English 8 students finished up the Halloween unit on "The Tell-Tale Heart" and started a new short unit on poetry, specifically focusing on figurative language. We went through a Pear Deck to assess...
Archive
What our classroom did in previous days, weeks, months, even years…
Socratic Seminar and Inference Work
English I Honors students conducted a Socratic Seminar on the question of who had the most power, Calypso or Odysseus. Students used information from five sources to make their determinations and...
Finishing Tone and Preparing for a Debate
English 8 students continued with the second of several sessions working with tone. We also went to the library for checkout. We'll be embarking on silent sustained reading (well, maybe not quite so...
Tone and Modern Influence
English 8, after going over a term in the article of the week worked on tone some more. It's a tricky subject that we'll return to often. We worked on determining the tone of selected poems by...
Calypso and Communication
All students had benchmark testing today, so classes were only half an hour long. English I Honors students worked on an extended Think/Pair/Share (completing only the "Think" portion) regarding...
Benchmark 1 and Short Classes
All classes went over what we're going to do for the ELA quarter one benchmark, which will take place tomorrow. We reviewed the templates we've been using for TDAs in class (students have been...
Loose Ends and Cultural Awareness
All classes cleared up a few loose ends today as we had a shortened schedule because of the public service presentation about the dangers of vaping that all classes in all grades attended today....
Odyssey and Tell-Tale Heart
English I students worked on the introduction of the Odyssey, plotting the opening lines against a diagram of Odysseus's journies. We determined that several of the lines match up perfectly to his...
Odyssey and a Halloween Story
English I Honors students began the Odyssey by just diving right in. We'll be continuing tomorrow after we review phrase homework, which we neglected today. English 8 students began looking at "The...
Phrases and Finishing Yesterday’s Work
English I Honors students finished their whirlwind tour of phrases (see notes). We'll have some practice over the next week or so and then have a small test on it. English 8 students finished...
Irony Walk and Participles
English 8 students began a short unit on irony and its use in fiction to heighten tension, specifically in horror stories. We'll be studying Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" to look at how Poe uses all...
Phrases and Finishing Up the Quarter
English 8 students finished up the quarter, wrapping up some final assignments and clearing the books as it's the last day of the quarter. English I Honors students began a short unit on phrases....
