It Was So Nice To See You...

Last week was wild and crazy, but I really enjoyed conferences because it's always nice to meet with parents face-to-face.  I love to make the personal connections, so thank you to all who came out!

Even though we only had three days of class time, I feel like we accomplished quite a bit.  Term Two is already off to the races, so here we go:

• English 9 - last week we previewed Romeo and Juliet with activities and background information. I have a bulletin board for posting connections to Shakespeare in our modern world and media, so I'll introduce the extra-credit option for bringing in something to post on this board; all extra credit will be applied to Term 2. This week we will be moving into the text.  Vocabulary will pick back up this week, so they'll receive the words on Monday with a quiz on Friday.  This week I'll introduce the extra-credit option that will connect to vocabulary.  It will be applied to Term 2.  We will be reading Act I of our play and working on activities for understanding.  Many activities are group activities where we get up and move and cannot be made up independently.  Please make sure that when your student misses school, it's a necessary absence, or they will most likely feel lost.  I excuse people from the activities, but they miss the comprehension help.
• English 11 - last week, we finished our medieval unit and they turned in their own tale, written in Heroic Couplets.  Kudos to your kids for tackling a complicated task, and doing it with good humor!  Now we move into Macbeth and Shakespeare.  Everything I said in the English 9 paragraph above will apply to English 11, with the added task of taking notes from a video posted online.  This will need to be finished within one week, and will have a worksheet to go with it.
• Because we're all reading Shakespeare in class together, all students in my English classes will be choosing an independent book to read.  They will have three weeks to read it; the project will be to create a reading blog of their own and to follow someone else's blog.  Step one will be to choose a book.  I will post the assignment online on my webpage and will instruct them as to how I will be grading them.  This should be a great new adventure!  I did this last year with my English 9 students, but there were far fewer of them, so this should be a new challenge!

I'm very excited for Term Two.  Since I attended a workshop in Stratford, Ontario a couple of years ago (and I intend to go again this year), I have learned to love teaching Shakespeare.  I think we've done a disservice to students for generations having them sit and read his plays in a chair.  It's done nothing but create boredom and animosity.  My goal is to get the words off the page and into the mouths of my students and to get them out of their chairs and moving!  Yes, we still have to sit and read and "get" the text, but through many, many activities, reading, and viewing the plays, I'm hoping that my students will have a new appreciation for the Bard!

I hope everyone has a fabulous Sunday, and a great week!  Ciao!


It Was So Nice To See You... by Laura Stubbs is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.