June is Getting Closer!

This week is going to be short and sweet, since I do not have any videos or photos to share.  It's always exciting to come to the end of the year, but it's always difficult as well.  I am a huge proponent of field trips and extra-curricular activities to supplement learning, because I truly believe it makes students better learners, but the disruptions to what I'm trying to do in my classroom are always HUGE at this time of year.  So, that being said, here is what the majority of my kiddos have accomplished over the past week:

• English 9 students finished doing the preview work into our unit on The Odyssey.  They worked collaboratively as a group to find out information about a city state, create a digital presentation, learn about a Greek myth, and then present everything to the class.  I made sure that the grading criteria would hold students accountable for the work that they did, but also held them accountable for being there to present.  We worked around anybody who had A.P. testing or were on field trips, so the only students whose grades were affected were the ones who were absent due to their own individual behaviors. 
• English 11 students finished Frankenstein.  They have taken the test and turned in all of the work to go with it, though some are still working their way through the assessment due to the length of the test, or field trips.  I'm not having them do a large paper over this novel, so the test includes an essay which makes it go on a little bit longer.

Coming up, we still have some major work to do:

• English 9 students will be reading The Odyssey (or sections of it from the textbook) in class with me, so they will not have reading homework.  They will have a couple of writing assignments coming home, but most of our big projects are completed for the year.
• English 11 students are entering a unit on the Holocaust and Personal Narratives.  I will be handing out the assignment for their Personal Narrative early this week, along with a due date, and it will be their responsibility to complete it on their own.  In the meantime, we will focus on the autobiography Night by Elie Wiesel.  I think this is the quintessential book about the Holocaust, and details his experience in surviving Auschwitz.  It also won the Nobel Peace Prize.

So as you can see, while we're nearing the end of the school year, we still have much to go.  I hope everyone has a fabulous week and can get out and enjoy some beautiful weather.  It's that beautiful time of year!


June is Getting Closer! by Laura Stubbs is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.