Looking Good!

My Most Excellent Students,

I received a few emails of students requesting access to edit the Google Docs in the Google Classroom for two of the three enrichment activities posted:  The Anne Frank Tour and the Free Writing activity.

Just to be 100% clear:  unlike when we do live digital writing in the classroom for Sentence Composing, here you DO NOT need to edit the Google Docs that are being shared.

If you would like, you can copy the Google Doc into a new document of your own creation.  Or you can just highlight the text that you need and Copy and Paste that text into a new document that you can then edit.  But you do not need access to editing the original Google Doc that has the instructions. You should be able to view the Google Document just fine, and if you can't, please let me know.

I hope that helps.

I really hope you are enjoying the virtual tour of the Anne Frank Museum. I know many of you enjoyed the play and a few of you have even visited the actual museum itself.  Wow.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I get to teach the very best and brightest students.  Keep up the great work, stay safe, and I hope to see you in a few weeks!

Best,
Mr. Chappell / JChapps

My Most Excellent Students!

Good Morning!

I hope that you are all doing well and are making the best of this challenging situation.  I totally miss you guys!

Be safe by practicing social distancing, wash your hands, and be kind to your family (and to everyone).

ONLINE SUPPLEMENTAL AND ENRICHMENT LEARNING
When we get back to a normal situation, we'll resume our Daily Sentence Composing practice, screen the film of The Outsiders, and get into the Diary of Anne Frank.  I can't wait!

In the meantime, I encourage you to to keep your word brain and language arts skills engaged by doing three ELA activities per week online that I have posted and will post in the future on this blog. These were developed by volunteer teachers in Birmingham (including yours truly) working for the entire school district.  These will not be graded or turned in.  Each assignment should take you no more than 45 minutes.

Here are the links:

Anne Frank Virtual Tour

https://classroom.google.com/u/2/c/NTM0NDY1MjA2MTla/m/NTQyMjI0OTI0ODJa/details

Narrative Free Writing Activity

https://classroom.google.com/u/2/c/NTM0NDY1MjA2MTla/m/NTQyMjI0OTI2MTZa/details

National Parks Virtual Tour

https://classroom.google.com/u/2/c/NTM0NDY1MjA2MTla/m/NTQxNjI4NzEzNjBa/details

The instructions are located within the links.  These are fun, engaging activities that are not meant to replace our direct instruction in the classroom, but rather to be meaningful activities related to our 8th grade curriculum as we go through this challenging time together. 

I'll post another set of ELA supplemental and enrichment learning assignments every week as needed.  Your responsibility, as you are able to do so, is to stay engaged by participating the best you can.  It's like we say in class:  the more you put into something, the more you will get out of it.

COMMUNICATION
As we continue our work together online, please don't hesitate to email me at jchappell@birmingham.k12.mi.us.  I check my school email every day, and if you have any questions or concerns, or just even want to say "hi!," feel free to email me.

Just as I've said many times in the classroom, you are all important.  The work we do together is important because it will open doors for your future. This is true now more than ever.

Best Always,
Mr. Chappell (a.k.a. JChapps)

Sentence Composing Adverbial Phrases and Clauses #101 - #105

Parent Teacher Conferences

Dear Parents,

I'm so excited to be able to meet with you during the regularly scheduled Parent Teacher conferences here at Derby next week!  I'll be available in the gym on Wednesday, 3/11/20 from 4 pm - 7 pm. 

However, due to scheduling conflict, I will not be available the next afternoon on Thursday, 3/12/20.

To compensate for this missed opportunity, I'll be available to chat on Monday, 3/9/20 in my classroom (Room 205) from 6 pm to 9 pm.

If you would like to talk and can't make the regular Wednesday conference time, please come on by! 

Best,
Jonathan Chappell

Just for fun

Just for fun, try reading this out loud:

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Fe0ffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

You’ve been reading “The Chaos” by Gerard Nolst Trenité, written nearly 100 years ago in 1922, designed to demonstrate the irregularity of English spelling and pronunciation.

This Week's Agenda

New Quizlet Vocabulary: The Diary of Anne Frank

Tentative Test Date:  3/16/20

We will be reading the play, The Diary of Anne Frank.

To front load the vocabulary for that piece of literature, we will be studying 50 vocabulary words.

https://quizlet.com/_5w4tpe?x=1jqt&i=1si0a


*Modified list for students with 504 and IEPS:

https://quizlet.com/_84q22d?x=1jqt&i=1si0a