English I students began a new unit on the Odyssey, reading the opening lines and going over some expectations about the epic form we'll be studying. This included the non-linear nature of the...
Archive
What our classroom did in previous days, weeks, months, even years…
Infinitives and Planning
English I students worked on infinitives today, and in doing so, they're nearing the end of our short unit on phrases. English 8 students used a model personal narrative to reverse-engineer its...
Gerunds and a Chronological Text Structure Example
English I students finished up participles and moved on to gerunds. They're a little trickier than participles in some ways and yet a little easier to recognize at the same time. English 8 worked on...
Text Structures and Participles
English 8 continued a brief overview of text structures in conjunction with the "Tell-Tale Heart." English I students went over participial phrases today after going over the annotations they could...
Annotations and Text Structures
English 8 students continued working with text structures, applying the chronological text structure to "A Tell-Tale Heart" before moving on to the cause/effect text structure. We'll be applying it...
Final Poetry and Tone and Mood
English I Honors students had their final day of test prep/unit review today. I gave students a copy of the poems that will be on the test tomorrow, and they had the opportunity to collaborate on...
Poetry Review, Participles, and Socratic Seminar
English I students (fourth and fifth period) worked on the next step in our phrase phase by covering the basic idea of the participle. It was a 10-minute introduction to the form (the -ing or -en...
Sonnet 130, Prepositional Phrases, and the Tell-Tale Heart
English I students finished up their work on sonnets today and then had a little practice with prepositional phrases in a Gimkit to finish the week with a bit of fun. [gallery size="medium"...
Final Sonnet and a Halloween Story
English I students worked on their final sonnet, the famous "Sonnet 130." They looked at it in terms of the problem/solution organizational structure of sonnets, paying particular attention to the...
Sonnet 18 and Irony
English I students today continued with the final stages of our poetry unit, looking at Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18" while refreshing an old term (inversion) and adding a new one (syntax). English 8...
Quiz, Test, and Phrases
English I students had their quarter 1 Article of the Week vocabulary quiz today. Most students did very well. Afterward, we went over prepositional phrases and began a new sonnet. English 8...
Sonnet Completion and Test Prep
English 8 students worked on a practice test for tomorrow's test on Nightjohn, effective readers' skills fragments, and voice. Everyone did fairly well on the pre-test, so we will go ahead with the...
