ELA 10: May 30-June 3

Students are in the home stretch with their final writing piece--the op ed. I am very happy with the progress many of them have made, and I hope our final week of writing workshop helps the students perfect and polish these pieces!

If you’d like to review the assignment sheet and scoring rubric, please click here.  Also, please encourage your students to make use of the short instructional videos I’ve been sharing with them on Google Classroom for the past week.

Developing your counterargument

Organizing your rough draft

Citing your sources and backing up your claims

Improving your word choice

Students need to bring complete, PRINTED drafts of their op-eds to class on Tuesday.

The other thing we’re beginning work on this week is our final speech of the year. Students will be giving a persuasive speech about one of their independent novels from the year. Please click here for the assignment sheet. Students should have a book in mind already that they will use for this assignment, and we will begin drafting those speeches next week as well.

One final, very important thing about this upcoming week: Reading and Books.

On Friday we will have our end of the year reading party to celebrate all the reading we’ve done this year and make plans for the reading we’ll do this summer. I have a list of books I’m planning to read that I’ll share with the students and a list of suggestions I’ve gathered from the staff at the high school. We’ll revisit the reading resolutions we made in December and think about what we need to do to make time to read this summer. And, of course, we’ll read. Hopefully, it will be outside in the sunshine.  If you’d be willing, I’ve found that reading parties are always more successful with snacks! We’ll take any donations you’d like to send in with your students. You can sign up here if you’re willing: http://www.signupgenius.com/go/20f054fa8aa2eaafc1-summer

Also, it’s time for kids to start returning my books!!  I am happy to share my collection with them all year, but I always get nervous this time of year when I see how empty my shelves are. I know some of my books are buried under beds or piles of laundry. If you could help me out by reminding them to start bringing those back, I’d appreciate it! And, if someone is in the middle of something and can’t finish it before summer, I’m happy to check it out to them over the summer--I’d just like to know who has what!

Enjoy the long weekend!! ​