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Week 6



Last week was so busy that I am just now getting around to posting!  Last week students read "Rikki-Tikki Tavi by Rudyard Kipling.  I grew up with this story (and cartoon). I was surprised that most of them had never heard of it!  Back in the day when certain movies only came on once a year-think Wizard of Oz and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.  Rikki-Tikki  was something I always  looked forward to.  The cobras terrified me almost as much as the  Sleestaks   in Land of the Lost.  Anyhow, it is a great story for character analysis, so students learned about indirect characterization using the STEAL acronym.  S is for speech, T is for thoughts, E is for effect on others, A is for actions, and L is for looks.  Students looked for passages as the read that revealed Rikki's character.  I then taught the how to seamlessly incorporate quotes into a literary analysis, analyze each quote, and cite the source.  I think the kids did very well, especially since it was new to most of them!
Anyone else love this show?

 Later that week, students discussed "Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradbury.  I gave them over a week to read and annotate the story at home, so they were well prepared for the discussion.  On Friday, I simply asked them to write down two discussion questions for the story.  As I walked around listening to their discussions (well, okay, sometimes arguments) about the story, I was blown away!  It didn't hurt that our most recent Article of the Week's main argument was that being a good listener is the best way to make people love you!  We also did a vocabulary activity called Coffee Klatch.  Each student received a word from the story with the complete definition, as well as a sentence using the word.  They had to move around the room and share their word using a sentence frame I provided. This activity requires the other person to be a good listener.  If you look at the sentence frames below, you will see why!  
Coffee Klatch

Learning New Vocab

Sentence Frames

Love this kid!

:)

How adorable is this?

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