Weekly Update

It was truly a pleasure to meet with you this week to discuss your children. I am blessed to teach really wonderful kids, and I look forward to meeting with the few remaining families on Thursday. Thank you for your support in your child's education!

In Literature we are reaching the climax of The Westing Game. It has been so much fun to see the excitement in the students as the pieces start to fall into place. The major assignment for this book is to fill in a character web for each character in the book. I have been encouraging the students to work on this a little each day so that it is not an overwhelming assignment that they try to do the night before it is due. As you can imagine, when this happens, the results are not good! Please encourage your child to keep working on this. I plan to finish the book up during the first few days following Thanksgiving.

In English, the students are working on writing their mystery stories. They began by brainstorming all of the different components that they might include in their story. They then bounced these ideas off of a partner. The next step was characterization. We talked about how we must "show" and not just "tell" about a character. For example, instead of saying a character was skinny, I asked students to come up with a creative way of showing this. To practice this skill, I asked the students to write a character sketch about their main character of their story. Now we are working on setting. I took the classes outside and asked them to write vivid descriptions about everything they saw, felt, heard, smelled, and perhaps tasted. From there they will write a potential page from their story that makes the setting of their story come alive to the reader.

In Religion, we are concluding our study of Peter and Paul and reflecting on their impact on our faith and the spread of Christianity. I have posted two questions on the Class Chatter blog that ask students to share their thoughts on this topic. They will need to have this done by next Wednesday. From there we will complete the museum exhibit project. I'll let you know when the "museum" is open, so you can come and see it if you get a chance.