We survived the first week!! It was touch and go there for awhile at my house (we have a new kindergartner!), but I think we all made it. I hope you’re enjoying this relaxing, warm weekend.

Students now have their blogs up and running. These will be a place to practice writing and research as well as a place to begin storing ideas for future research projects. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the students’ first entries and getting a glimpse of what they are interested in researching this year.  I encourage you to ask your student if you can take a look! My hope is that students fully engage with their blogs. These will never be graded or edited; rather, they are places to practice writing and thinking. I’ll always give feedback, and they will grow tremendously if they write often! This is a great time for them to practice writing simply for the sake of learning rather than to earn points.

Assignments like blogging will be recorded in MiStar as “not graded” and will be given a score of 4=advanced, 3=proficient, 2=somewhat proficient, 1=not proficient, 0=not completed.  All assignments that are factored into students’ course grades will be entered as out of 100.  At this point in the year, you may see some low scores. Please don’t be alarmed!! We will repeat these tasks and the grades will be replaced as the students’ skills grow!

This week we will begin forming research teams for our first big research project. For the next three weeks students will be working both independently and with their teams to fully explore an issue or problem of their choosing. In the first week of October, they’ll present their findings to the class. Please ask your students about their research topics!! The more voices involved in the conversation, the better. My students last year discovered that their parents were actually excellent resources for helping them think of additional avenues to explore (Imagine that!! Parents are useful!)

Enjoy your weekend and please let me know if you have any questions.

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We’ve had a great (busy!) first week in AP Language. Students have done some baseline assessments to give me an idea of their current level and those assessments will be in MiStar early next week.  These scores are to show us where the students are right now. The goal is for them to go UP! Please encourage your student to see those scores as feedback only and to focus on what needs to happen to improve them. Often, students get caught up in scores and have a hard time remembering that it’s the beginning of the year. A student with a C right now can certainly have an A by the end of the semester--that’s the whole point of the class!! I want their skills to grow!  Hard work is the way to do that.

If you’d like more information about the class as a whole and the AP exam we will prepare for, please take a look at the College Board’s overview site. You can also learn more at Curriculum Night on Wednesday. I’d love to meet all of you!

This week we will begin our work with rhetorical analysis and close reading to determine what an author is trying to accomplish with a piece of writing. What does the author want me to do or think or believe? How is the author accomplishing that purpose? Which words make me feel a certain way? How does the structure of the argument lead me to that feeling? This analysis is important for two reasons. First, it helps us think critically about our reading. People who don’t think when they read are often easily duped! Second, it helps us persuade others in our own writing. Later in the semester, after we’ve done this careful work with analysis, we will apply these rhetorical skills to our own writing and arguments.

Students will have their first opportunity to manage and balance their own time this week. On Tuesday I will give them a large chunk of practice work: two essays to analyze, some vocabulary acquisition work, and some writing practice.  Students will have lots of time in class to tackle all that work while I conference with students individually about their summer writing that they submitted on the first day.  Please talk to your students about how they’re using their time!! You’ll know how it went based on how much time they’re working next weekend. If they’re buried in homework for AP Lang, they need to rethink how they’re spending their time in class. If they have “no homework”--give them a high five!

I hope you have a great weekend and I’m looking forward to meeting you all on Wednesday!

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We had a great first week and did a lot of things to get us ready for the year ahead. If you’d like more information about the AP examination and performance tasks your students will be preparing for this year, check out this link to the College Board. You can also learn more by coming to see me at Curriculum Night on Wednesday! I’d love to meet all of you.

This week we will continue our conversation about Wealth and Poverty and the many questions students have raised. Here’s an example of the questions your students are coming up with:

• How can schools better help prepare students to be financially literate?
  
• How much impact does advertising have on spending habits?
  
• How is money valued differently in different cultures?
  

I have a whole stack of questions from the students on my desk, but I wanted you to see an example of how they are already using their own interests to drive their research. This week we will start digging into research and practicing the skill of identifying a source’s argument. Students will read several different pieces with different perspectives and will practice identifying the text’s argument, articulating the line of reasoning, and evaluating the quality of evidence used in that reasoning.

Students are also beginning to blog this week. The goal of these blogs is to help the students collect information about the world around them as they go through their daily lives. Every week they’ll do at least one post about a news article they’ve read, something interesting they learned in another class, a political cartoon they saw that made them think--the possibilities are endless as long as they’re letting their curiosity lead them! This is also great practice for learning how to create a positive digital footprint.  I’d encourage you to listen to this short NPR piece about how students can begin to think about their online identity and talk about it with your students.  Hopefully in the next few weeks we will have some blogs to share with you.

Finally, students are beginning book clubs to deepen their thinking about wealth and poverty. They had the opportunity to choose their book on Friday and chose either Hillbilly Elegy, Nickel and Dimed, or Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Make sure you ask them to tell you about their books!

Have a great week and hopefully I’ll see you on Wednesday!

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I hope you've all had a lovely, relaxing summer.  I am excited to get to know all of my students and dig into our work for this year. 

For the past two years I have maintained this blog as a way to keep in contact with parents and let everyone know what we are up to in class. I will email you a link to the blog every week (usually!), and it will give an overview of the week's work.  I will give you a head's up about big assignments and an overview of the readings we are doing in class. My hope is that this helps you have conversations with your students about both our course content and how they can best manage their time! As these are Advanced Placement classes, my goal is to mimic a college course while still providing some supports that students need in high school.  For example, work is often given in big chunks (no nightly reading assignments with study guides), but I will help students plan out how to tackle those big assignments in a way that makes the most sense for their personal schedules.  

My goal for my students is that they learn how to take ownership of their work and plan carefully so that they do not become overwhelmed. A student who plans well and works consistently in my class should be able to keep homework to a maximum of 30 minutes a night. Sometimes students prefer to have "no homework" for several nights in a row and then pull an all-nighter to finish something.  That practice concerns me, and I aim to help students avoid it as much as possible.  The mental and physical health of my students is very important to me; I want to send them off to college with the skills necessary to balance a challenging course load. 

This week in class, we will be working on the following:

AP SEMINAR: Today we started class by watching and discussing a Ted Talk called "The Danger of a Single Story." Our research will be built on the ability of students to think about others' perspectives and view issues through multiple lenses. It's a great TedTalk and I'm sure your student would love to chat about it with you!  For the rest of the week, we will talk about the purpose of the course, the unique assessments that are part of the AP Capstone program, and our plans for the fall semester. Students will begin working on developing strong working relationships with their peers because there is a lot of group work in the Capstone program. 

AP LANGUAGE:  Today in class we watched a video called Learn Like a Jungle Tiger and talked about the importance of pushing and challenging ourselves this year. If you have 10 minutes, I'd encourage you to watch it and chat about it with your student. For the rest of the week, we will spend some time reviewing and working with our summer reading and writing assignments early in the week. By the end of the week we will dive into the study of rhetoric--how does a writer craft an argument and for what purpose? 

Next week I'll have separate posts about each class, but for now, welcome! I can't wait to meet you all in person and hope to see you at curriculum night next week.