Today, after the phrase quiz, we worked on using phrases and clauses together to break sentences down into constituent parts. If the sentence is the base unit, then the next smallest unit would be...
Archive
What our classroom did in previous days, weeks, months, even years…
Scout’s Reliability
Today we did a little new work with the article of the week: students shared with each other in their groups about the context clues they found for the word "fraught" in the article. Afterward,...
Long Sentences and Point of View
Today we worked on how to parse some of Lee's longer sentences in the novel. They'll tend to fade away as we read, but at the moment, we've got to work through some pretty complicated sentences. We...
Starting Mockingbird
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...
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...
