Monday, May 11 - Friday, May 15

Friday
Today we watched the Temple Grandin movie!
Thursday
We began the class with an emoticon activity about reading facial expressions to reinforce the idea that for Christopher in Curious Incident, peoples emotions are almost impossible to read from their faces. Next we reviewed the definition of a metaphor and discussed why metaphors are incomprehensible for Christopher, but he is okay talking in similes. Finally we looked at some road signs that would cause Christopher great difficulty if he were to encounter them. Don't forget good copy of synthesis is due tomorrow!

Wednesday
After silent reading, we went through the questions related to yesterday's jigsaw activity. Following that, we created a criteria list of six possible traits of a person who is on the autism spectrum. Next, we watched a video clip from Sherlock - the one where he delivers his best man toast at his friend's (Dr. Watson) wedding. We noticed that Sherlock is definitely portrayed in this series as having some Aperger -like traits. At the end of the class there was time to work on the good copy of the synthesis piece that is due on Friday.

Tuesday
Today was an edit quiz day. Once the quiz was done, we did the jigsaw activity with the information about Aspergers and autism. Tomorrow you will have a bit more time to deal with the questions and then we will discuss them.

Monday

I began today with and explanation of the during reading assignment for Curious Incident: choose six pictographs that Christopher provides in his narrative. Create a chart with the picture/drawing from the book and then (in another column) explain how he uses it and (in last column) what it's use reveals about his character. I returned the drafts of the synthesis pieces today. The organization of these was well done. Everyone had three or four paragraphs that had a strong controlling idea. Everyone also made the point/thesis they were trying to prove clear. Some things that need further work and practice are embedding quotes and using the Point, Example, Explanation structure in the paragraphs. We did an edit sheet based on the writing errors I found in the synthesis pieces. Tomorrow there will be a quiz on these errors. At the end of the class we watched 15 minutes of the movie about Temple Grandin.