Spring Is Finally Arriving (I Think)!

The days are getting longer, and though we still have cold days, those 40-degree days are becoming more numerous (how weird is it that I think of 40 degrees as warm).  I hear birds singing all the time, now, which is a welcome sound.  The other morning I was on my way into school at about 6:30 AM and a bird was having his own little party in the trees above me.  Not for the first time, I wished I knew bird calls so that I could identify him.

And as spring approaches, my students get antsy, so at the moment we're doing lots and lots of projects!

In English 9, we're completing two big projects:  their independent reading projects are due on Monday!  The plan is that they will bring in their project, throw on their t-shirts and we'll share what we've been doing for the past month.  I'll bring the food and drinks, and we'll celebrate!  After that, they need to get their final copy of their research paper completed to be turned in by Wednesday.  We've been working for about 3-weeks in class on the computers on this project, so I think we're all ready to see it come to an end.  By Wednesday evening, expect to see Flowers for Algernon books coming home and reading homework, along with study guides, will commence.

Here's a picture of some of my 2nd Hour working on the computers for their research project:

I'll take photos of the Monday presentations and post them next week.

In English 11, we're presenting our group projects.  Many chose to try to use new programs like Prezi and ThingLink, and it has been a lot of fun to watch them learn how to do collaborative presentations.  In Prezi they all work on the same project and so they're given avatars and can see who is working on each slide.  The first day I kept hearing, "Hey!  Get out of my bubble!"  Hilarious!  We started the presentations on Friday after working all week on them, and we'll finish them on Monday.  I'll take more photos to post next week, but here's what I have of some of them working and presenting:

On Tuesday I am taking many of them on a field trip to Macbeth at Wayne State University.  The rest of them will stay back at school and start watching the movie of Lord of the Flies.  By Thursday we'll be turning the corner and starting our research paper.  Packets will follow, but please note that I'm going to have them use Google Drive so that they can access it anywhere and can share for peer and teacher editing.  This will be about a 2-week process.

I hope everyone has a wonderful week, and feels rejuvenated as spring approaches!  Cheers!


Spring is Finally Here (I Think)! by Laura Stubbs is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.