Changing moods, beating hearts, and Ray Bradbury...

During the week of December 8-12, we wrapped up our short story unit and started our drama unit.

We began the week by changing the mood of a setting. This assignment started the week before when students received a picture of a scene in nature and described it in paragraph form by using active verbs, precise adjectives, and their senses. When they got their paragraphs back they looked for a sentence they wrote that evoked a distinct mood. Then they determined the specific mood of the sentence and changed it by manipulating some of the "mood" words. I think Edgar Allan Poe would have been impressed with how some students' settings transformed from being sunny and cheery to dismal and dreary!

Speaking of Edgar Allan Poe, we read one of his short stories, "The Tell-Tale Heart", together in class (complete with me pounding on the desk while reading to simulate the beating heart that is a key part in Poe's classic) because we will be seeing it performed next week at the Berklee Performance Center in Boston during our class field trip.

Our class reading of "The Veldt" by Ray Bradbury produced some great debate at the end of the week. Topics ranged from the pros and cons of modern technology to questions about whether we could ever part with our favorite electronics like MP3 players, cell phones, and personal computers.

We ended the week by beginning our unit on drama. Students took notes on terms that we'll be referencing throughout our drama unit like stage directions, scrim, and backlighting.

Returned Assignments

Students got back two graded assignments this week. The descriptive paragraph (20 point assignment) and a verbs quiz (15 point assignment) were both returned. Feel free to check in with your child about both assignments.