Edit-Me Monday Writing Sentences: These sentences need your help. Rewrite each one so it is clearer and makes better sense. Our city’s new aquarium offers amazing sights and sounds, more of them than any other attraction in the area. Visitors find themselves staring down into a pond filled with twenty huge alligators entering the building. In one large gallery visitors can pick up and listen to starfish and the songs of humpback whales. A rare opportunity to see nature’s marine marvels up close is offered at this wonderful new facility; you should definitely visit it soon. In another room they can stand in the middle of a great hollow glass cylinder, and big fish swim around and around.

Test Prep Tuesday Comparison of Characters: -ful and -less are suffixes that can describe something or someone who has an over-abundance (handful) or a lack of something (worthless). Read the two short articles written about a person. Compare the two “characters” and make a list of words their “-ful”’s and “-less”’s based on the information and details in the articles. Explain why you think so. Help! I Can't Put Down My Phone The Danger of Just One Drink Shaky hands. Sweaty palms. Seventeen-year-old Oliver is restless, can’t focus, and keeps reaching into his empty pockets as his heart pounds with panic. But why—is he on the run from zombies? Vampires? Werewolves? Or all three? Actually, it’s a much more ordinary situation: Oliver accidentally left his phone at home. Oliver isn’t proud of it, but he’s the first to admit his dependence: Even a five-minute trip to the store without his device is enough to fill him with unease, paranoia, and fear. But he’s not alone in this feeling—the stress and separation anxiety of going phone-free is so common, it’s been given a name: nomophobia (short for no-mobile-phone phobia). Yes, technology helps us stay connected and informed. Who can even imagine life without the Internet in their hands or being able to text Mom to say “running late, don’t worry”? When technology does everything, however, it’s easy to become dependent on it. And now, scientists are beginning to wonder if our tech addiction is giving us a leg up, or putting obstacles (in many cases invisible ones!) in our path. Seventeen-year-old Taylor Meyer found herself standing in the woods one October night after her school’s homecoming football game. Two paths lay in front of her. One led back the way she’d come—to a parking area, a familiar territory in the town of Norfolk, Massachusetts. The other went deeper into the trees. Normally, Taylor would have known exactly which direction would bring her to the safety of the parking lot. But when she got up from the campfire to go home, she wasn’t thinking clearly. Hours of drinking left her mind fuzzy and disoriented. Despite being just a few feet away from both her friends and the exit, she was utterly lost. Elsewhere, as morning came, it dawned on her family and friends that she was missing. A frantic search began. But on day three, the unthinkable happened: Taylor’s body was found, drowned in two feet of water in a swampy area of the woods. She’d died drunkenly trying to find her way back.

Word Work Wednesday Antonyms: Read the words given and add another antonym that has nearly the opposite meaning as the group of words. poverty-stricken, wretched, destitute, _____________ to decrease, diminish, _______________ cheery, inviting, genial, ________________ fearfulness, timidity, faintheartedness, _______________ rigid, inflexible, recalcitrant, _____________ definite, conclusive, confirmed, _______________ to purify, purge, expurgate, ______________ paraphrased, _____________ emotional, oversensitive, high-strung, ________________ frank, ingenuous, aboveboard, _________________

Thoughtful Thursday No Warm Up

Friday Writing a Claim: Read the passage from a government report on post-high school education. Write a claim that you can support using this passage. An associate’s degree is usually earned in two years. Students Earn More Associate's Degrees and Vocational Certificated; Up 25 Percent in 5 years Largest jumps for Black and Hispanic women; seen in health care, propriety schools The number of associate’s degrees and vocational certificates awarded by postsecondary institutions has reached almost 1.5 million, according to a new report from the National Center for Educational Statistics. Most of this growth was driven by women seeking credentials in health care fields—in particular, Black and Hispanic women. Health care accounted for 31 percent of all certificated and associate degrees awarded in 2007 and increased 68 percent over the decade studied. The report, “Changes in Postsecondary Awards Below the Bachelor’s Degree: 1997-2007,” comes at a time when the labor market demand is growing for jobs requiring these types of credentials. Tome Weko, associate commissioner for the postsecondary division at NCES, said the increase is driven by both labor demands and a demographic bubble of people entering college-age years.