Happy Presidents' Day!

Happy Sunday before Presidents' Day! I don't think I've ever wished people Happy Presidents' Day before, but why not? Life is hard, so why not celebrate even the most mundane of moments. You have to grab joy from where you can find it, right?

We're cruising along in both English 9 and English 10 now. English 9 is working on The Crucible. Last week we finished Act One and took a quiz, which goes to one of my first offers: if your student is unhappy with their quiz grade and wants to come in either before or after school, we can look at what they got wrong and if they can tell me the right answer without looking it up, I'll give them the point back. I set the digital quiz for an amount of time that seemed reasonable to me, but I think it moved a bit fast for them, so this is my offer to counteract that. In English 10 we're now getting ready to organize and draft the research paper. Last week I had them practice what they will need to do for the writing of this thing and submit it; if anyone did not do this assignment correctly, I'll be offering them the chance to re-do it. It's important to me that they understand this difficult task, so I'd rather have a re-do than a low score.

I put an offer for extra credit on Classroom for all students. If they are interested, they need to check the announcement on the Stream on Google Classroom.

Here's what's coming up this week:

English 9

• Tuesday, 2/18 - Academic Advisory - bell work; start Act II
• Wednesday, 2/19 - bell work; continue reading Act II
• Thursday, 2/20 - PSAT Advisory - bell work; continue Act II
• Friday, 2/21 - bell work; finish Act II; quiz?

English 10

• Tuesday, 2/18 - Academic Advisory - bell work; create and submit Thesis; organize Outline
• Wednesday, 2/19 - bell work; create and check in Outline; create Works Cited
• Thursday, 2/20 - PSAT Advisory - bell work; submit Works Cited; start Rough Draft
• Friday, 2/21 - bell work; continue working on Rough Draft

That's the week. I hope everyone enjoys the end to their weekend. Ciao!

Happy Presidents' Day! by Laura Stubbs is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://www.laurastubbs.blogspot.com.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day and a shortened week? I'll take it.We're coming up on a 4-day weekend, so that means this week will breeze by. Last week was chaotic but exciting with spirit week, games and competitions, a really great pep assembly (I don't know the last time I said that!) and a dance. I chaperoned the dance and it was a lot of fun to see so many of my students all dressed up in neon and glowing as they danced themselves silly. Despite all the fun, we actually got a few things done. English 9 is almost done reading Act One of The Crucible; English 10 is almost done taking notes for their Wax Museum project. Here are a few pictures of your kids working over the past two weeks:

This coming week may be short, but it's packed with stuff. English 9 will finish Act One, do some activities, and take a quiz; English 10 will check in their notes, write a 2-paragraph piece, pick the final elements for their project, form a thesis, and work on outlining their paper.  Here's the official schedule:

English 9

• Monday, 2/10 - bell work; finish reading Act I; do the vocab. cards
• Tuesday, 2/11 - Academic Advisory - bell work; finish Act I activities; quiz
• Wednesday, 2/12 - bell work; start Act II
• Thursday, 2/13 - PSAT Advisory - bell work; Valentine Character Activity
• Friday, 2/14 - NO SCHOOL!

English 10

• Monday, 2/10 - bell work; check in notes; get Whitman/Plath packet and read/annotate Whitman
• Tuesday, 2/11 - Academic Advisory - bell work; read/annotate Plath; outline 2-paragraph piece - due Thursday on Turnitin.com
• Wednesday, 2/12 - bell work; pick 2 poems for Wax Museum; copy to Google Docs with Citation and annotate
• Thursday, 2/13 - bell work; 2-paragraph assignment due by midnight; create thesis statement; begin outline - due Tuesday, 2/18

I hope everyone has a great week and a wonderful Valentine's Day! Ciao! 

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

Another Busy Week On Deck

Good morning. We're heading into another busy week: second week of the semester, Spirit Week, 1/2 Day on Wednesday, Assembly and Dance on Friday, 8th grade visits to the building.  The Spirit Week dress up days are the following -

• Monday - Sleeping Beauty (PJ's)
• Tuesday - Mickey and Minnie (red and black)
• Wednesday - Moana (Hawaiian)
• Thursday - Favorite Disney Character Day
• Friday - Neon

In the meantime, we have much to accomplish in class. English 9 is finishing the preview for The Crucible so that we can begin Act I; English 10 has been exploring British poets and practicing using MEL (Michigan Electronic Library) to locate sources for information so that we can begin their Wax Museum project. They will choose their poet for the project on Monday and then we're set to start taking notes (as of right now the notes are due on Friday, 2/7).

Here's the schedule for the week:

English 9

• Monday, 2/3 - bell work; gallery walk; start The Crucible Act I
• Tuesday, 2/4 - Academic Advisory - bell work; continue Act I
• Wednesday, 2/5 - 1/2 Day - continue Act I
• Thursday, 2/6 - PSAT Advisory - bell work; continue Act I
• Friday, 2/7 - Activity Schedule - bell work; finish Act I; Quiz

English 10

• Monday, 2/3 - bell work; Author Choice for Wax Museum Due; finish preview activity
• Tuesday, 2/4 - Academic Advisory - bell work; go over citation and notecard do's and don'ts; begin research
• Wednesday, 2/5 - 1/2 Day - continue research
• Thursday, 2/6 - PSAT Advisory - bell work; finish notes for research
• Friday, 2/7 - Activity Schedule - bell work; check in notes; pick two poems to analyze

I hope everyone has a great week! Ciao!