"Zebra" Vocabulary (Academic and Words to Know)

Journal: Look in your agenda on page 11 for the definition of idiom. Read the sentences and decide if they are an idiom or a sentence.

• I went down a rabbit hole, but I survived.
• Robert put the last nail in his coffin.
• Ms. Evans is as blind as a bat.
• He blushed like a red tomato.

Then write two idioms of your own.

Day 33

Capitalization

• We continue on the constant review of proper nouns and adjectives.
• Monday is a proper noun because it is a day of the week.
• The names of ships (Dutchess Regal) are proper nouns.
• Cruise is not a proper noun, but Alaskan is a proper adjective.  So, in Alaskan cruise, only Alaskan is capitalized.

Punctuation

•  Commas are placed between two or more descriptive adjectives.  Two descriptive adjectives are separated by a comma, unless it is a color or limiting adjective.
• "drink hot chocolate on cold snowy days": cold and snowy are descriptive adjectives and need to be separated by a comma. 
• Periods are placed after the abbreviation of a title
• Mrs is an abbreviation of Mistress, so needs a period.

Verbs

• What's the difference between to rise and to raise?
• To raise means to go up with help and requires a direct object. 
• To rise means to get up without help and doesn't need a direct object.
• Bread (rises/raises) due to yeast: There is no direct object; the correct form is rise.
• Direct object: What was raised?  what. There is no direct object.
• The guard (rose/raised) his hand in protest. 'His hand' is the direct object, so raised is correct.
• Direct object: What was raised? His hand.

Dictionary Skills

• Today's lesson reviews syllables. It is important to understand syllabication when looking up a word in the dictionary so you know how it is pronounced.
• For today, students identified how many syllables are in words like bubble, exhibition, and gradual.

Sentence Fluency

• Today's sentences are two simple sentences with independent clauses that should be combined.
• Using a conjunction: Carl lifted the crying infant, and the baby began to coo.

We spent about five minutes doing some random organizational things. 

Reading Homework

We started the unit on Chaim Potok's short story, "Zebra."  We did not read this story in class like the previous two stories.  Instead, we assigned the story to be read for homework.  We told students to write the homework down in their sacred agendas.

• Read "Zebra" (47-61) by Wednesday/Thursday.

Composition Books

After assigning homework, we had students turn in their composition books.  The end of the quarter was quickly coming up on Friday, so we needed to collect their books to give them a grade for all the notes we've done so far this year.  Having the students place their notebooks in an orderly fashion took a couple of minutes.

This activity may not be rigorous.  It may not require analysis, interpretation, or evaluation.  It is, however, a good way to make sure that students know how to say new words correctly.  This is especially important in my co-taught classes so my co-teacher and I make sure to not skip this step in those classes. My co-teacher usually leads this activity.

All the words are written on the board or displayed on the doc cam.  There are seventeen words, divided up into four rows.

For the "I Do" I (the teacher) read all the words aloud.  For 'We Do" all the students read the words aloud.  For "You Do" I (the teacher) chooses random students to pronounce each word in the row.

How can I make this activity more rigorous?  Rather than having just the word, I can also include the dictionary pronunciation scheme thing. The idea is to help guide students to be independent learners, so exposing students to the pronunciation methodology through this activity provides the scaffolding needed.