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We survived the first semester!! I’m excited to continue the work we’ve been doing with reading and writing this year. Most of you are returning from first semester, but some of you are transplants from other ELA 10 classes. Welcome, if you’re new! I write a weekly blog to keep parents and students up to speed on what’s going on in class.
I’m happy to report that, overall, the students performed very well on the midterm exam. It was a challenging exam--multiple choice especially is tricky for lots of kids--but the results were great! Students will get their combined reading and writing scores on Monday along with their final grades for English for semester one. Later in the week, we will spend some time discussing the test , but students who wish to discuss their own tests with me one on one should plan to come see me in AA or before school. This week we will be recommitting to our independent reading for second semester and making plans for sharing our book recommendations with one another. This semester each student will write at least one book review (see samples here) so that they can begin sharing their book suggestions with one another. We will spend Monday looking at suggestions for books to read this semester and examining some popular authors. Later in the week, we’ll begin discussing our Unit 3 focus question: How does drama shape or reflect our social norms? We’ll read two plays in this unit: Antigone and A Doll’s House. With each play, we’ll consider whether or not the playwright was challenging the social norms of the time or simply reflecting them. Then, we’ll look at modern dramas--tv shows, movies, etc--and consider how pop culture is shaping and reflecting the norms of today. There are no major assignments or projects to be thinking about just yet, but if you could, ask your student what he or she is reading for an independent novel. Students who are strong readers become students who are strong writers. The best thing you can do to support your student at this point in the semester is make sure they’re reading!! Have a great week! Next week I’ll give you some more information about scheduling and how to make choices about English classes for Eleventh Grade.
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We made it through first semester! Welcome new parents and students if you are a transplant from Mrs. Volansky’s class!! I write a weekly blog to give an overview of what we’re up to and, hopefully, help keep everyone on the same page.
First, a word about the midterm. I am ecstatic about the students’ performance on it. The class average on the whole thing (the three essays + the multiple choice) was a 104.4 on the AP scale. That converts to a 4 on the five point AP scale. Here is a the formula if this is all gibberish to you. The important thing to know is that scoring a 4 or a 5 equals college credit in most cases. We are well on our way to lots of 4s and 5s in May!! Your students will receive their scores in class on Monday, and then we will discuss the essays and multiple choice on Wednesday. Students will have time to get additional feedback, ask questions, etc. If your student did not do as well as he or she hoped, please encourage him or her to come see me before school to discuss the results of the test. And, please remember that we still have thirteen weeks to improve! This week we will begin our unit study on Pop Culture. We will look at how or if pop culture reflects our values and we will read a number of texts--both old and new--that examine how we interact with “popular” media. We’re starting the week talking about Zombies. Make sure to ask your students about why modern life feels rather “undead”. We are also kicking off this semester’s independent reading lists. Per student request, I’m giving all of the recommended lists to them up front so they can make a plan for the semester for their reading. My expectation is that they will read at least three independent novels and complete two assignments: a book review (see here for examples) and a book advertisement that can be posted in the classroom. We will talk about all of this on Monday, but please ask your students which books they are planning to read this semester. I want to encourage them to make a plan now and work hard at sticking with it. Many students liked the freedom of last semester’s independent novels, but others expressed a desire for more deadlines. I’m going to work a little harder on helping them hold themselves accountable to their own deadlines. I could give them hard and fast dates, but I am much more interested in helping them learn how to monitor their own work and set their own goals. You can really help me out by pestering them about it now and again at home! I’m excited about this second semester and can’t wait to get started! Have a great week. Friday we finally had our Art of Protest Museum. What a cool exhibit of your students’ talents!! Here are some pictures of some of the projects. I wish I could include more, but I kept forgetting to take pictures! The students did a great job flexing their creative muscles and thinking about different ways to express their point of view. It was a nice way to end the semester.
Next week we will spend Monday and Tuesday preparing for the multiple choice portion of the final exam. Students were given a review packet for the multiple choice skills last week; we will begin Monday by discussing the answers in that packet. Tuesday will be more specific review and practice. For the actual midterm on Friday, students will read a new short story and a new news article and answer 15 comprehension and analysis questions about each one. To review at home, students can revisit the review work we did in class, their notes about the elements of style from unit one and their notes about reading news articles from unit two. I hope this week is not too stressful in your homes! Next time you hear from me, we will starting fresh in semester two. Last thing: NHS is collecting toilet paper this week for a local food pantry. If you have a chance to grab an extra package, please send it in with your student. They should take it to their first hour teacher for collection. Happy Exam Week!! I’m sure parents and students alike will be happiest when this week is over. Trust me, I’m right there with you. The stress of exams and grades can be a bit overwhelming at times. Please try to remind your students that their English midterm is really just their chance to show me where they are. They’ve all grown a lot this semester and we have a long way to go before the end of the year. This is just one step in that process, and I will take the information they give me from the midterm (what are their writing strengths? weaknesses? what are their reading needs?) and use those to shape our second semester.
