English 8 students are working their way through the year-opening ROCK unit, looking at kindness. Today we stepped out of the lesson plans because everything we going more quickly than expected, and students had their first Socratic Seminar.

It was a roaring success: the kids enjoyed it, and what’s more, the discussion was rigorous and supported consistently with references to the text. We’ll definitely be doing this again.

English I students made an unexpected shift: since things have been going so well with the introduction to Schaffer, we decided — well, more to the point, I decided —  to skip some of the Schaffer model practice and move directly to the short story analysis unit, which includes a hefty dose of Schaffer writing.

To move toward analysis, we began by examining the difference between analyzing and summarizing, and we did so by reading “The Gift” by Chinese-American poet Li-Young Lee.

We analyzed a summary of the poem, and tonight students will be analyzing an analysis of the poem, all in the effort of trying to determine what it means to analyze. (Yes, I am aware of the irony in that summary of the day’s work.)

Homework

• English 8 Studies: none.
• English I Honors: complete your analysis of the analysis (step 2 in the handout from today).