ELA 10: Feb. 22-26

We are roughly halfway through our first unit of the semester and students are making great progress on our unit learning goals.  We finished reading Antigone and students completed a practice assessment of the drama reading goal on Friday. We will examine that practice assessment next week when we begin our second drama, A Doll’s House, next week. Students will use the feedback they receive on the practice to figure out which skills they need to focus on while we read A Doll’s House.

We will revisit our informational reading goal this week as well. Students will look at their first annotated article assessment, examine what went well and what didn’t go so well and we’ll practice reading and analyzing some more informational texts.  In particular, we’ll be reading some articles about Nobel Prize Winner Malala Yousafzai and considering how her experience of challenging social norms is similar or different to Antigone’s experience.

Later in the week, we’ll do some more creative writing when we return to our language goal--writing with varied syntax. Last week students had some fun experimenting with writing monologues. This week we’ll continue that work and our experimentation with creating variety and interest through our sentence structure.

Finally, on Friday, I’ll introduce this unit’s major writing assignment: an analytical essay. Students will be choosing (or creating!) a piece of media (tv show clip, song, movie, internet video, etc) that either reflects or challenges a social norm or value.  In their essay, students will analyze how effective the media is with challenging or reflecting that norm. Friday will just be dedicated to looking at examples and brainstorming; students will have several days to choose their topic, and then we’ll begin drafting and writing late next week.
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One last reminder: Scheduling plans are due on THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25th to me. Students need to submit their plans on Thursday, and I will turn them in to the counselors so that they can prepare to schedule with the students the following week.  If you have questions about which class to take next year, please take a look at my blog entry from last week. If that doesn’t help, feel free to shoot me an email or encourage your son or daughter to ask me before or after class.

Have a great week!