·        Elements of Literature .  This month we will venture into reading plays with "Brian's Song," a story of two football buddies who endure many triumphs and tribulations together.  Within this lengthy play we'll take quizzes, introduce new vocabulary, respond to writing within the text and employ our knowledge of Bloom's Taxonomy to create an answer questions regarding this play.  This unit should take about two weeks.  In June, we'll do a multi-cultural Cinderella unit.

·        Review of grammar – parts of speech and mechanics.  Practice will include daily drills to exercise proofreading skills (D.O.L.), as well as other homework assignments focusing on parts of speech particularly noun, pronoun and verb consistency.  We'll review what we've learned so far about nouns, verbs and adjectives and re-acquaint ourselves with adverbs and prepositions.  Activities and quizzes will be used to assess knowledge in this area. 

·        Creative Writing Practice – Daily free write in journals on weeks that don’t have D.O.L.  Writings this month will focus on using verbs to create an interesting piece of writing.  Our Cinderella unit will provide us with an opportunity to create our own Cinderella stories.

• Essay Writing - Our final essay will focus on a theme from Of Mice and Men and concentrate on forming a strong thesis and supporting it with relevant examples from the reading.

·        Literature – Our final novel will be Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.  This unit will include a study of vocabulary, literary terms, answering thematic questions, essay and other writing activities.  Formal assessment will include quizzes and tests over the reading.