Genesis - Blocks 2 and 3
Week of 5/27/08: We continued our writing workshop of memoir and short fiction; we had community share sessions and status of the class reports after each workshop block to learn from each other. Ms. Rekkas conferred with students to offer feedback and advice on revising. We completed our word stem study for the year--great job with the challenge of learning all those stems! Students need to keep their notecards for next year. Students in Block 3 read the Rod Serling teleplay, "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street."
Week of 5/19/08: We continued our writing workshop of memoir and short fiction; we had community share sessions and advised each other on how to address our individual "creative demons" within our drafts (examples from students included troublesome dialogue and too-frequent transitions). Students learned about the ancient Maya civilization and read a folktale from the region; we extended our knowledge on the ancient Americas and reviewed Egypt while on our Field Museum trip. We will be completing our year's vocabulary study next week.
Week of 5/12/08: We continued our writing workshop of memoir with analyzing how memoirists develop voice in their work through explorations of names and family vacations, reading excerpts from authors Sandra Cisneros, Tobias Wolff, Scott Momaday, Jhumpa Lahiri, Lan Samantha Chang, Roald Dahl, and Paul Fleischman. After reviewing plot line and considering alternative views on plot structure in the short story (a beginning-middle-end in flash fiction), students worked on their own writing with a revision focus on elaboration and community share at the end of the week. As we practiced literature circle discussion skills through a group game, we finished Letters from a Slave Girl literature circle discussions this week. We continued our vocabulary and grammar study.
Week of 5/5/08: We completed our reading of persuasive essays for the language arts classroom and returned to pull-out. Students worked on their RAFT assignments inside and outside of class, where they integrate essential knowings about slave narrative through understanding role, audience, format, and topic. Students continued their literature circle discussions this week and investigated a reference point from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl on prejudice. Our reading/writing workshop focus this week was memoir, and students read excerpts of Walter Dean Myers' Bad Boy ("Sonnets from the Portuguese") and Jerry Spinelli's Knots in my Yo-Yo String ("Good Boy") in groups and noted/discussed how each writer addressed common memoir techniques in their work. Students continued their vocabulary word stem study. Next week will be our last week of literature circles!
Week of 4/28/08: Students began reading their persuasive essays aloud to their classmates. Each block will choose two essays to forward to Dr. Hopkins for her review and response. Students received a RAFT activity related to our essential themes on language and power, perception of slavery and reality from Incidents from the Life of a Slave Girl. We return to literature circles and writing workshop next week.
Week of 4/21/08: Students continued drafting and revising their persuasive essays during pull-out. We held daily writing conferences during workshop. Alongside literature circles, students began a group activity surrounding our unit's essential question: How can our language make us powerful? Final drafts of persuasive essays are due Monday, April 28 or Tuesday, April 29 depending on block.
Week of 4/14/08: Students continued drafting and revising their persuasive essays during pull-out. Final drafts are due Monday, April 28 or Tuesday, April 29 depending on block. Students were also introduced to the genres of memoir and flash fiction, with class discussion of texts sparking our writing projects in these genres by the end of the school year. We continued the student-led book discussions of Letters from a Slave Girl: The Story of Harriet Jacobs. Students continued their investigation into the rhetorical devices used in slave narratives with a poem study of Phillis Wheatley. We continued our vocabulary and grammar study.
Week of 4/7/08: We began our literature circles on Letters from a Slave Girl: The Story of Harriet Jacobs. We are comparing this text to the slave narrative from which it was inspired--Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl--with an approach to middle-level-appropriate sections to gain understanding of the rhetorical features of the slave narrative genre. We continued our persuasive writing workshop with in-class drafting, revising, editing, and conferencing.
Week of 3/31/08: Students gavetheir Ancient Egypt presentations early in the week; several presentations were postponed for the beginning of next week. In writer's workshop, students created maps of their neighborhoods/favorite places and developed their persuasive essay on something they would like to see changed at Springman. We went over the checklist of components for a persuasive essay and the persuasive essay rubric. In order to gain statistical data for our essay analyses, we polled the class about our research questions. We began reader's theatre for the Paul Fleischman book, Bull Run, and are about to begin Civil War literature circles next week.