Students already wrote the three essays. We will examine those in depth the first week of the new semester when I’ve crawled out from underneath the pile of them!! This week we will focus on review for the multiple choice portion of the exam on Monday and Tuesday. The MC portion consists of 5-6 short passages the students have never seen before. They will read the passages and answer 5-10 MC questions about each. We’ve done lots of work with MC this fall and hopefully our practice on Monday and Tuesday will help them feel confident and ready for the exam. In non-exam related news, many of your students wrote blog book reviews last week as their independent novel projects. They’re great, and I’m planning to post more in the coming days on the Student Book Reviews page of this website. Check them out; the kids made some great recommendations. I hope this week is not too stressful in your homes! Next time you hear from me, we will starting fresh in semester two. Last thing: NHS is collecting toilet paper this week for a local food pantry. If you have a chance to grab an extra package, please send it in with your student. They should take it to their first hour teacher for collection. It is a short week but it will be a rather intense one in AP Lang. Students will write their three midterm essays on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. On Wednesday, we’ll take a little break (since it’s a shortened class due to AA) and finish up independent reading projects.
I thought it might be helpful for parents to have a better idea of what the AP test actually is and how it is scored. I never want our class to feel like simply a test prep class; we do test prep, but I’m much more concerned with their growth as readers and writers than I am about a test. Luckily, I think it’s a really good test, so I don’t mind doing some prep work for it specifically. The test has three essays:
The essays are an excellent representation of the type of writing they’ll do beyond high school. Perhaps they won’t write them in 40 minutes, but practicing this style of writing will be very beneficial to them. We’ve worked extensively on these three types of writing all fall, and they are ready to demonstrate their skills on the midterm! In May, they’ll write all three essays in a two hour block. They can divide that time however they choose. For this midterm, they’ll have an entire class period (60 min) for each essay. The other hour of the test in May is dedicated to critical reading. Students will read 4-5 passages and answer 55 multiple choice questions about them. For the midterm, they’ll have 90 minutes for this portion as we will complete this part on the actual exam day. For their grade for the midterm, I will use the same formula AP uses to determine grades. The combined essays are worth 55% of the total and the multiple choice is worth 45%. Students who are interested in playing around with the numbers (what do I need to score on the essays to get X score?) might like this calculator. It’s not 100% accurate, but it’s very, very close. This calculator will give them a score on the 5 point AP scale. For our midterms, the scale will convert as follows: 5=100% 4=95% 3=85% 2=75% 1=65% 4s and 5s both earn an A because those are the scores students need to earn college credit for most colleges. A 3 is a B because it is considered proficient, but only some colleges will award credit for a 3. Usually, however, they will let students choose an English elective in place of their freshman writing course. I hope this helps you better understand the AP test and the scoring. I’m happy to answer more questions if you have them! There are practice writing prompts on Google Classroom for students who would like to do some extra work to prepare this weekend. Please encourage students to take a look at those and email me if they have questions about them. Have a great weekend. Encourage your students to step away from their studies for a little while on Monday to reflect on the reason we have Martin Luther King Jr. Day off. A day of service and reflection could be nicely capped by attending the Unity in the Community celebration at the high school at 7pm. This year’s theme is “Light the candle, Pass the flame” and organizers hope to inspire the community to a year of service. I’d love to see you there! Well, last week didn’t go quite as planned. My husband often accuses me of trying to fit ten pounds of fun into a five pound bag, and that’s exactly what happened. I thought we’d be able to work on students’ art projects and writing assignments simultaneously, but that was a bit too ambitious on my part. Combine that with some technology snafus and we had to do a little adjusting of the schedule!
Students did write their argumentative constructed responses, and I was very happy with the results. We looked at a model in class, graded it together, revised together and students had lots of time to ask for feedback. I returned those on Friday. Some students received hard copies if they turned in hard copies; other students received digital feedback if they turned their final drafts in via Google Classroom. If your student turned in a digital copy, please encourage him or her to revisit that assignment this weekend and read my comments!! Lots of students were having trouble seeing my comments on Friday. The problem has been fixed and they should be able to see them now. Why is it so important that they see my comments?? Two reasons:
On Wednesday, we’ll go back to the art portion of this assignment. Students will have time in class Wednesday and Thursday to work on creating their art pieces and we will have our Art of Protest “museum” on Friday. This will also be a chance for students who would like a second chance at the speech. If students did not do as well as they had hoped on their art speech, they may give a speech about their own art on Friday as a replacement score. Have a great weekend. Encourage your students to step away from their studies for a little while on Monday to reflect on the reason we have Martin Luther King Jr. Day off. A day of service and reflection could be nicely capped by attending the Unity in the Community celebration at the high school at 7pm. This year’s theme is “Light the candle, Pass the flame” and organizers hope to inspire the community to a year of service. I’d love to see you there! This week is dedicated to wrapping up loose ends from the semester.
