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Last week we started our final unit and I’m happy to say that (I think) the kids are enjoying John Steinbeck and Of Mice and Men so far. I told them it’s one of my all time favorite books, so perhaps they’re just humoring me, but they seem pretty invested in the characters already. Ask them to tell you about it!
We are using Of Mice and Men to work on our first unit goal--reading literature to recognize the impact of the author’s choices on the text. Specifically, we’re looking at how the author uses point of view, parallel structure, character development and manipulation of time. We’ve been reading and discussing these things together. This week students will start doing some independent annotations to show me what they can do on their own. After we’ve practiced a few times--watch MiStar for practice scores--we will do a graded assessment with a new short story by Steinbeck. Please click here to see our unit 4 learning goals. After OM&M we will transition into examining rhetoric and writing op-eds to practice our argumentative and informative writing skills at the same time. We’ll end the semester with one last speech--this time each student will speak about one of the independent novels he or she has read this year. More on all of that in later weeks! In the meantime, have a great weekend and enjoy the sunshine!
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We’re in the home stretch!! All of the students survived the practice test last week--no tears!--and we are ready to begin our last push of review.
For the next two weeks, I will be conferencing with students individually about their writing while they work independently and in small groups on their Revision and Review Portfolios. These are intended to help the students review their work from the entire year, engage in some revision to help them refine their skills, and then practice those skills one last time. My intention is that the bulk of their preparation can and should be done in class. The portfolio gives many opportunities for additional practice for those students who choose to do it, but I know that the next two weeks can be very busy for them. Some are just finishing the musical, others are gone for DECA Nationals, more will leave for Robotics, spring sports are well underway, and eight million other things including prom next weekend. On top of that, many have additional AP tests to prepare for. As I’ve told the students many times, there’s a fine line between studying and burning yourself out. I want them to walk into that test on May 11 confident and well-rested--not overwhelmed and exhausted. Please talk to your students about their plans for completing the portfolio or even ask them if you can see it! I’d love to have them walk you through their work and their writing progress this year. Please let me know if you have any questions about the portfolio or the test. Have a great weekend! We survived testing week and, hopefully, things will start to go back to normal this week. Students are finishing up their final in class essays at the beginning of the week and then we will begin our final unit--Author’s Style--in the second part of the week.
Unit 4 is dedicated to revisiting, refining, and deepening our understanding of the skills we’ve been working on all year: analyzing literature, analyzing nonfiction writing, argumentative and research based writing, language variety, and public speaking. We will do all of that by considering the choices an author makes when he or she writes a piece. First we’ll study some classic stories by John Steinbeck (Of Mice and Men and a number of short stories). We will examine his style as our model and use that to consider the choices we make in our writing. Assessments will run much like they did in the last unit: lots of practice with feedback followed by a final assessment of each individual skill that “counts.” Next week I’ll share the unit learning goals with you and give a brief overview of the unit assessments. Enjoy the beautiful weather this weekend! They did it!! It was a crazy week, but all of my juniors survived testing, and most were still smiling by Friday. According to my teacher chaperone and Twitter sources, the HOSA and Robotics kids are happy, too.
