First period, after the day’s diary prompt, had a bit of time to regroup for coming group presentations and then continued with effective readers’ skills practice with an annotated text about rising anti-Semitism in Germany.

Second and fourth periods began a new unit on poetry. I’ve had to juggle the schedule a bit: we were to do To Kill a Mockingbird right now, but as I was out with a sick child last week, I was unable to order the extra books we’ll need from instructional materials. I decided to bump Mockingbird to the end of the year and move everything else up. As such, we began a poetry unit, looking at the differences between poetry and prose as well as reviewing basic steps in reading and decoding poems by reading a poem entitled, “Because You Asked About the Line Between Prose and Poetry.” Notes from class are below:

Fifth period continued with the drama projects, with group two presenting today. They also used the same diary prompt as a starter.

Homework

• First and fifth periods: as I was out Monday and Tuesday of last week, I’ve reassigned the previous Thursday’s homework (which would have been due last Monday) to tomorrow in order to give students the chance to find/make up lost work.
  
• Second and fourth periods: as I was out Monday and Tuesday of last week and didn’t have an opportunity to review the block-form business letter in person, I gave students the opportunity today to review their letter’s formatting and moved the due date to tomorrow.