Week of 3/17/08: Students continued their four-line grammar and vocabulary word stem study. We continued our work on Ancient Egypt, developing our double-entry notes and completing online research during class. Students developed their visual product components using their presentation rubric, and conferred about their research process. We worked on our persuasive essay drafting in class, and students had two writing conferences each regarding their persuasive writing draft's progress. We will begin Civil War Literature Circles after Spring Break, and will complete these persuasive essays and begin editorial writing.
Week of 3/10/08: Students continued their four-line grammar and vocabulary word stem study. We continued our work on Ancient Egypt, beginning our independent studies on a topic of interest. Students began research and product development in class. They learned how to take double entry research notes and use key words when developing search terms for online databases. They also learned new ways to determine how websites are reliable. We discussed an editorial article from Newsweek magazine, and began developing our pros and cons for writing our persuasive essay drafts on what we would change at Springman.
Week of 3/3/08: Students discussed their experiences with developing persuasive language by looking at how to intensify language without alienating an audience. Students continued their learning on Ancient Egypt through readings, storytelling/read-aloud, videos, images, and lectures. We will begin our G/E Egypt independent study during pull-out starting 3/10.
Week of 2/25/08: Students continued working on persuasive writing and began studying Ancient Civilizations--Egypt through in-class lecture, reading, video, and our supplemental websites. Students learned how to distinguish between fact and opinion, and how to develop persuasive language. They learned three logical fallacies to avoid in their persuasive writing: appeal to fear, appeal to pity, and personal attack.
Week of 2/19/08: Students completed their literature circle discussions and science fiction books. We learned the "Idea, Evidence, Interpretation, Extension" acronym that will help focus thinking and writing for the ISAT Extended Reading Response. Students worked on developing their thinking through conferences with Ms. Rekkas and class discussion. Students also drafted practice prompts. NWEA tests for the Winter 2008 testing window were taken at the beginning of the week.
Week of 2/11/08: We continued student-led book discussions (literature circles) to explore the science fiction genre. Ms. Rekkas taught a minilesson on how to distinguish good from "bad" discussion questions and met with G/E groups to help them extend their questions and responses. We continued our writing workshop with status of the class reports and lifebook sharing, as well as students using in-class time to workshop and meet for writing conferences. We worked on preparing for the ISAT tests with minilessons on narrative writing and extended reader response. G/E students' independent reading logs and Analytical Writing #1 and #2 are due on Tuesday, February 19. They are able to email me drafts until Monday, Febuary 18 by 10am for feedback before turning in their final. Please see the Assignments page for further description of the analytical writing assignments.
Week of 2/4/08: We began student-led book discussions (literature circles) to explore the science fiction genre. Ms. Rekkas met with G/E groups to help them extend their responses to the inferencing and clarifying sections of their literature circle response packets. We kicked off our writing workshop with students beginning to explore one of their writing territories in depth. G/E students' independent reading logs and Analytical Writing #1 and #2 are due on Tuesday, February 19. They are able to email me drafts until Friday, February 15 for feedback before turning in their final. Please see the Assignments page for further description of the analytical writing assignments.
Week of 1/29/08: This week, we began setting up procedures and structures for writing workshop. With a minilesson by Ms. Rekkas, students began mapping out their own "writing territories," or life subjects to write about, and were introduced to the expectations for workshop and established writing folders. Students learned about the process for preparing for literature circle discussion through a minilesson by Ms. Rekkas, and received their first or second choice science fiction literature circle books to begin reading for their first circle meeting.
Week of 1/22/08: Ancient Civilizations group presentations were completed, and we teamed with Mr. Strilich's class to begin our science fiction study with "The Veldt," where we heard the story performed aloud and viewed the film version, discussed how technology developments relate to the theme, and considered whether or not George and Lydia were good or bad parents. We also began learning the process of interpretive questioning. Please see Genesis Field Notes for more information. Students will begin differentiated literature circles with their gifted/enrichment peers and writing workshop next week.
Week of 1/14/08: We teamed with Mr. Strilich's class to complete the Ancient Civilizations unit; please see Genesis Field Notes for a closer description of content coursework. In addition, together we went through guided reading and annotation of an excerpted article which describes the origins of the "Gilgamesh" epic that students heard read aloud in the classroom. We used the background knowledge in the article to develop our reading questioning strategy and figure out how to find the information we need to know to make sense of high-vocabulary nonfiction reading.
