Today, there were no new words and no new lessons in sentence diagramming. Instead, I invited the two groups who met today (groups 4 and 6: group 2 was off today) into a more complicated discussion likely to get unwieldy.
I presented each group with a moral dilemma: Let's say your best friend admits to you that, unable to handle the stress of his/her life, he/she cheated on a significant test. Your friend swears you to secrecy and you agree. However, you later find out another innocent person is getting into major trouble for the cheating your friend did. You beg your friend to come clean, but he/she refuses. What do you do?
Your job was to find a solution that could be acceptable to all. While your debates over the scenario lead me to believe that you're morally sound folks, the discussions hit some bumpy parts: people talked over one another, monopolized, grew entrenched and impassioned, etc. And while some jumped into a hard core debate with just a few others, the remainder of the class grew bored and/or inattentive. While hardcore debating is fun for some and certainly keeps one from falling asleep, that doesn't necessarily make for a productive discussion. We'll continue to work on our consensus building skills.
Your homework:
Study for the quiz. It will include vocabulary from both units 1 and 2 (mostly unit 2), sentence diagramming from lessons 1-4, and questions from the short stories "New African" and "Sponono."
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