As the school year starts to wind down, the seniors seem to be counting the days. One thing we’ve tried to impress on their minds is to “don’t count the days, make the days count.” Some seniors may have “senioritis”. We’ve discussed and broken down the word senioritis, like we do with most words. The suffix -itis means “the inflammation of”. So, just as in tonsillitis, tendonitis, bronchitis – it means the inflammation (swelling) of the root word.

   In English 4, we’ve focused on not getting carried away with the last days of being a senior and staying with our routine.  Our routine always starts with the basics – grammar, writing and vocabulary enrichment – which means starting the class with Daily Language. Daily Language consists of two sentences on the screen with several mistakes. Seniors find the mistakes and every day a selected senior presents to the class the corrections he or she has made. We then go to an analogy and antonym for the day.

   Next, we focus on our new vocabulary words for the week, which consist of ten words that have a central theme. On Thursday, we have a spelling quiz over those words, followed by Friday’s definition quiz.

   We then usually have the objective for the day – which could be reading comprehension, writing, or other Language Arts aspects. One thing continually emphasized is reading. Reading comprehension is a skill that they will use the rest of their life. I’ve always stated, “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” If you want to lead, you better read.

   So, as the seniors become closer to that magical graduation day, they know to stick to the basics and they’ll do fine in the days to come.