Happy President's Day!

What a wonderful week I had last week with all of my students!  My 11th graders finally got to the best part of the novel we're reading, and my 9th graders helped me learn how to use my new Chromebooks and worked on a really fun project.  I love weeks that go well!

Let's start with English 11 this time.  Last week they accomplished quite a bit:  vocabulary, reading through chapter 9 of Lord of the Flies, and a non-fiction article on teen brain development.  They also continued to annotate the novel, searching their own way through the novel instead of relying completely on me.  This week they'll be reading another article on teen brain development and how it impacts not just risk-taking behaviors, but the impacts of those choices, we'll write a 10% summary about one of the articles, and then they'll do an ACT-style writing applying the knowledge in the articles to the choices that have been made by the characters in our novel.  We will also continue with vocabulary (quiz Friday), read two more chapters, and do more activities as we build toward the end of this book.  We will finish it the week of February 23rd.

In English 9, I don't have a lot of grades to show for how much they've learned (yet), but I have to say that I think they've learned a plethora of things.  The first couple of weeks of the term focused on what quality writing is all about, and now we're applying that knowledge to some group presentations.  In addition, they've learned how to use the library's system for databases of quality resources, they've learned how to cite sources in MLA formatting, they've learned how to create a group project on Google Drive, and now they're learning how to present that information to an audience.

Here are some pictures that show our evolution from using the computer labs to using Chromebooks in my classroom.  To me, the beauty is in both the quality of the machinery (Chromebooks are much faster) and in our ability to pick them up and move them.  At the beginning of the week we were still in the lab, which used up time both in getting in there and in booting everything up, but you can also see how each student is working completely independently on their group project, which is not ideal since they need to communicate:

Once we were able to get on the Chromebooks in my room, we were able to bring them to the desks and I could teach from my computer and overhead projector while they followed along on their computers -

- and then they were able to pick them up and move the computers to their groups where they could truly colaborate with their information to create their presentations:

Of course, once they were able to work faster, their questions for me came much faster, and so I didn't get very many photos, but trust me, it was really fabulous to watch them collaborate and learn - from me, from the computer, and from each other.

They are using Google Drive Slides and Presentations to share their information.  I love this because they all access the presentation independently so each person is responsible for his/her own information, but they work on just one document.  They can also access Google Drive from anyplace that has internet access, so the work can continue away from the classroom and school.  We watched our first presentation on Friday - which I think went very well - and the feedback from them was very positive.  There are definitely downfalls, but overall, I'm very excited about having these Chromebooks in my room.  Thank you Airport Community Schools for giving us this opportunity!

Coming up this week in English 9 - we'll finish the presentations and start reading To Kill a Mockingbird.  I'm going to use a combination of study guides and annotations to help guide them through.  I prefer annotations because it helps them learn how to locate and identify key aspects in the reading, but I do like to mix things up so that they don't get bored.  We'll be working on rhetorical language and its applications, and vocabulary will be a part of the week (quiz Friday).

Big things are happening in my classroom, and I couldn't be more thrilled.  I hope everyone has a wonderful President's Day, and I look forward to being back at school on Tuesday.  Ciao!

Happy President's Day! by Laura Stubbs is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License