For the last three weeks the title of my blogs have all been about how fast the week went by...and I was ready to do it again this week! I guess it's true what they say about time flying when you're having fun!
This past week was a blast! I know for a fact that I freaked out quite a few people on Wednesday and Friday when we launched into Romeo and Juliet! And on Monday and Thursday, we got serious about our word counts. It was an adventurous week to say the least.
I saw groups A and B in on Monday and Wednesday, which is how it usually plays out. However, Tuesday and Thursday weren't quite so straight forward. Tuesday we had a guest speaker come to discuss endangered species, so we had a rotation in the morning. My part of the rotation was beginning the film version of The Odyssey.
The film was originally a television mini-series back in the 90's. The kids really got into it. They would beg to finish a scene before we switched. We watched more of it on Thursday before we headed up to the Fall Festival. Then we finished it on Friday afternoon.
We were in four rooms watching the end on Friday and each room was slightly off from each other. It was really kind of neat for me since it allowed me to stop by the different rooms to add something or draw their attention to something. Then right near the end of the film a "bad guy", one of the suitors, is killed. The cheers came in a round on the hall, and when the film ended, the applauds came in a round as well. It was really cool!
Finishing up The Odyssey was just a small highlight of the week. The first day we met, we talked a bit more about turning off our internal editors and getting ready for NaNoWriMo. We finished peer editing our essays and set our word count goals. We talked about how they will have homework everyday for the entire month of November.
The only way they'll reach their word count goal, or that I'll reach mine, is by setting aside time everyday to write. The lowest word count goal I allowed was 20,000 words. That breaks down to 667 words per day or about one typed page. This month should be fun and challenging. I know some of them are super excited about getting started and the others are coming around to the idea.
The second day we met, I carried a sword and spoke in a terrible British accent. I stood on the table pretty much the entire class, (the cause of much of the freakout). We talked about love and teenagers and then went into The Prologue from Act I of Romeo and Juliet. We took the 14 line sonnet to pieces looking at every detail of it. We added motions to it and talked about ways to memorize it.
They will write and recite the sonnet for two separate grades on Tuesday or Wednesday of this upcoming week. We'll also be getting ready for NaNoWriMo, setting up our accounts, and mapping out our stories and starting to think about our Shakespeare Banquet. It'll be a bit of a busy month, but rewarding in the end.
I'm preparing a bit of a send off for Friday since Saturday will be the first official day of writing for NaNoWriMo!!
Chances are good this week will disappear without much effort like the last several...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment