Wednesday

Well, my husband and I, like some of you I'll bet, are watching the weather and hoping our daughter has made it back to Purdue before the snow hits. It's truly the end of the holiday season now that everyone is back to their old routines.

Today in LA, students studied five new spelling and vocabulary words and continued their focus on effective and ineffective persuasive strategies. I'm approaching the start of this unit a little differently this year, asking students to analyze what makes a person's persuasive efforts ineffective. It's my goal to have students learn to read and write persuasive pieces with a more critical eye. Name-calling, biting sarcasm, confrontation, and other "tone" issues have no place in a logical, level-headed argument; in fact, those practices often cause readers/listeners to stop reading/listening. As writers and speakers, students must consider their audience and strive to persuade them when that is, indeed, their main goal.

Students had 30 minutes of reading to do today in preparation for Friday's reading response in class. Stay warm, everyone!

Fondly,
Mrs. V~