ELA 10: March 7-11

Last week was a little challenging with snow days and scheduling and a meeting in Lansing for me!  We didn’t get through quite as much material as I had hoped, but I have figured out how we can adjust.

This weekend or Monday, students will need to share their Angry Letters or Monologues with me in Google Classroom. We missed time in class for writing conferences, so this will allow me to give them feedback on their writing before moving forward. Students should be revising using their notes about varying syntax for maximum impact. I will give specific feedback about their ability to vary their sentence structure effectively, and  they will submit their final drafts of their writing on Friday, March 11.

The bulk of the week will be spent on shifting from our critical reading focus (students will receive scores on their final annotated article on Monday) to a critical writing focus.  We will use the article they annotated last week to work on writing an argumentative essay. Students will practice organizing their main points, selecting quality examples, and forming a complete essay in a timed environment.  By the end of the week, we’ll be ready to do a practice in-class essay. This will be scored and recorded but will not count towards their grades as it is just practice at this time.  

Finally, this week I will introduce the unit speech assignment.  We have been studying how different types of texts (articles, cartoons, plays) challenge or reflect our social norms and values.  For their speeches, students will choose a piece of media (tv show, song, movie clip, commercial, etc) and examine how the clip challenges or reflects a social norm or value.  Students need to submit a link to their clip by next Wednesday, March 16 on the shared Google Presentation in Google Classroom. Once I have had a chance to check all the links for appropriate content, we’ll get started writing and practicing the speeches.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!