Week of 1/7/08: We teamed with Mr. Strilich's class for the Ancient Civilizations unit; please see Genesis Field Notes for the description of lessons. In addition, we studied an article that debates the origins of writing in Mesopotamia to practice annotation and reading strategies. We learned and consciously practiced the reading strategies of connecting (schema) and questioning in order to tackle challenging, frustrating text, and talked about how to approach this genre and level of writing as independent readers. We continued our four-line grammar study with sentences from our expository/nonfiction reading.
Week of 12/17/07: We continued our four-line grammar analysis. We completed our investigation of creative nonfiction by reading and annotating “The 5R’s of Creative Nonfiction” by Lee Gutkind. We analyzed Gutkind’s advice for writers in this genre by looking closely at “research” and “reflection,” making connections between Gutkind and Jon Krakauer’s approach in Into Thin Air. After evaluating the creative nonfiction we have read and written during the unit for story elements, we looked at an excerpted essay by Annie Dillard (“Living like Weasels”) and discussed how Dillard communicates theme/the lessons learned from personal experience.< xml="true" ns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" prefix="o" namespace="">
Week of 12/10/07: Students reflected on their growth as writers at this point in the trimester, and participated in guided peer assessment of personal narrative and personal essay first drafts. Through reading the short story "Homework" by Mona Simpson, we made connections to our own process for composing this type of personal writing, and responded critically to the text. We continued our grammar study (considering that grammar is a way of thinking about language) through four-line analysis, and reviewed how to write our independent book analyses--by focusing on the author's theme, or what idea he/she is communicating through the book, through depicting events experienced by the book's protagonist.
Week of 12/3/07: Learning about creative nonfiction through reading an interview with Lee Gutkind, we analyzed how Jon Krakauer's book captures the essence of this genre and evaluated how he communicated the emotional experience of these events to readers. (Block 2) We further defined and discussed author's strategies from "Appetizer" and used them to write a fictional narrative about our Everest creatures' encounter with human beings. We learned how to tell the difference between reader-based and writer-based prose and how to shape our own writing to be inclusive of our readers. We also learned how to distinguishbetween writing personal essay and personal narrative, exploring response questions connected with Into Thin Air regarding turning points in our lives and developing our own writing related to the subject. We continued our parts of speech grammar study with adverbs and prepositions. (Blocks 2-3)
Week of 11/26/07: We continued our discussion and finished our reading of Into Thin Air, using Krakauer’s chapter epigraphs as our focus for studying main idea, summarizing, and text analysis. We extended our reading of “The Squonk” by comparing and contrasting the author’s strategies with those of the website, “The Jackalope Conspiracy,” and the short story, “Appetizer.” We will be developing our knowledge of evaluating websites for reliability and authority through our own online publication of documenting our Everest creatures. We continued our grammar study of parts of speech with adjectives.
Week of 11/19/07: Students continued reading Into Thin Air. We practiced close reading through a passage and students' responses, and further practiced our annotation skills with adding two strategies to our toolbox (questioning in the margins and marking repeated ideas in a sequence). We read and annotated a New York Times article called "Why Does This Sherpa Climb Everest? Because It's A Job" for the main idea. We read Jorge Luis Borges' "The Squonk," a sketch describing a mythical creature, and discussed how the author achieves a sense of physicality and a sense of the character's emotional state through his detached observational stance. We invented our own Everest creatures and wrote accompanying descriptions. Have a happy Thanksgiving holiday.
Legacy - Blocks 3 and 4
Week of 5/27/08: Students continued work on our justice unit through the humanities, using the historical lens of Gillian Slovo's remembrances of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. We reviewed the essential understandings we have considered in dialogue during our justice unit, and students chose one of these understandings to create a screenplay using conventions of screenwriters (taking a cue from Walter Dean Myers' craft in Monster). We will continue working on these screenplays during writer's workshop, and fellow peers will participate in cold readings of the scripts at the end of next week.
