March 8 (Wed.)

How nice to have a class that did not require horrible stress about whether or not a test would be passed or failed based upon my choice of instruction. I think yesterday probably went fine, but we really won’t know until May. So, moving right along…

Finally, we can get back on track and have some real reading lessons for a change. We vaguely started mythology in the dark haze of persuasive writing, but now that the fog has lifted, review, review, and more review will be required to get us back on track. I had a moment of brilliance during the movie yesterday. I made an organizer for the myths that we will read in class, so the kids can keep a log of the stories they have read. They started this organizer today with the story of Phaethon and Apollo. It went really well, and it made the kids really think critically about the purpose of the myth. Between Lynn and me and their group buddies, even the novice students are getting the point. There was a little translation needed at first (and I swear, Minah thought I was totally crazy for a little while) but the novice kids really do understand that myths were used to explain things that happen in nature. One thing, the blanks aren’t big enough. They need more space to write the characters and the ‘how it happened’ section.

We also started the 12 Labors of Hercules play today. They read their labor in their group and tomorrow they will start to turn the story into a script. We modeled how to do this and the kids are already really excited. I’m wondering if they are going to be able to pull it all together by next Friday…