Writing:

All amendment paragraphs were due on Friday before Fall Break.  The students had 2 weeks to work on this one single paragraph.  They had to support their opinion for which amendment they believed was the most important.

Reading:

We began working on how to determine the main idea of song lyrics and magazine articles.  We played with the song lyrics from “Rude”, read magazine articles about how the zombie virus would be contained quickly since it’s a bite versus airborne, read a magazine article about the true posture of the T. Rex, and looked at a primary source document about Civil War medicine.  In addition to determining the main idea, the students had to figure out which details actually support the main idea and why.  They also had to understand why some details did not support the main idea.