November 24 & 25, 2014

Encore asked if they could have a Thanksgiving Read-In during the last meeting before break. They had all checked out books from my room and wanted to dig in. I brought cookies, and they spent the meeting silently reading the whole time. ECO visited Triplett Tech on Monday, so we spent our meeting discussing the careers they'd seen and what they would do for a career if they could choose anything and how to make it happen in their lives, even if it didn't become a career.

All classes finished their work with the sixth graders on their turkey letters. My students received the letters and used our writing rubric to score them. Ms. Phillips said she planned to return the letters and let the students have one more opportunity to revise after my students' input. Late, missing, or sloppy work was a revelation to my students from the perspective of the teacher. We hope to do another cross-grade level assignment later, and other English teachers have expressed an interest in trying such cross-grade level tutoring.

Core 1 and 3 did a freewrite in preparation for reading Polonius's advice to his son Laertes in Hamlet, which they will do after we return this week. The topic was, "Do your parents ever give you advice? What is it? Do you take it?" The responses and discussion were so interesting that we may continue it later in an additional assignment. A writing assignment all three cores enjoyed was one I picked up about 15 years ago at an AP conference and that has become a regular Thanksgiving tradition. I ask students to write skit dialogue for 15-20 minutes of Mother, Father, Sister, and Brother at the Thanksgiving table. I then explain that Theater of the Absurd is a twentieth century theater form in which individuals feel there's no higher power or any other human who cares or listens. Knowing Theater of the Absurd is just an interesting aside and explains the outcome of their writing: I collect the papers, mix them up, call up four students for characters, and Mother reads the first line on her paper, then each character does the same, until the first page is read, then the next page, until we stop. It's very funny and surprisingly fits together. Since second core just finished Hamlet, I told them to use Hamlet, Ophelia, Gertrude, and Polonius. It's a wonderful exercise to give more practice in writing dialogue and also to see how dialogue fits together, even when it isn't intentional.

Happily--and sadly--Core 2 finished Hamlet. I told them the homework responses would stop as we neared the end so they could experience all of the story lines coming together as a surprise. The homework responses had given them a deep understanding of all the themes and characters. It was wonderful to see some tears as "flights of angels" sung Hamlet to his rest. I put them into Socratic Seminar groups with some starter questions at the conclusion, and the discussions were passionate. I have very, very much enjoyed seeing them take complete ownership of this play. I am looking forward to seeing them experience it this Wednesday at Blackfriars, and I'm sorry my other classes didn't have time to get through the play as well, but only start it.

In that spirit I end with a picture the American Shakespeare Center (Blackfriars) sent this week. I hope that all of your sons and daughters had a blessings-filled holiday and enjoyed the extra snow day on Wednesday.