ELA 10: Feb. 8-12

Last week we kicked off our Drama and Social Norms unit by discussing the differences between norms and values and considering how media (tv, music, movies, etc) reflects or challenges our norms and values.  

One of our unit learning goals is reading informational texts for valid arguments and relevant evidence, so we started with that.  Students read many different types of texts: print articles, editorial cartoons, and commercials.  With each text, we considered the author’s assertion, evidence used by the author to support the assertion, potential counterarguments, and the validity of the assertion.  For this weekend, I asked students to apply that same process to the ads they see during the Super Bowl on Sunday. We’ll start class on Monday by discussing the arguments made during those Super Bowl commercials. Students will also take their first graded try at annotating an informational text on Monday. We’ve done lots of formative practice, but on Monday they’ll do one that “counts.”  Hopefully, they’ll all do really well this first time, but if not, there will be two more chances throughout the unit to improve their scores.

On Tuesday, we will start reading our first play of the unit, Antigone.  Students are sometimes hesitant to pick up a Greek Tragedy because it looks so…...old. Hopefully, I’ll be able to convince them that the story is not old at all. A teenager standing up to someone trying to tell her what to do? Sounds pretty relatable to me!! We will spend the week reading the play, discussing how it fits with our unit theme, and examining how the playwright uses different techniques to build up the tension in the story.

Please ask your student to tell you about Antigone this week! It is a great story and students are usually pretty intrigued by it.  Also, please continue to encourage them to dig into their independent novels. There will be very little homework this week since we’ll be reading so much of the play out loud together. This is a great week to get a jump on those independent novels!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

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