Week at a glance Jan 10 - 14, 2011

Curriculum focus: differentiates between connotation and denotation, determines meaning of words based on context clues (11.1.3.K1), generates ideas from personal experience (11.7.1.1), selects a topic and relevant details for form, purpose, and audience (11.7.1.2), composes narrative writing (11.7.2.1a), writes using descriptive text structure (11.7.2.4a), develops clear and purposeful ideas with sufficient evidence and/or relevant details (11.7.1.1c), organizes ideas in a logical structure (11.7.3.2), writes with energy and enthusiasm using appropriate tone and word choice (11.7.3.4), creates text that flows easily with a variety of sentence structures (11.7.3.5), uses standard writing conventions effectively to enhance readability (11.7.3.6), and produces final written products that are of a quality to present to others (11.7.3.7).

Root words for this week (root - definition - examples):

1. cad/cide - to fall - accident, coincidence, deciduous
   
2. geno - creation - genesis, genetics, genocide
   
3. meta/muta - change - mutate, metamorphosis, metabolism
   
4. somn - sleep - insomnia, somnolent, somniloquacious
   
5. vor - eat - voracious, carnivore, herbivore, omnivore
   

This week, we launch into the second semester of our root words unit. Students will be learn five new roots, definitions, and examples, review them throughout the week, and have a quiz on Thursday. We'll also begin a brief poetry unit that highlights many famous poets in American literature and challenges students to analyze and interpret their poems. The purpose of the unit is to do a study of five themes common and unique to American literature, as well as to study American free verse as a poetic style. Our unit will eventually wrap up with students writing their own free verse poem centered around one of the five American themes. This week, however, will wrap up with students typing their Definition Essay in the computer lab.

• Mon: American Poetry - unit overview. Songs of America: Whitman and Hughes. Study guide due by the end of the hour.
• Tues: American Poetry - Free verse: Whitman and Frost. Study guide due by the end of the hour.
• Wed: American Poetry - Modernism and Surrealism: Pound, Williams, and Eliot. Begin discussion of poems.
  
• Thurs: Root Words quiz. Finish American Poetry - Modernism and Surrealism: Pound, Williams, and Eliot. Study guide due Friday.
• Fri: Meet in the computer lab and type the Definition Essay. Typed final draft due by the end of the hour.