This week begins our final push of review for the big test May 11. We will spend this week zeroing in on language--specifically, sophisticated grammatical constructions and diction. Many of the students are hoping to break into the high range of scores and, often, sophisticated language is the way to do it. We will start the week developing a “toolbox” of grammar tricks the students can apply to their own writing and then we will spend the second half of the week applying those tools to new writing, old essays, and even the essays from some students in another class. In every case, our goal will be to take writing that is “pretty good” and make it GREAT. The other big event this week is the full length practice test. I encourage all students to take advantage of this after school opportunity if it is at all possible. We will offer the test two different nights--Tuesday and Wednesday. Students will begin testing at 2pm and finish around 5:30pm. It’s a long haul, but I think it is vital for students to go through the whole testing process once so that they know they have the stamina to write three essays in a row. For students who absolutely cannot make it after school, the test will be offered spread out over four days in class. It’s not ideal, but I know some of them have big commitments this week (the musical!). Unfortunately, this is the only week that makes sense to do the test since we need enough time to go over the results, talk about what went well and what didn’t, etc. Enjoy the beautiful weather this weekend! Welcome back from spring break and welcome to crazy testing week! In case your student hasn’t shared this week’s schedule with you, here it is:
Monday: Normal school day Tuesday: PSAT 10 testing + parent teacher conferences in the evening from 5-8pm Wednesday: late start in the morning; periods 1-3 beginning at 11am Thursday: Normal school day Friday: Half day; periods 4-6 Don’t worry; we have lots of important things we will do despite the crazy schedule! Monday will be dedicated to finishing up social norms speeches and refocusing on our final unit learning goal: argumentative writing. Students will receive their practice essays back with three scores on them. All of these are formative (practice!) scores only and are intended to help the students see where their skills are right now. They received a score for their Focus, Organization, and Use of Evidence. All of these scores are recorded as 4/3/2/1 and checked as “not graded” in MiStar. We will look at a sample high scoring essay and students will compare their essays to the sample. What went well? Where do they need additional help? Thursday we will continue our work with the essays and students will be working in small groups based on the skill level they demonstrated with the practice essay. Some students will be working on improving one or more of the three skills (focus, organization, or evidence) and some students will be working on pushing their writing to the next level with some additional challenges. Friday students will take a second stab at the timed, argumentative essay. This essay score will count! If, prior to Friday, students feel like they need extra help, they are welcome to come see me for some extra feedback. I will be available every day this week before school and Wednesday and Thursday after school. Students need to let me know they are coming in so that I can plan appropriately! Hopefully I will see many of you Tuesday night at conferences! I encourage you to look over your student’s MiStar progress with your student prior to Tuesday. They should be able to give you a good idea of how they’ve been doing with practice work vs. assessments. Have a great week! Welcome back from spring break and welcome to crazy testing week! In case your student hasn’t shared this week’s schedule with you, here it is:
Monday: Normal school day Tuesday: SAT testing + parent teacher conferences in the evening from 5-8pm Wednesday: ACT Work Keys testing in the morning; periods 1-3 following the test Thursday: Normal school day Friday: Half day; periods 4-6 And...just to keep things extra interesting, about half of our classes will be gone for HOSA or Robotics on Thursday and Friday! I want to assure you that we are still going to squeeze some important learning into this week. I know that their little brains will likely be completely spent by the time we hit Wednesday afternoon, though, so I will substantially lighten the load. There will not be any homework this week beyond some reading due next week. On Monday, we’ll do two things: a little SAT review and some reflective writing to prepare for parent teacher conferences. For the SAT, we’ll look at the essay and talk through some of the sample prompts and high scoring responses. The SAT essay is very closely aligned to the rhetorical analysis essay we do in AP, so I hope this will lessen their stress for Tuesday. They are more than ready to write that essay! Students will also look at their progress reports and do a little reflective writing about their goals for the remainder of the semester. They will bring these home on Monday, and I’d like you to use these to have a conversation with your student about his or her progress prior to conferences. I think this will make our conversations more focused and productive, and it will hopefully help with my notoriously long line!! On the half day, we’ll do some analysis of some children's books. This may seem a little silly, but it’s actually a nice, low stress way for students to practice their analytical writing in short bursts. It’s easy to recognize the strategies the authors are using, so students will be able to quickly zero in on explaining why those strategies are effective. On Thursday, we’ll start our next unit which focuses on the extent to which science and technology impacts our lives. We will read several short texts aloud in class and practice our annotating and critical reading together. This will be excellent practice for students who are still struggling with the multiple choice tests. I know this is not a fun week to be an eleventh grader, but hopefully we can all work together to get them through it! |
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December 2022
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