Today, we began looking at To Kill a Mockingbird in earnest. We looked at the opening pages to determine how the author developed a Southern voice. Remember first that voice comes from Diction (word...
Archive
What our classroom did in previous days, weeks, months, even years…
Formal and Informal Voice
Today we talked about formal and informal voice, which is an element on our rubric for the Romeo and Juliet project that we're finishing up. We went over seven guidelines: Avoid using colloquial...
Transition Paragraphs
Today we began making the transition from having six rather disjointed paragraphs that have no connection to one another to having one coherent paper. In other words, we worked on transition...
Gerunds and the Project
Students today went over gerunds and gerund phrases. We're continuing to work on verbals and verbal phrases, and we will continue with them until the end of the week. Afterward, we worked on our...
Socratic Seminar
Today we had a Socratic Seminar on a simple but not-so-simple question: who is most culpable for the deaths that happen in Romeo and Juliet? Each table had a chance to make an argument, and then...
Final Speech Analysis
We looked at the final soliloquy in the play, when Romeo loses all sense of rationality and makes a horrible decision based primarily on emotion. We examined how Shakespeare develops this idea...
Final Speech
Students today began the final textual analysis of Romeo and Juliet, looking at Romeo's final soliloquy: In faith, I will. Let me peruse this face. Mercutio's kinsman, noble County Paris! What said...
AOW and Workshop
Students today reviewed the AOW marking from the last article. By this time, students should be getting nothing As and Bs on that assignment -- it's like a basketball player shooting free throws. We...
Benchmark and the Door
Today students took the district-mandated benchmark test. Instead of shifting into a test schedule, though, we simply ran the test through students' English class, which means we did not make any...
Doubts
Students today looked at Juliet's last long soliloquy in which she contemplates the consequences of taking the potion that Friar Laurence gave her: Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again. I...
Project Work
Students today worked on their Romeo and Juliet projects. It was not something I'd planned on doing, but as I was looking at students' work as they came to me in the morning before school, I...
Timeline and Explosion
Today we looked at the timeline of the play for a few minutes at the start of class: Students were surprised at the realization that it's only Monday night and everything began Sunday morning....
