Archive

What our classroom did in previous days, weeks, months, even years…

Major Grades and CFAs

Major Grades and CFAs

English 8 students took their first district-required (or perhaps it's just school-required -- I'm not sure) CFA today on summarizing. Since we're not using Mastery Connect exclusively for the CFAs...

Plot Analysis and Ephipanies

Plot Analysis and Ephipanies

English 8 students finished up "There Will Come Soft Rains" and did a plot analysis of the story. Tomorrow we'll finish up with practice creating a summary. English I students continued discussing...

Reading Rains and Casks

Reading Rains and Casks

English 8 students finished up reading "There Will Come Soft Rains" as the second story in our first unit. We'll be analyzing its plot and working to summarize it tomorrow and Thursday. English I...

Soft Rains and Sentence Parsing

Soft Rains and Sentence Parsing

English 8 students began their second short story, which they will be analyzing on their own as opposed to the class version we did with the first short story. Today students began a two-day period...

Parsing Sentences and Inference Work

Parsing Sentences and Inference Work

English I students worked on parsing long sentences in confusing texts as we began reading "The Cask of Amontillado" We'll be using this for the second story in our short story analytic writing...

Second Story Cycle Planning and Participles

Second Story Cycle Planning and Participles

English I students worked on their second cycle of short stories and analytic paragraphs. Today we read "In the Family," an odd story about a seemingly magic mirror that everyone seems just to...

Participles and Feedback

Participles and Feedback

English 8 students finished, in accordance with the district pacing guide, a couple of lessons covering participles and participial phrases. We worked on materials from the workbook -- practice with...

Participles and Assessment

Participles and Assessment

English 8 students worked on a grammar lesson on participles, connected with our current story "The Brave Little Toaster." We used this slide show with embedded Pear Deck questions to introduce the...

Summarizing and Workshopping

Summarizing and Workshopping

English I students were going to spend half the day finishing up their final drafts of their "Dangerous Game" analytic paragraphs. However, we discovered quickly enough that we needed more time to...

Writing and Analyzing

Writing and Analyzing

English I students worked on their first analytic paragraph, which is about "The Most Dangerous Game." We worked in groups to focus our topic sentence after looking at the rubric and a model...

Planning and Plots

Planning and Plots

English I students worked on the planning for their first Schaffer paragraph on "The Most Dangerous Game." Students should have a good idea of their topic sentences and should have two passages from...

Discussion and Finishing Reading

Discussion and Finishing Reading

English I students discussed informally in randomly formed groups the question of how the setting of "The Most Dangerous Game" affects the plot. We came up with several ideas: We'll be using these...