January 28-30, 2015

*If words are orange, that indicates a link to a document or website.

This week, most of our time was spent reading and discussing Night. C2 finished the book, so we took a look at Elizabeth Loftus's TED Talk on false memory and how that could affect the writer of a memoir. I had determined before we began the book not just to read it, but use it to discuss how to evaluate primary resources for research. I've shown them Oprah's tour of Auschwitz with Elie Wiesel, which I believe was a valuable activity that left them very moved, but it has scraped my soul raw to spend days teaching the Holocaust. I will be very glad to leave the topic behind. Another activity was a creative writing prompt. They watched a clip from War and Remembrance in which the Jews arrived at Auschwitz on the train and were then sorted into those sent to the camps and those who would go to the gas chambers. Their writing was some of the most descriptive I've read this year.

In all classes, I had time to begin carpe diem poetry, which we will return to in the upcoming week. We will have two days with computers next week to begin the new projects--or for students who still haven't completed second quarter work to finish it. Any work that was turned in at the end of this week will be graded this weekend with grade changes submitted this week.

In an effort to help students remember due dates, I've begun asking them to get out their cellphones OR their planners when I give them a due date. I also told them about a gmail app, Boomerang, that allows them to send themselves e-mails on a certain date or to "boomerang" an e-mail with due dates or instructions back to themselves. I have to thank C2 who said what should have been obvious to me: "I never take the planner home or look at it. My whole life is on my phone. Can I just put the dates into my phone instead of my planner?" Well, of course! Why didn't I think of that long ago??

ECO is still working as a study hall, and they reported that their grades have gone up as a result of our time spent organizing assignments and study time. We hope to soon have some classes dedicated to career discussions again. Encore finished That Was Then, This Is Now. I was impressed that students often stopped as we were reading and initiated discussions. When we finished the book, we had an intense discussion that lasted most of that meeting time about love, hate, and betrayal (the main character turned in the boy who had lived with them and been as close as a brother for drug dealing). They asked what we'd read next, and I said I planned to focus on writing for the upcoming SOL. I anticipated possible groans, but they were excited. In fact, they wanted to start right that moment. Wow! Looking forward to it!

Important Dates

February 27: Interim Reports
March 10-13: Writing SOL (Day 1: Multiple Choice; Day 2: Writing the essay; Day 3: make-ups for absentees)
March 17: Spring picture day
March 31: End of Q3

English 8 Due Dates

February 13: Create Your Own Project: Plan due (found on pages 3 and 4 of the project hand-out
February 20: Choice essay #1 due
March 5: Choice essay #2 due
March 20: Powtoons Project Due
March 31: Create Your Own Project: Project due

January 19-23, 2015

The week began with a holiday and ended with a 1:00 p.m. release for weather. Thus ended the second quarter and the first semester.

Most of the time was given to students to use the computers to finish projects. On the board, I also posted late/missing work (all completed in class) that I still didn't have from students, and I gave the student another copy of the assignment (for some this was the third or fourth time I'd given a copy). If there is a zero for daily work still in the gradebook, it isn't because I didn't make students aware of it.

I reminded students that all summative assignments (the big ones) must be completed, so, if they have a zero for it this quarter, it still must be done the next quarter. I plan major assignments for a purpose, and it's part of the learning experience. The major assignments for this quarter were the important things in my life essay, a one-page summary of a current event from the news, including a Works Cited page showing the sources, and, in Cores 1 and 2, The Outsiders five-page sequel. All of these assignments were originally given to the students in October or November, so they've had adequate time to complete the work. I have computers for 2 or 3 classes a week.

At the bottom of the blog, I've posted the summative projects for the upcoming quarter. Check it every week, because I will add quizzes and other assignments as I set those dates throughout the quarter. I e-mailed and gave hard copies of these assignments, except the essays, long ago. I included a link to the Google Doc for each assignment.

This week, we continued working on fragments and run-ons, two of the major writing mistakes made in writing. They took a vocabulary quiz on the last five words they learned (qualm, clarity, explicit, stellar, cohesion).

ECO continued study hall work. Encore is finishing That Was Then, This Is Now.

Important Dates

February 27: Interim Reports
March 10-13: Writing SOL (Day 1: Multiple Choice; Day 2: Writing the essay; Day 3: make-ups for absentees)
March 17: Spring picture day
March 31: End of Q3

English 8 Due Dates

February 13: Create Your Own Project: Plan due (found on pages 3 and 4 of the project hand-out
February 20: Choice essay #1 due
March 5: Choice essay #2 due
March 20: Powtoons Project Due
March 31: Create Your Own Project: Project due

January 5-9; January 12-16, 2015

Happy New Year!

