Vocab test. 16 quesions Sadie and Ashely each missed 2, Devin missed 9. Devin and I worked on some of the ones he missed and I discovered (and admitted) my test was flawed -- two of the ones he missed could actually have been right it turns out -- so he "only" missed 7 in the end. I let the girls leave 5 minutes early and worked with Devin on his test. I chose 4 of the ones he missed and reviewed meaning, and asked him to look back at his notes for the definitions and examples for those words and to write me a new sentence for each as homework. Right after we took the test we reviewed Walt Whitman's freeform poems, and looked back at the line "I Sing America." Then we went to Langston Hughes. We reviewed what was going on during the Great Gatsby era and talked about Jazz. We talked about the references to jazz in Gatsby adn discussed the origins of it. We talked about syncopation in music and I gave them examples (with drumbeats on the table). Then I read them some Langston Hughes poetry aloud and told them they were allowed to laugh if they needed. I think they were a little embarassed, but I told them to let it out. Then Ashley volunteered to read a poem (in 1927 African American dialect) and she did a beautiful job. I told them to focus on the musicality of the poems (instead of just the teacher-y "meter and rhyme scheme" stuff.) I wanted them jsut to feel the poems. I showed them some places where Hughes referred to Whitman (for ex. when he wrote "I too sing America").