AP Lang: Dec. 11-22

Hello! It’s been awhile, but I wanted to give you a quick update of what’s going on in AP Language.

Writing: Students are beginning an argumentative essay this weekend that we will draft, revise and edit over the course of the next week and a half. We spent this past week brainstorming ideas for five potential prompts; this weekend students need to choose their topics and begin outlining their essays. Next week will be dedicated to one-on-one writing conferences. Students who have complete drafts and specific questions will get the most out of those conferences!

Reading: We are continuing our work with reading challenging, complex texts. As I reminded the students in class, challenging reading is a lot like weight lifting!! It’s hard, but if you try things that are “heavier weight” your muscle (brain!) will grow.  I encourage you to ask them about the texts they’re reading. Everything in this unit is related to our Gender theme and our guiding questions about how our expectations and norms for gender roles shape the way we interact with one another.

Notebooks: This past week was dedicated to conferences about students’ contextual pool entries in their notebooks. I thoroughly enjoyed talking one on one with the students about what they are learning about global and domestic issues, history, pop culture, etc. Please ask them about their contextual pools. They have lots of interesting stuff to share!

Finally, I wanted to let you know that we are planning a book related party for the week before break. We are going to get involved in the book fairy movement by wrapping and hiding 30 books around Novi High School.  The books will be marked with a note encouraging the finder to take it, read it, and pass it on! We’re hope to spread a little reading joy right before break starts. If you have any great books gathering dust on your shelves that might be interesting to high school students that you are willing to part with, we’d love any donations for our project.

I’ll update again after break. The only “homework” the students will have for the break is READING! Please encourage them to ask me for recommendations or to borrow some of my books prior to break.

​Have a wonderful, restful holiday. Please reach out via email or phone if you have any questions for me!

​