On Monday, we’ll review the tone and term words for our final quiz (Wednesday). Students have access to the powerpoint of the words to study and should be working on these already. Tuesday will be spent reviewing the three types of writing we learned this semester and discussing strategies for the midterm exam. Thursday and Friday will be dedicated to work on assessing students’ understanding of the independent novels they’ve read. Each student should have read a book from the lists given with each unit: Education, Work, Gender. We’ll do a short answer assessment, and then students will have the remainder of those two days to work on one of the project options explained here. There will be little homework beyond independent reading this week. I know some of them have let their reading slip at home because of their crazy schedules! Please encourage them to dedicate some time each night to their reading. If all goes as planned, grades should be completely up to date by the end of the week. I’m doing my best to get through the final stack of essays--the gender research papers--by Friday. We will begin tackling the midterm writing next week because we need to space it out over two weeks both to keep the kids’ brains from turning to mush and to give me time to grade all 252 of them (yikes!). Have a great week and please encourage your students to relax and not worry about their midterm in AP Language. They have worked hard all semester, and they are ready. I will give them some tips to prepare this week, but, ultimately, this isn’t an exam they can study for. If they’ve been putting in their best effort all fall, they will be just fine. And... it’s curved :) Have a great week! First, an apology! I promised that the Art Essays would be returned Friday, and I had to hold onto them until Monday. In my haste to get them turned in prior to break, I was unclear with the students about the turnitin.com expectations. Not all of the students realized that I needed everyone to submit their essays to turnitin. Since this is a common assessment for all 10th graders, I can’t return essays until everyone has uploaded their papers. Please encourage your students to submit online asap!
Speeches went well on Friday and--thankfully--everyone survived! Everyone did a great job and we’ll finish up the few remaining speeches on Monday. For the remainder of the week, we’ll be in workshop mode. Kids will have their choice of how and when they want to tackle two tasks for the week: writing an argumentative constructed response and creating a piece of art that shows their point of view regarding a controversial topic. Students chose topics for their art and constructed responses last week. We also talked about different options for their art piece: sculpture, collage, print art, cartoons, a song, etc. The purpose of this assignment is not to judge a student’s artistic ability; rather, I am hoping students will consider different ways to make their voices heard. Please take a look at the assignment sheet for more information if you’re interested. Please remind your students that they are in charge of their own time this week. That’s a blessing for some and a curse for others!! This week gets at two important skills for tenth graders to practice: time management and self-advocacy. I will be available all week for writing conferences while the students work. Students who take advantage of the opportunity to ask for feedback and help with their writing will be more successful than those who do not. I am not requiring students to conference with me. It is vital that 10th graders learn to ask for help when they need it rather than being forced to accept help!! Please talk about this with your students and encourage them to make good choices. I am also available before school Monday-Wednesday for students who need additional help. I am expecting it will be an exciting week of creativity and imagination. Expect to see some cool pictures in next week’s blog post! I hope you all had a restful and fun-filled holiday! This will be a short post because my kids have friends over and my house is currently overrun with three and six year olds. I need to have my wits about me because I’m severely outnumbered today!!
We have three weeks before midterms begin and we will spend them finishing up our Gender unit that we started prior to break and preparing for the midterm exam. The midterm gets us one step closer to our preparation for the AP exam in May, as students will take the full AP exam as their midterm. We haven’t worked much with timed writing yet, though, so the midterm will be spread over multiple days and students will have extended time for each of the three essays. The midterm will also be curved since students are only halfway through their preparation for the exam. It will serve as an excellent diagnostic tool to figure out where we need to focus our energy for the months of February-April. This week, gender synthesis essays are due on TUESDAY and the Unit 4 Reading test will be Thursday. The test Thursday is optional; students who scored well on either the Unit 2 or 3 tests are welcome to skip the Unit 4 test. I will only count the highest score of the Units 2, 3 or 4 tests. The remainder of the week we will focus on our critical reading practice. Students will read a few more texts and practice their analytical reading skills. Enjoy the rest of your weekend! I hope you all had a restful and fun-filled holiday! This will be a short post because my kids have friends over and my house is currently overrun with three and six year olds. I need to have my wits about me because I’m severely outnumbered today!!
We have three weeks before midterms begin, and we will spend them tying up loose ends and preparing for that exam. This week and next we will wrap up our work with the Art of Protest unit. Before break we focused on “reading” alternate texts (visual art, cartoons, graffiti, music) and understanding the writer’s argument. Students turned in their informational essays about their chosen pieces of art prior to break. Those will be returned by the end of this week. This week, we’ll work on preparing speeches about those pieces of art. This week we’ll turn the essays into speeches and practice delivery. Students will deliver those speeches on FRIDAY of this week. Please, please, ask your student to practice for you! Public speaking is considered one of the greatest fears of most people. I know some of your students are terrified to speak in front of their peers. Please help them understand that I really don’t do this to make them miserable!! This is a small, low pressure environment to get them more comfortable in speaking situations. With more practice, it will be less scary. Click here to take a look at the assignment and the grading rubric. Enjoy the weekend! |
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December 2022
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