1st Hour - Week of 1-28-13

Εμπρός, tι κάνεις? That means "Hello, how are you?" in Greek and it's pronounced "Embrós, ti kánis?"

As you know, last week and this week we're focusing on words we use in everyday English that have Greek and Latin roots. You guys made some really helpful posters that are now hanging in the classroom, but in case you'd like to see a list of roots online, here's where I got the ones we used in class: https://www.msu.edu/~defores1/gre/roots/gre_rts_afx2.htm?...

If your root word isn't on that list, try looking it up on dictionary.com. I've found a few there that surprisingly weren't on our original list (like "trans" and "ad").

Something a few people have asked me since we started talking about Greek and Latin roots last week is if you're supposed to find words you don't know or words you do know. Either is fine. The goal is to find words you don't know that contain Greek or Latin roots and use your knowledge of the root word to help you figure out the meaning of the overall word. However, if you can't find a word that you don't know, but you spot a familiar root in a word you do know, you can use it for your assignment. Clear as mud? :)

If you have questions or need help figuring out if a word contains a Greek or Latin root word, just let me know! Διασκεδάζω (pronounced diaskedazo), or in other words, have fun! :)

1st Hour - Week of 1-14-13

Last week, lots of you were asking if you could write about words you didn't know, and I told you we would talk about those kinds of words soon. So, that's what we're doing this week! I hope you're all ready to talk about words you just flat out don't know!

Today we read the short story "Mr. Entwhistle" by Jean Little. In it, we read about a misunderstanding between a substitute teacher and a student named Kate. Mr. Enwhistle is the kind of sub that wants to show everyone right off the bat that he is in charge and won't put up with any funny business. Kate is in trouble for not answering Mr. Entwhistle when he asks what her name is, and Kate is very confused because she didn't even know that Mr. Entwhistle was talking to her. Mr. Entwhistle's anger escalates to the point of him frantically shrieking at her and threatening to send her to the office, when he suddenly realizes that he has made a mistake in being angry with Kate.

The paragraph where he finally realizes his error goes like this: "Then it was as though someone said, 'Will the real Mr. Entwhistle please stand up?' The bombast went out of him. For one more moment, he hesitated." The word "bombast" was somewhat unfamiliar to me. I felt like I had seen it before, and I thought maybe it meant "fight". I thought about the way Mr. Entwhistle suddenly changed - how he went from being very angry and flustered to being calmer and realizing he was wrong. "Fight" made sense to me - like all the fight went out of him. Still, I wasn't sure that was right, so I looked it up in the dictionary and found that it meant "pretentious speech or talk", which means he was speaking in a manner that made it seem like everything he said was very important. So, basically, Mr. Entwhistle thought he was very important and was talking in a way that reflected that, and then he changed his mind when he realized how that attitude had steered him wrong.

I was way off! I'm glad I looked up that word! This week, as you're trying to figure out words you don't know, stop and use information from the story to help you figure out the word. Get the best definition you can from what you know. If you still don't feel good about it, look it up in the dictionary. Good luck this week! Let me know if you have any questions!

1st Hour - Week of 1-7-13

Hi, kids! :) This week, and for the next several weeks, we're focusing on figuring out words that confuse us while we're reading. Remember that you're trying to practice a specific strategy based on the mini-lesson I taught you on Monday. This week was all about those tricky words that have more than one meaning.

Sometimes a word has more than one meaning and we can be super familiar with some of the definitions of that word, but not understand other ways it can be used. This happened to me when I read the book The Little Ships. On the first page, I read the word "smack", but it wasn't used in a way that made sense to me. The sentence it was in read, "My father, Martin Gates, owned the Lucy, a sturdy fishing smack." The definition I know of smack is "to hit someone or something with your hand" or like the sound you make when you smack your lips. But neither of those definitions of "smack" made sense in that sentence.

To help myself figure it out, I decided to use other information on that page that might tell me more about this kind of "smack". The author said the Lucy smelled of herring and mackerel and cod, which I know are types of fish. Later on the same page, we find out that the narrator's father is a fisherman. From these context clues, I can infer that the Lucy is a fishing boat. I looked it up in the dictionary to make sure, and I was right! It said a smack was a fishing boat, sometimes with a well for keeping live catches. Woohoo!

So now that we know that words we're normally familiar with sometimes have meanings that are completely foreign to us, we can stop ourselves to make sure that we understand the correct definition before we move on. If I had read on thinking the Lucy was a way to hit someone, I would have certainly been confused!

You're ready to do one on your own! Use your vocabulary blog organizer to write a response like the one I did above. Since you guys didn't get to hear the mini-lesson until Wednesday, you only have to define one word. Have fun and let me know if you have any questions!