Most of the kids in my AGATE classes have read or are reading The Hunger Games. I understand the movie opens March 23. We have parent conferences the following week, but no one will be at school Friday afternoon on March 30. I think I'll plan on seeing the movie in Poulsbo at the first matinee show on March 30. Any parents want to join me? Oh, yeah. You can bring your kids too, if you want.

This month you will be using adverb and adjective openings for your vocab sentences. 

There are several different kinds of adverbs, but the ones you will be using are the ones that end in -ly.Those adverbs tell how something was done. You may use one or two to start your sentence. You do need a comma after your opening.

• Slowly and carefully, Mildred crept out onto the ice.
• Suddenly, her skates slipped out from under her, and she fell to her knees.
• Painfully, she picked herself up again.
  
• Hesitantly, she started to skate around the rink.

There are several different kinds of adjectives, but the ones you will be using are descriptive. They describe a person, place, thing, or idea. Use them at the beginning of the sentence (without a, an, or the in front). You do need a comma after your opening.

• Clumsy, Mildred stepped around the edge of the rink as if she were walking.
• Graceful and lovely, her cousin Maud glided past her.
• Impatient, Mildred pushed away from the edge of the rink and tried to twirl in the center of the ice.
• Horrified, Maud saw her cousin trip and sprawl spread-eagled on the ice.
• Relaxed and happy, the two girls drank hot chocolate by the fire while Mildred's dad signed her up for skating lessons.

This week I have been teaching writing skills for History Day using handouts developed by the Writing Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Designed for college students who need some extra support in writing, these resources are at an appropriate level for students in the middle school AGATE classes.

I am having the class read one handout a day this week: introductions, thesis statements, evidence, arguments, and conclusions. Some days they read silently with partners and add sticky notes with question marks when they run into a “clunker” (something they don’t understand) and a sticky note with a star when they run into a “link” (something that makes them think of a connection to something else they have heard or know about). Then they discuss the clunkers and links with their partner before the class discussion. For the handouts on evidence and arguments, I had the whole class read together—I felt there would be far too many clunkers!

Because History Day projects are often done in groups, I then have the class practice group writing. The groups use poster-size sticky notes to write the most important things they learned from the day’s lessons. Then each group decides on the single most important sentence they want to remember. I write those sentences on the board exactly the way they tell them to me. We work together to evaluate the sentences, organize them, combine, revise, and edit. Then I type them and post them. The paragraphs they’ve written so far are on the right hand column of following page: http://www.kragen.net/middle-school-class-materials.html.

When I first told the students that the material was from a college site, they were a bit intimidated, but they are feeling more comfortable with it now. Learning to write quality academic research papers is a skill they are certainly capable of. And there are additional materials on the UNC site that they can explore: http://writingcenter.unc.edu/resources/handouts-demos.

I wrote to the Writing Center to let them know how much  I appreciated their materials. Here is their reply:

Hi, Jan—thank you so much for writing to share what you and your students are doing!   We’re always delighted to hear that our handouts are helping writers. When  we created the first ones, they were just photocopies on a wall in our office.  When we got a website and posted them, we thought they’d mostly be of use to Carolina students.  But now we hear from people all over the world who are reading them—scientists in Antarctica trying to start a writing group, a 70-year-old woman in Minnesota who has decided to get her bachelor’s degree, students all over the world who are learning English, and lots of high school and college instructors and students here in the US. You’re the first middle school group I’ve heard from this academic year, and I’ll be passing your message along to our tutors (who are the authors of most of the handouts)—it will make their day!  We’d be interested to hear any feedback you or your students might have for us, including suggestions for other topics we might address in future handouts (and video “demos”—those are our newest source of fun here).

Vicki Behrens, Ph.D.
Assistant Director
The Writing Center
UNC-Chapel Hill

Central Kitsap is inviting parents from North Kitsap to join them for this class. SENG--Supporting Emotional Needs of Gifted--is a terrific organization. This class is a great opportunity.

For January, you will be using appositives in your sentences. Appositives follow a noun and rename it. Appositives do not start with who, whom, which, or that. They do use commas unless they are very short and just add a name. For example, my cousin Bob names the same person twice, but in that case the appositive doesn't need commas. You will use longer appositives, ones that do require commas. Here are some samples:

• Mrs. Kragen, our English teacher, told us to use appositives in our sentences this month.
• We are supposed to use longer appositives, ones that require commas.
• There are several movie versions of Cyrano de Bergerac, a story about a man with a very large nose who falls in love with a beautiful girl.
• Cyrano, a skilled swordsman, could also write poetry.
  

_Let's review some basics.

There are words. They come in eight parts of speech: verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections.

There are phrases. They are groups of words that work together to do a single job: verb phrases, participial phrases, noun phrases, prepositional phrases.

There are clauses. Clauses have both a subject (with a noun or pronoun) and a predicate (with a verb). Clauses that can stand by themselves as sentences are called independent clauses. Clauses that cannot stand by themselves as sentences are dependent clauses.

There are different ways to join two independent clauses. Here are two independent clauses:
There were 58 students from Poulsbo Middle School at Regional History Day.
The girls led them all in school cheers before the awards ceremony began.

The most basic way to join two independent clauses is to use a comma and conjunction:
There were 58 students from Poulsbo Middle School at Regional History Day, and the girls led them all in school cheers before the awards ceremony began.

Another common way to join two independent clauses is to use a subordinating conjunction to make one sentence into a dependent clause and then attach it to the other sentence:
Since there were 58 students from Poulsbo Middle School at Regional History Day, the girls led them all in school cheers before the awards ceremony began.

A less common way to join two closely related independent clauses is to use a semicolon:
There were 58 students from Poulsbo Middle School at Regional History Day; the girls led them all in school cheers before the awards ceremony began.

An unusual and classy way to join two closely related independent clauses is to use a nominative absolute. Change the verb in the second sentence into an -ing participle and use a comma where the period was. See how it works:
There were 58 students from Poulsbo Middle School at Regional History Day, the girls leading them all in school cheers before the awards ceremony began.

Cool, huh?

You will be using nominative absolutes in your vocab sentences during December. That's just two weeks--Dec. 7 and Dec. 14.

The kings vs lords chart and your notes on the two power points should help on the essays. The chants are full of information that is on the multiple choice test.

Look at the file above called "UW Prep." What a wonderful thing the librarians at UW have done to help all of you! Then read this note from the library staff at UW:

The UW Databases with the padlock icon are UW Restricted--only current UW students, faculty, and staff can use them from off campus.  Your students are welcome to use them (and will likely have the most success finding newspaper articles searching these UW databases) while on campus, and we hope that they'll visit a UW Library to use them again if needed.

Our website can be a bit overwhelming, so we have pulled together the most useful UW Databases and added them to the News: History Day Guide at <http://guides.lib.washington.edu/hdnews>. Students can view this before they get here and begin to use the websites listed on their resource sheets. 

The titles listed under the Microfilm heading include the Microfilm A call number that the students will need to locate the microfilm in Microforms & Newspapers (MicNews).  MicNews staff will be on hand to help the students locate their materials, use the computers, and the microform machines.