It was great to see everyone after this long weekend! I enjoyed the time off, but to be honest, I missed y’all!

We spent the bulk of our time today taking our vocabulary quiz, which included an essay comparing the situation in Syria to the plot of The Hunger Games using some of the words we studied last week. I have graded two periods of quizzes so far, and I’ve been impressed with your insights! If you were absent today, please come to tutorials during lunch on Wednesday or Friday to make up your quiz. We also graded the multiple-choice portion of the quizzes from today and last week – I’m reviewing your sentences and essays to see if you used the words in context correctly.

Just some notes on some things I’ve seen so far from your quizzes:

• I have noticed that collectively (one of our words from the first list, and one that many people seemed to have a little trouble with – it doesn’t mean that you are good at collecting things, but rather, “as a group”) one of the issues students seem to be facing is that you’re more confident in identifying the words as you are reading than composing sentences of your own using them. I would suggest that you really study the notes from the PowerPoints that we take, in addition to paying particular attention to how the words are used in example sentences.
• I’ve also noticed a relationship between the quality of notes that people are taking as we talk each day about the words, and their final scores on the quizzes. I wonder what could be at work there… 🙂

No homework for tonight!