Week of 5/19/08: Students continued work on our justice unit through the humanities, using historical (New York Times articles considering the age of moral development and when we become responsible for our actions)anthropological (the Handa tribe described in the article "Vengeance is Ours") and philosophical (Socrates's definition of justice in excerpted retelling of Plato's Republic) perspectives. Students began developing/performing debates and dramatic monologues to explore the issues raised by our reading.
Week of 5/12/08: Students turned in their phenomenal point of view supplement work this week to conclude the Mystery unit. They read and wrote their own 55-word stories. We continued our word stem vocabulary study. Our pull-out unit on justice began on our last lesson this week, when our reading workshop focused on primary sources by Martin Luther King that revealed his beliefs on nonviolent approaches for creating social change.
Week of 5/5/08: Students practiced critical literature circle discussion skills through randomly drawn literature circle roles. We completed literature circle discussions this week. Students read Ha Jin's "A Bad Joke" and James Fleming Jones Jr.'s "Searching Still for Odysseus" in order to determine what strategies the authors used to determine point of view. Students' own point of view products are due Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, depending on block. They have been working on these products throughout the mystery unit. Students worked on logical induction through lateral thinking puzzles related to mystery.
Week of 4/28/08: Students continued their literature circle discussions and began drafting their minute-mystery projects after Ms. Rekkas's minilesson on how mystery writers begin drafting their pieces in real life. We taught new literature circle discussion skills--how to prove stances based on text support and monitoring off-task behavior. Students adopted literature circle roles in order to practice these skills. We continued our vocabulary study; our big review test will be the week of 5/12.
Week of 4/21/08: Students continued their vocabulary study this week. They continued their literature circle discussions, and worked on mystery activities that included a fingerprinting activity with Mrs. Shaw.
Week of 4/14/08: Students continued their mystery unit with lessons by Ms. Rekkas on red herrings and characterization through voice in fiction. Student-led book discussions continued this week in addition to vocabulary and grammar study.
Week of 4/7/08: Students began their literature circle discussions, and Ms. Rekkas taught minilessons on how to ask good questions and good follow-up questions during lit circles. Students continued their vocabulary study and worked on grid perplexors, which are logic puzzles involving inductive and deductive reasoning.
Week of 3/31/08: Students solved various mystery puzzles (Agatha Christie; 2-minute mysteries) in preparation for our literature circle unit. Ms. Rekkas gave her lesson on the key elements of mystery (character, setting, plot, clues, distractions/red herrings, structure) using the book Detective LaRue and thought-aloud how to effectively complete the mystery literature circle bookmark. She also facilitated discussion on how to create a friendly and supportive atmosphere for literature circle discussion; students created their own lists of behaviors to use as references throughout their literature circle discussions. Students received their mystery books and will begin their first chunk of text. They will receive their G/E supplement on Monday or Tuesday depending on block.
Week of 3/17/08: Students continued writing their Hero's Journey drafts during in-class workshop with daily writing conferences. Students received peer feedback on their writing drafts earlier in the week. We also focused on writers' issues of developing character change, plot, and theme during minilessons on a short story by Harry Mark Petrakis, and poetry by Gary Miranda on Orpheus and Stephen Dobyns on Daedalus & Icarus. Students continued their grammar and word stem study.
Week of 3/10/08: Students presented their Perseus and Theseus PowerPoints in class, and completed WebQuests on three sites thematically linking Greek myth and ancient Greek life. We read an opinion column (with Socratic discussion), a poem, and short stories connecting Greek myth to contemporary experience, and will continue our groupwork on the subject next week. Students continued writing their Hero's Journey drafts during in-class workshop.
Week of 3/3/08: We began writing workshop during class time in order to develop our "Hero's Journey" drafts. We shared a status of the class report and conferenced on each of our writing drafts-in-progress with Ms. Rekkas. Students worked in collaborative groups to develop a PowerPoint and presentation on either the Perseus or Theseus hero myths. They considered how the myths fit or do not fit Joseph Campbell's "hero's journey" paradigm by determining the four steps of each myth. They also evaluated the artistic choices of the storytellers in order to gain tools for their own writing drafts-in-progress. They will present their PowerPoint and myth to their peers on Monday or Tuesday, depending on block.
