Weekly Update

English
We are continuing to work on punctuation; this week our focus has been semicolons and colons. We are working on creating complex sentences to add variety to writing, which is an aspect of sentence fluency, one of the six traits of good writing.

Literature
We are reading the novel The Westing Game. This is a fun mystery that we are reading together in class. I am asking the kids to focus on the character traits of the many people in the book. They are also supposed to be keeping in mind the elements of stories and more specifically, those of mystery stories. These elements will be used when they write their own mystery stories at the end of the unit.

Religion
The students have learned that one of the major conflicts that St. Paul encountered on his missionary journeys was the issue of whether or not the gentile converts needed to follow the Jewish laws when they converted to Christianity. James and the Jewish-Christian leadership based in Jerusalem felt that since they, themselves, were following the Jewish laws and were now Christian that all people converting to Christianity needed to follow the same laws. St. Paul felt that the gentiles were becoming Christians--not joining another sect of Judaism and should not have to follow the Jewish laws. After consideration, James decided that the gentile converts needed to only follow four of the 613 Jewish laws. One of the laws was to follow the Jewish dietary rules. This seems to be something that many of us Christians don't fully comprehend, so this week we studied the basics of these dietary laws. If you'd like to read the article that we read in class, you can find it at the following address: www.jewfaq.org/kashrut.htm. I also asked the students to check some of their food packaging for the kosher symbols; if they find any such packaging, they can bring it in for extra credit.

Reminder: the students will be needing large cardboard or display boards for their museum displays at the end of this unit. If you have extra cardboard, please keep it for students who may not have any. Thank you!