No homework for this weekend, but please remember to study for your vocabulary quiz! (There’s a vocab.com list for you to use to practice.)

If you didn’t finish your reading guides for The Glass Castle, you’ll have some time on Monday. If you would like to work on them this weekend, here’s an electronic copy of the book (The_Glass_Castle_-_Jeannette_Walls).

I hope everyone had a great STAAR day!

We spent today going over the first vocabulary list for The Glass Castle. We’ll have a vocab quiz over that on Monday. And we’re having an extra credit film on Friday – Dead Poets Society!

Happy return from Spring Break! I hope you all got to relax and do something interesting! We had quite an adventure in Japan (if you’re interested, you can check out the trip blog at http://www.cardinalstakeflight.com).

I wanted to apologize and give you an update – I have quite a few assignments graded, but Gradespeed has not been allowing me to enter new assignments since before Spring Break. I have contacted our tech support, and the person who is supposed to be able to fix it should be returning tomorrow. As soon as it’s up, I’ll put those grades in.

As far as our assignment today goes, we are beginning a new text – The Glass Castle – and we’re starting by considering some pieces of nonfiction that deal with contemporary American poverty. Today we looked at a documentary – A Place at the Table – which discusses food insecurity, and students worked on a viewing guide (A Place at the Table – Guided Notes).

No homework for tonight, but please make sure to bring your copy of The Hot Zone tomorrow if you checked one out.

Woohoo! Happy Spring Break!

Today we just finished (finally) the rest of the podcast that we started last week. The only thing that you have to do over the break is to finish the last Hot Zone reading guide (and hopefully you’re already done, so you won’t have homework)!

Remember that I will be returning from Japan on Monday, so you’ll have Mrs. Wu again. If you want to read about what we’re doing in Japan, check out the blog that students will be writing – www.cardinalstakeflight.com – !

We finally took the exam on Wednesday, and students who were out then had the opportunity to make it up today. We also worked on your final reading guide for The Hot Zone (The Hot Zone Reading Guide 8), which will be due the Monday after Spring Break.

Hi students:

I have come down with some strange and sudden illness (Ebola?) and won’t be in tomorrow. I’m so sorry, but we will have to postpone your exam until Tuesday. You can use the class time tomorrow to either continue studying (if you only skimmed the article, this would be a good time to go back and annotate it) or to get a leg up on your next Hot Zone reading guide, which I am attaching here (the-hot-zone-reading-guide-7).

If your substitute seems to not know what to do, would you please direct your classmates to this website?

Hope to see you on Tuesday!

If you would like for me to mail you a postcard from Japan over Spring Break, please fill out this form!

Today is a podcast day! I’m realizing that we’re not going to get through all of it, but we should knock out most. Here is the link, and here are the questions (radiolab-patient-zero-podcast-questions).

There’s no homework for this weekend, other than reading the article for your exam on Monday (see yesterday’s post).

Today we will be reading an article about the response to the Ebola crisis two years ago and answering some multiple choice questions (the-most-terrifying-thing-about-ebola-slate-article). As I told you yesterday, we will have a multiple choice critical reading exam on Monday over a lengthy article about the people who put their lives on the line in the Ebola crisis (time-2014-person-of-the-year-the-ebola-fighters). I will give you a paper copy of the article on Friday – you will take it home and annotate it (you won’t have a reading guide over the weekend), and you may use it on the exam on Monday.

Tomorrow (Friday), we’re going to be listening to a podcast, so if you would rather listen independently instead of having me play it for the whole class, please remember to bring a listening device.

Today we went over both the latest Hot Zone reading guide and the Masque of the Red Death reading guide. We watched a quick film interpretation of the Masque of the Red Death story. The next reading guide (the-hot-zone-reading-guide-6) is due on Friday.