Today, a guest poster (who’ll be posting regularly for English Studies, first period) covered what first period did, though he left out the motivation: the purpose of the odd-sounding exercise was to provide a technique (and some practice) to take even the most mundane topic and transform it into a lengthy journal entry. Not only first but second and third periods worked on this as well.
Fourth period continued with their sonnets.
Fourth period: complete sonnet paraphrase.
A quick overview: First period went over outlining for a PASS writing test prompt. Second period continued working on their review of Much Ado About Nothing. Fourth period went through IV.1 and IV.2 of Romeo and Juliet. Seventh period had a review of nouns and pronouns. Additionally, first and seventh spent some time writing in their journals.
First and seventh periods worked on reflexive and intensive pronouns. First period completed everything; seventh period needs to work on practice exercises.
Additionally, first and seventh periods were assigned journals. First, second, and seventh periods are now working on identical journal assignments. The requirements are simple:
There are no length guidelines. It’s a question of quality over quantity.
Second period looked at how to write a review. They’ll be writing a review of Much Ado About Nothing after they watch it.
Fourth period went over the study guide for III.i through III.iii. We finished up watching III.iv. I’ve instructed students to go back and read the portions of the play we didn’t act out in class.
First and seventh periods went over the tests from Friday. The results were good: somewhere in the mid-80s for both classes. Additionally, first period began working on reflexive and intensive pronouns (tomorrow’s topic).
Second period had rehearsal time for their major Shakespeare acting project. Tomorrow we’ll be working on the rehearsals a bit more tomorrow, as well as going over the format for a review. The presentations will be Wednesday. Thursday and Friday we will watch the film version of Much Ado About Nothing.
Fourth period had a quiz on act two from Romeo and Juliet. We also watched a BBC performance of III.ii.
First, second, and seventh periods completed the Diary of Anne Frank I.3 today. We used a two-sided journal to parse out some of the implications of select portions of the dialogue.
Fourth period had a final day of preparation for the poetry presentations next week. Students who completed the work early continued working on the quarter-long parts of speech review, looking at adverbs and conjunctions. We will likely be having a final parts of speech test some time within the next few weeks.
