English I Honors students began the new unit on literary analysis. We looked at the difference between summary and analysis by examining a new poem, "The Gift." English 8 students returned to the...
Archive
What our classroom did in previous days, weeks, months, even years…
Housekeeping and Schaffer Completion
All students got introduced to the Article of the Week assignment that was such a success last year. It's time-consuming to explain it all, but since it's a year-long assignment, I wanted to get...
Schaffer Efforts and Close Kindness
English I Honors tried working on their first full solo Schaffer model paragraph today. The topic sentence was the same for everyone: X is Y, where X is someone the students know and Y is some...
Text Marking and Schaffer
English 8 students began creating a model of text annotation that will serve as the goal for the rest of the year, combining the work with our kindness review for the ROCK mini-unit we're working...
Kindness, Close Reading, and Schaffer
English 8 students began a short assessment of their reading and annotating abilities today that will be completed for homework. English I Honors students began learning what the Schaffer model...
First Day 2016
Everything went quite well during our first day of school. All classes went over some basic housekeeping items, with English I Honors students focusing on the academic expectations for the class.
The End 2016
It's the same every year: the kids who say, "Oh, I won't cry. No way!" are the ones often crying the hardest. But it's a touching reassurance that innocence still exists in the world. See you all...
Almost There
Hold on, kids -- we're almost there. Tomorrow, we cry. Trust me -- you will.
Half-Day 1
Half-days -- what can we say about them? In theory, they're half as productive as full days, but coming at the end of the year as they do significantly alters that efficiency. Journalism kids...
All Done!
The instructional portion of the 2015-2016 school year is now complete.We will meet with each class once next week, during which time we'll have tears (of joy and sadness, I would imagine), perhaps...
Monster Done in All Classes
Almost -- English 8 Strategies still has a bit of reading to do. All English 8 students will have a chance tomorrow to apply the novel to some extra credit.
Monster Done and Almost
English I Honors finished Monster today and went over the extra credit, finding out whether or not Steve Harmon is guilty. English 8 students are almost done.
