English I students began a few days’ work on Shakespeare as we bring our poetry unit to a conclusion. We started today looking at how we could create an incredibly long sentence out of a relatively short sentence: we began with “When I go home, I relax.” Students added and appended things until we reached the following:

Every single day of the week when I go to the home to the house I have lived in my whole life, I most often relax by sitting with my dog and reading a book that I really enjoy until dinner and then I go to sleep. (Fourth period)

I helped out a little with fifth period:

When I, tired from a day of working with adolescents and looking forward to some peace and quiet, go back to my home after a long day at school, I like to relax, sleep, and meditate, but not before I finish my homework because I like to get it over with so I can have fun after I am done with track. (Fifth period, with an addition from Mr. Scott)

After looking at that model, we had our first reading of Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 29,” noting unknown words.

Fourth period’s first annotations

Fifth period’s first annotations

Sixth and seventh periods worked on their Somebody Wanted But So for chapter 5 in Nightjohn.

In addition to the work mentioned above, all students went to the media center for book checkout today. Students will be writing one-pagers for the second quarter, so they need to have an independent reading selection for this first half of the second quarter.

Homework

• English 8: 
  • complete reading chapter 5 from Nightjohn (as necessary);
  • test Friday on Nightjohn.
• English I Honors: 
  • AOW vocab quiz on Friday;
  • define unknown words from “Sonnet 29” by class time tomorrow.