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.
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