Monday

·         Reading 8 – We will discuss students’ talking to text notes and view examples of these on the board together as a class. Students will work with someone who read the opposite story as them, and discuss elements of each to compare/contrast using a Venn Diagram. As a class, we will then compare/contrast the two stories and pairs will report out their findings from their Venn Diagrams. As a class, we will also discuss the story questions and journal responses that students have completed.

·         English 8 – Students will review “The Tell Tale Heart” by discussing comprehension questions in preparation for a quiz tomorrow. Students will then explore setting with the story by completing the setting section of the packet. As a class, we will discuss this section and students will then continue working on the next section: elements of plot. As a class, we will discuss the elements of plot that students identified from the story.

Tuesday

·         Reading 8 – We will discuss students’ talking to text notes and view examples of these on the board together as a class. Students will work with someone who read the opposite story as them, and discuss elements of each to compare/contrast using a Venn Diagram. As a class, we will then compare/contrast the two stories and pairs will report out their findings from their Venn Diagrams. As a class, we will also discuss the story questions and journal responses that students have completed.

·         English 8 – Students will take a quiz on The Tell Tale Heart. Students will then complete a section on figurative language in order to identify different types of figurative language from the story. Students will then begin writing an extended journal response and complete a section on context clues. We will discuss these together as a class.

Wednesday

·         Reading 8 – Students will illustrate their talking to text skills using a short piece of text in order to monitor progress with this specific strategy. They will also respond to specific questions about the text. This will be used as baseline data to compare to later student work. Students will then work from the PSSA book on the lesson on fiction and nonfiction. They will work with a partner to read through sample PSSA passages using talking to text in order to respond to comprehension and analysis questions.

·         English 8 – Students will discuss figurative language within the “Tell Tale Heart” and we will examine the section from the packet on context clues in groups and as a class. Students will then write an extended journal response discussing mood within the story.

Thursday

·         Reading 8 – Students will illustrate their talking to text skills using a short piece of text in order to monitor progress with this specific strategy. They will also respond to specific questions about the text. This will be used as baseline data to compare to later student work. Students will then work from the PSSA book on the lesson on fiction and nonfiction. They will work with a partner to read through sample PSSA passages using talking to text in order to respond to comprehension and analysis questions.

·         English 8 – Students will discuss mood within the story using the journal responses from yesterday. Students will also write an extended journal response to predict the ending of the story and use evidence from the story to back up their prediction.

Friday

·         Reading 8 – As a class, we will review the fiction and nonfiction passages that students completed during the last class period. Students will discuss the elements of fiction/nonfiction as they were presented within the passages and the types of fiction/nonfiction presented. Students will discuss the comprehension and analysis questions for each passage and how talking to text helped when completing these questions.

·         English 8 – Students will work with the text of “Tell Tale Heart” to practice a reading strategy: highlighting and chunking. Students will work with a partner to read each paragraph of “The Tell Tale Heart” while talking to the text and highlighting important information. As a class, we will discuss examples of these on the board together.