or pick it up on Monday).

This coming week we will spend the majority of our time on the writings of Lincoln (history). You may see some mid-week homework on this front, but it won't be anyhing that takes more than 20-30 minutes. In English we will be finishing You Don't Know Me by David Klass, working on essay structure, and finishing presentations.

Have a great weekend!
Mrs. A