Archive

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

Project and Project Prep

Project and Project Prep

English I students worked on their Odyssey projects. English 8 students finished their practice writing for the final major project.

Odyssey Narrative Structure, Game, and Paragraphs

Odyssey Narrative Structure, Game, and Paragraphs

English I students did a little more work on the Odyssey. We looked at how Homer's non-linear storyline comes about (hint: it involves punctuation) to provide a model for one of the project...

Infinitives, a Project, and Quote Embedding

Infinitives, a Project, and Quote Embedding

English I students went over infinitives today; in doing so, we've completed all five phrases: prepositional participial gerund infinitive appositive We'll be having a test on them next week. We've...

Allusions and a Test

Allusions and a Test

English 8 students had their test on parts of speech. Afterward, students worked on their "Inside Out" memoir and the accompanying Somebody Wanted But So engagement. Students who did not finish it...

SWBS and Allusions

SWBS and Allusions

English 8 read the second selection from The Circuit. It's called "Inside Out" and deals with the author's first days in school and the challenges he face not being fluent in English. We used a...

Completing Paragraphs and More

Completing Paragraphs and More

English 8 worked on two things: first, we took the graphic organizer we made yesterday: We first needed to add the commentary for our paragraph. We wrote it as a class, but in our graphic...

Homeric Embed Completion

Homeric Embed Completion

English 8 finished their first round of practice with embedding quotes. We shared and assessed our homework. We determined we should include the following for their context: They had already made it...

Embedded Similes

Embedded Similes

English 8 students continued working on the quote embedding practice we began yesterday. In addition to our trip to the library, we moved students away from teach-centered and group-based work on...

Embedding Quotes and Gerunds

Embedding Quotes and Gerunds

English 8 students worked on embedding quotes in our CDs. We have be using a very simple format: "For example, the text says 'here is the quote.'" This is acceptable but not optimal. Today we worked...

Socratic Reading

Socratic Reading

English 8 students began working on the first of three selections from The Circuit, Francisco Jiménez's memoir of life as a migrant child. We read "Under the Wire," the first chapter of the book,...

Parts of Speech Review and Views of Calypso

Parts of Speech Review and Views of Calypso

English 8 students worked on a parts of speech review covering nouns, verbs, and adjectives. This is the last of our review: we'll have a test on those three parts of speech late next week. English...

Socratic Odyssey

Socratic Odyssey

English 8 students went off-script a little today: we were supposed to start our next reading, "Under the Wire," but as I read through students' responses to the video we watched yesterday ("Harvest...