English Strategies (fourth period) began working in earnest on the reader's journal mini-project that goes along with the Nightjohn unit. English Studies (fifth period) began an additional...
Archive
What our classroom did in previous days, weeks, months, even years…
MAP Math and Completion
All eighth-grade students took the math MAP test today, and that meant that all classes were cut to half an hour. Two days in a row of this seems like it might not be the best use of time, but...
MAP and STEAM
All eighth-graders took the MAP Reading test today, which shortened all the other classes significantly. In the other, shortened versions of class, we officially began our STEAM project for the...
Finally Friday
English I Honors students finished up yesterday's work before looking at how to evaluate their first writing assignments. (Screencasts are available here and here for students who were absent.)...
Voice, Journals, and Characters
English Studies finished up their group work on determining voice. We'll be pulling it all together tomorrow. English Strategies finished their first journal entries and began the work a voice that...
Final Planning, Voice, and a Beginning
English Strategies (fourth period) students began the book Nightjohn and began writing their first journal response. Tomorrow they'll finish up their first journal response and then start a lesson...
Text Marking, New Novel, and Schaffer Planning
Fourth period (English Strategies) students worked on marking their texts using Google Docs' comment feature that we learned and practiced yesterday. We'll be putting this to good use in the next...
First Chromebook Action and First Short Story Schaffer Planning
English 8 students continued with their introductory work with Nightjohn and their initial work with Chromebooks. English I Honors students began planning their first Schaffer model paragraph...
Chromebooks
Almost all classes got an introduction to Chromebooks today. It wasn't in my lesson plans, but when a teacher gets a class set of Chromebooks and the week has been a week of learning and hard work,...
Schaffer Planning and More Reading Skills
English 8 students continued with their effective readers' skills work. We'll finish it up tomorrow and begin our first novel of the year Monday. English I Honors students finished up yesterday's...
First Analysis and First Skills
English 8 students began looking at the specific reading strategies we'll be working to master and deepen throughout the year. Afterward, we read a couple of texts to begin applying the skills....
Socratic Seminars and Analysis
English I students finished looking at the difference between summary and analysis. We noticed a few things: Everything in a summary is in the text. There are many portions of the text not even...
