Second period took a break from Romeo and Juliet to look at the four types of sentences:

• simple,
• compound,
• complex, and
• compound-complex.

The other periods began with a quick starter. One exercise: make a prediction about the following passage:

The ground-breaking ceremony for the new game arcade began quietly. The ceremony was solemn, with builders, bankers, and investors making nice speeches about the value of the arcade for the community. Twelve kids had been invited to break the ground. They waited with their shovels. The signal came for the first boy to dig a shovelful of dirt. He dug; but he could not resist tossing the dirt high into the air so that it fell on the next kid in line. There were giggles from the young people and glares from the adults. The next person, Ellie, stepped up and dug a chunk of dirt, her eyes twinkling.

Fairly obvious what happened next.

Afterward we began our persuasive writing. There will be a prize for a select number of people Thursday, and the winners will be determined in a debate, with another teacher serving as the judge. We’ll then go back and look at the arguments to determine which persuasive techniques each group used.

Today, we prepared the presentations:

Fourth period preparing

Fourth period preparing

Fourth period preparing

Sixth period preparing

Sixth period preparing

Sixth period preparing

Homework

• First, fourth, and sixth periods: none.
• Second period:
  • read the review of sentence types;
  • complete the activities.

Addendum: if you’re using a Greenville County Schools computer, you will not be able to access this grammar review because it’s blocked. I suppose it’s somehow an inappropriate resource.

The GCS filtering software blocks the University of Ottawa