Jesse’s Blog

Today in LA, we continued to read chapters 6 & 7 in our mystery genre book, The Westing Game.

 We stopped a few times to review our clues to see whether we made any new leads, however, there were very few of them. Our homework was to finish the chapters 6 & 7 Westing Game questions. Today in LA, we continued to read chapters 6 & 7 in our mystery genre book, The Westing Game. We stopped a few times to review our clues to see whether we made any new leads, however, there were very few of them. Our homework was to finish the chapters 6 & 7 Westing Game questions.

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The very next day we took our rough drafts of our Mother’s Day poems and began to make them into cards. Mrs. Ekstrom supplied us with paper and our homework was to finish these cards to present to our mothers on Mother’s Day,
May 13th.

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Today in L.A., 6L and 6H made poems for mothers day that used four stanzas worth of metaphors. For example,

My mother is…
my mother is a rose, expressing love every moment of the day
my mother is the sun, giving warmth to every living thing
my mother is a greeting card, showing everyone that she cares
my mother is a comedian, making me laugh every single day

however 6V and 6E were told to make poems for Mother’s Day that ryhmed.Our homework was to finish the poem if we didnt already in class.

India is an interesting place!  We learned all about it in a video we watched, Friday 2-16-07.  We studied five topics; Varanasi and the Ganges, the Taj Mahal, Hindu ceremonies, Old and New Dheli, and Corbett National Park. Did you know that Varanasi is the city that the Ganges lies in?  People … go to Varanasi to die in the Ganges so they can meet the goddess … Shiva.  The Taj Mahal is also a big part of culture.  It is in the city of Agra,  and the Shah in 1631 wanted it built as a tomb for his wife.  … Do you know what Karma is?  It means that what you do today determines what you do tomorrow.  This is said in the Gita, their holy book.  … Delhi is like a mini New York City.  It has many small hotels and sells many different products.  However, India cares about wildlife too.  Corbett National Park was the first one established in India.  It was founded by Jean Corbett, a man eating tiger hunter.  After that movie, I definitely learned that India is a really diverse area.

Today, (2/6/07) in L.A., we were introduced to the ABC project. The ABC project is where we pick key ideas and put them to a letter from the alphabet. EX:

          J is for Jonas, the main character of The Giver.

      (I haven’t read Mrs. Frisby And The Rats Of NIMH, so I can’t do one for it.) We did this for every letter of the alphabet to help us understand the book.

On 1/31/07 in L.A. we reviewed our poems using personification. As said before, personification is giving inanimate objects, human qualities. We also practiced finding better sentence starters, and our homework was to re-write a poorly written pargraph about gym class. In that paragraph, we had to use more sentence starters and insert two golden bricks. (an anecdote and a statistic)

Today in L.A. (1.30.07) we studied more about personification. Personification is when you give an inanimate object qualities of a human. We used our L.A. CMT coach books to help us understand the concept. Our homework for the night was to write a poem using at least 5 examples of personification.

Our Assignment today was to summarize the article that we read about the worlds oil supply. It explained that without some help, it could run out very soon. It told us that oil drilling is very expensive, and so when half of the oil is drilled, the other half turns hard and is very hard to reach. Some turns into oil shale, which is a large rock filled with oil, and so it needs to be heated up to recieve the oil inside. Because of this, oil is needed to heat up the rock, so more oil is lost is gained. However, it is possible to drill for oil in remote areas such as Siberia or even the seafloor of the Caspian Sea. Also, OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) has a lot to do with this issue. War can influence the prices of oil, making it more valuble. My opinion is that we need to make more fuel efficient automobiles, so we can save more oil for whenever we need it most. But sadly, oil, just like natural gas is not renewable, so we need to save as much as we can to help in the future.