I hope by next week to be on my regular weekly blogging schedule again. I'm sure your students told you that I went out of town on Friday for my fiftieth birthday, and I forced myself to abandon all schoolwork while gone. I've also been extremely busy grading all the late work that should have been turned in a long time ago. You've probably noticed grades getting filled in slowly in PowerSchool. Some of that resulted from student illnesses or going out of town before Christmas or extra activities, like Strolling Strings, so I've put them to work tying up all those lose ends. We were finishing a group of exercises in which they had to write about why and how authors use figurative language, and it was very difficult for them. I could see some lightbulbs coming on, and we'll be doing some upcoming activities where they put what they learned into use, so I hope to see the bulbs go from 25 watt to 100 watt. (That was a metaphor!)

I would have finished more grading, but we are now required to write detailed lesson plans for everything done in the classroom. When our administrators visit our classrooms, as they frequently do, we are required to have our plans out for everything that we teach. In one class period, I may start or cover three different lessons. Writing a plan from scratch can take hours. For example, I want the students to read two poems this week. My lesson plan for it is five single-spaced pages and took two hours to write. Thank you for being understanding about my not having all of the grading complete at this point.

They grumbled in pain about returning to work on the first day back, then we had a snow day, so the next day I asked them act out Katy Perry's "Firework" as literal language before writing about why authors use figurative language. They saw how difficult it is to write without figurative language because it permeates our writing and speaking. They took notes on sentence fragments and how to correct them, and we practiced. They are doing better than they think on fragments, so this week we'll add run-ons (fused sentences and comma splices) to skills for writing.

We began reading Night by Elie Wiesel. I've already asked them to do several anticipatory writings about memoir and memory, because we are looking at the book as a primary source and how to validate primary sources rather than just as a class book that we are reading. I showed a few minutes of Wiesel's tour of Auschwitz with Oprah, and they were overwhelmed that something like this happened in our century. Core 2 is reading it independently, and it needs to be finished by January 28, the day we return from the semester break.

Students will have a vocabulary quiz on Wednesday, January 21, on qualm, cohesive, explicit, clarity, and stellar. They asked to have a major grade before the end of the quarter that they felt confident they could do well on, so I announced it before we left for winter break so they could study each day. They need to fill in the blank in a sentence, identify a picture that fits the word, and (the most points) write a sentence with strong context clues using the word correctly, and they are allowed to memorize the sentence they wrote in class on the exercise because it's been checked for correctness.

Encore is almost finished with That Was Then, This Is Now and ECO has been a very efficient study hall with a time for students to get extra help from teachers or each other to complete assignments.

Please contact me with any questions or concerns. It's crazy enough when the quarter ends, but our semester is ending, and it's the time of the year for weather issues. It's easy to get confused. Except for far too much talking in class, which interferes with learning, I'm very proud of what the students are accomplishing.

December 8-12, 15-19, 21-23, 2014

Happy 2015!

Things were a bit confusing in the last weeks of 2014 with many students missing from illness or other activities. I also began an ongoing activity which was very challenging and which I asked student to re-do until they could do it correctly. On the old SOL test, students needed to identify the type of figurative language being used, which is fairly simple. The new test asks them to tell how and why the author uses the figurative language, which requires much higher reasoning skills. We read Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory" and reviewed characterization, as well as how he used figurative language. We'll be picking this back up after the break. We also briefly touched on voice in David Sedaris's writing.

We've been working on summarizing news articles, and they began writing their own Christmas memories. All classes took required midterm exams for reading and writing that I spread across three days so each testing sessions wouldn't be too long. All classes have been writing about memory and memoir prior to reading Night by Elie Wiesel and the play The Diary of Anne Frank after break. We also studied two new words (qualm, cohesive); when we've covered five, there will be a quiz.

Core 2 was assigned a group presentation on the poem "A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy's Day" by John Donne. Let's just say that public speaking and collaborating successfully with peers are definitely skills that need polishing.

Encore is reading That Was Then, This Is Now by S. E. Hinton. We've had some very intense discussions about the story, so we're only about one-third through. ECO is still mixing in time to catch up on late work and build some skills for core classes.