Not sure we ever really saw winter this year. Then again, I guess some of our worst ice days in the past have been in February! We shall see.
This week in Language Arts, we are working on simple, complex, and compound sentences. Sounds incredibly fun, right? I tried to make it fun today. We talked about independent clauses and dependent clauses as we compared them to Batman and Robin. Hey, whatever works, right? Ask your child and see if he or she remembers. One of our reminders for commas in complex sentences was this:
If the Dependent clause is before the Independent clause (DI), the sentence will DIe without a comma. However, if the Independent clause precedes the Dependent clause (ID) I Don't need a comma.
In looking at STAAR practice pages and in the kids' writing samples, sentence formation is sometimes still an issue. I'm seeing lots of incomplete sentences and run on sentences. These are the types of things that should be edited before a final draft. If you are helping your child at home, try highlighting or isolating any sentence you want him/her to look at again. As if there is a way the sentence can be split (for run ons) or combined (for fragments.) We are working diligently, but in a 45 minute class, you can imagine how tricky it is to master these types of concepts without some additional practice.
ALL STUDENTS SHOULD GET BACK ON GOOGLE CLASSROOM, CLICK UNSUBMIT, AND READ MY NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS. IF I MENTIONED AN OPPORTUNITY FOR REGRADING, PLEASE BE SURE AND CHECK THE DATE I WILL NEED IT.
Next week, February 10, we have our next Writing Benchmark. Like the last one, students will answer approximately 15 questions on revising and editing and then write an expository composition. They will have 3 hours to complete it. It's really hard to gauge a student's mastery when there are only a few questions, which is what caused the first benchmark scores to be lower. We've covered a lot of territory since then, and I'm hoping to see some improvement across the board.
Mrs. Klein's class: In Texas History, the area that we now call Texas is still under Mexican rule, but a dictator has stepped in and taken over the government. His name is Santa Anna. Once he came in to power, the colonists began to want their freedom. Lots of battles will take place in 1836. Some are won, some are lost, but the final victory of course, belongs to Texas.
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