Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day!  I hope your children show you all the love and support they can to thank you for all of the love and support you have given them over the years.  You deserve it!

Here's are pictures of the loves of my life, in a moment that remains precious to me because they were spending time with me:

I don't even remember what my life was like before they came into it, and I don't know what I would do without them.  I cherish these years!  I know you all feel the same way I do about your children, so enjoy your day!

In the meantime, life goes on, so here's what we accomplished last week:

In English 9, we finished To Kill a Mockingbird and started a poetry unit.  They had vocabulary terms and we applied them to a few poems I picked out; then they immersed themselves into poetry books and logged what they read, picking out a poem they particularly enjoyed.  In English 11, we outlined a project connecting their books to the larger theme of Human Rights, and then created a thesis statement about what can be done to be a positive force in this world.  After that, they created group presentations on Prezi to share their ideas.  Most of the groups are done presenting; I only have a couple more to go.

Coming up this week:

• English 9 will continue looking at poetry.  They have another set of vocabulary words and I will be assigning poems for them to read in order to identify poetic devices and understand how they work.  They will also begin writing a few poems of their own, choosing a topic but with guidelines for what poetic devices they need to use.
• English 11 will begin the book Night by Elie Wiesel, an autobiography about his survival of Auschwitz.  The beginning of the book centers around his life as a Hasidic Jew before the Nazis took over, so our vocabulary this week focuses on terms specific to that culture.  I find that they know quite a bit about the Holocaust, but very little about the Jewish culture.  We have a preview packet to do on Monday, and then we'll move into the book.  They will have a study guide to do along with the reading, which will take place completely in the classroom since we do not have enough books to check out.  We will also see a video of the author taking Oprah on a tour of Auschwitz, and connect the ideas with poems and/or poetry.

I am behind on grading again; the lives of my children have kicked into high gear and every night and every weekend has multiple events, but I will get caught up.  I hope everyone has a wonderful Sunday and a fabulous week...ciao!


Happy Mother's Day! by Laura Stubbs is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://laurastubbs.blogspot.com.