November 16 - 20

Assignments listed here represent the "Plan" for the week.  Plans of course are subject to change as needed, so this should not be considered the last word on what will take place in class or will be assigned for homework.  When plans do change however, the changes will be reflected here (hopefully by the evening of the day in which they are known to exist).

Monday

• Students will begin the class with an introduction to the DOG sentence of the week.  We will complete steps 1 & 2 of a five step process of breaking it down into almost all of its grammatical components.

• Students will view a brief video of students discussing the new vocabulary assignment in preparation for discussing it themselves within their teams.  Students will discuss the mistakes made by the students in the video and suggest ways they could improve the discussion.

• Students will be introduced to the 1st vocabulary assignment for our reading of The Call of the Wild.  Students will then work collaboratively to use the given context to determine the meaning and usage of each word.

No Homework Assigned

Tuesday 

• Students will begin the class completing Step 3, 4, and 5 of the DOG process examining sentence type, clauses, properly punctuating and capitalizing the sentence and finally diagramming the sentence parts.

• Students will continue using the context for each vocabulary word to determine both the part of speech and meaning of each word.  Once students have made a guess at each of the terms, they will use the dictionary to acquire a correct meaning of each word based on its use in the given context and then my begin completing their own sentences for each of the given words.  Students should be constructing either compound or complex sentences for their words.

• Students who have their own copy of the novel will highlight the words in their books.

Homework: Students should complete their definitions if needed and begin using each word in their own original sentence.  Definitions and Sentences are due on Friday.  Students in On level classes only need to complete sentences for the first ten words.  Students in the Advanced class should complete sentences for all twenty words.  Sentences should either be compound or complex sentences.   This is due on  Thursday

Wednesday - Early Release Day.

• Today will be used to for some additional house cleaning.  Notebooks will be cleaned out and reorganized to make room for materials relating to the current novel study.  Writing Evaluations will go into portfolios and classroom daily assignments and handouts will go into students work files.

• Remaining time will be committed to the completion of the Gold Fever Documentary.

Homework: Students should complete their sentences for their vocabulary assignment.

Thursday

• Students will begin the class with an introduction to the Share and Compare process they will use to compare the sentences they wrote for their vocabulary homework assignment.

• Students will then work in their cooperative teams to determine the best usage of each of their vocabulary words.  Students who don't have their own copy of the novel will sign out a copy to use.

• Student teams will then be called upon to share their best sentence.  Other teams will be called upon to label the given sentence either compound or complex.  Team points will be earned for both.

No Homework Assigned: We begin reading the novel next week.  Students who have their own copy will benefit from being able to mark important passages.  Students who acquire their own copy after being assigned a school copy need only return their school copy to Mr. Ott.

Friday

• Students will begin class with a discussion relating to the concept of Theme.

• Students will then go through "A Brief Thematic Experience."  Students will classify common classroom experiences into several of the themes which will focus our reading of The Call of the Wild.  They will discuss their findings with their teammates and then with the full class.

• Students will then personalize the themes putting the ideas into their own words.

Looking Ahead to Next Week
Students will begin reading the novel next week.  Student who wish to have their own copy of the novel to use during our unit, should acquire one over the weekend if they have not already done so.