English I Honors, after working on the article of the week, finished up the basics of the Schaffer model. We first filled in some blanks regarding numbers of elements and specific transitional devices we’ll be using at first.

Afterward, we made our first Schaffer plan.  Students were able to see the flexibility of this type of planning both in terms of on-the-fly editing of the topic sentence and in terms of the Lego-block-like quality of the chunks (hence, the name “chunk”).

English 8 students continued working on the article of the week and then completed “Thank You, Ma’am,” adding a few new skills to their effective readers’ skills’ repertoire.

Homework

• English 8: write a 2-3 sentence explanation of why Ms. Jones gave gave Roger the money to buy his shoes.
• English I Honors: 
  • choose a person/entity close to you (family, friend, pet);
  • complete this sentence: “[This person] is [some quality about this person]” (funny, smart, intelligent, etc.);
  • rummage through your memory to find two specific times this specific quality.