Week of 2/25/08: We completed our reading of the Odyssey with "The Suitors," "Odysseus's Revenge," "The Challenge," and "Penelope's Test." Students read "Penelope" by Dorothy Parker and an excerpt of a presentation on how violence is represented in the Odyssey, participating in Socratic discussion on both texts. Students began working on their "Hero's Journey" creative writing projects and independent reading contracts for Trimester 3.
Week of 2/19/08: We revieed the "Idea, Evidence, Interpretation, Extension" acronym that will help focus thinking and writing for the ISAT Extended Reading Response. Students drafted practice prompts in class. We continued our reading of the Odyssey with "The Return of Odysseus" and "Argus," pairing the latter with the poem "Argos" by Michael Collier and making connections between the Odyssey's reunion and plotting-schemes to scenes from contemporary media. NWEA tests for the Winter 2008 testing window were taken at the beginning of the week.
Week of 2/11/08: Ms. Rekkas introduced Socratic Circle discussion skills to students, and we explored a text by Thucydides from "The Peloponnesian Wars" through dialogue. Students now know the difference between dialogue and debate, and investigated the difference between descriptive and rhetorical language through individual, small group (through collaborating on an advertisement for an unsafe product), and whole class work questioning Thucydides' text. We continued our reading of the Odyssey with "The Land of the Dead," "The Sirens," and "Cattle of the Sun God." Students created products of storyboards and original songs to share with the class to present the content of the stories. We read poems by Takis Sinopoulos ("Elpenor") and George Seferis ("The Companions of Hades") to explore points of view on characters from the Odyssey that had not been presented by Homer.
Week of 2/4/08: Students in Block 3 performed their "Demeter and Persephone" sketch, and we began our study of the Odyssey. We studied the information Homer shares in the Iliad to learn about the key events leading to the Trojan War, the reason for Odysseus's leaving home (Ithaka). Students brainstormed their own lists of heroes to compare to Joseph Campbell's "hero cycle," his representation of the hero's adventure from world mythologies. We learned about the poet as "bard" and about the nature of oral storytelling in Homeric times. After reading the opening "Invocation" and "Sailing from Troy," we followed Odysseus's purported journey on a map and listened to how the Odyssey would have been performed in ancient Greek. Students then collaborated on reading and understanding "The Lotus Eaters" and "The Cyclops" sections. Our grammar and vocabulary study continues, and students will be teaching their own grammar/vocab sentences to the class next week. Upcoming 2nd Trimester deadlines: Analytical Writing #1 and #2 (or #1 and creative option) are due no later than Tuesday, February 19. Independent Reading Contracts (Block 3) are due on February 19; Wildcat Logs (Block 4) are due on February 11.
Week of 1/29/08: Students in Block 4 performed their "Demeter and Persephone" sketch, and we discussed the collaborative process for script development afterwards. Students from Block 3 questioned "what's hard about writing good fiction?", elaborated on the considerating in creating a character, and began developing fictional characters, which will be integrated into their future final assessment on The Odyssey. All students read Apollo, Orpheus, and Narcissus myths from Bulfinch's Mythology. We created clustering/webbing maps for our thinking processes about three poems on the Narcissus myth, which were shared during discussion. Students confirmed the expectations for the analytical writing for independent reading logs through a presentation. Students continued their Word within a Word and Word Cell vocabulary study.
Week of 1/22/08: Students continued their rehearsals for their original "Demeter and Persephone" performance. Their final assessment will be based on peer assessments and individual script contributions to the language of the group script. Block 3 began Word Within a Word vocabulary study, and Block 4 continued Word Cell vocabulary with Unit 6.
Week of 1/14/08: Students are well on their way to becoming experts in Greek mythology--our knowledge of the nine Muses has inspired our quest! Ask them to tell you more about how the ancient Greeks believed the universe came to be from Chaos. They will share more about the power conflicts among Ouranos, Cronos, and Zeus, and can tell you more about the major gods and goddesses--they taught their classmates about their backstory, personalities, and frequently depicted symbols. In Block 3, we read and performed a contemporary retelling of the story of Pandora. Both blocks read "The Fire Fetched Down," a contemporary poetry perspective on the moment when Prometheus gave fire to man. Students used inferencing to construct and retell the Demeter and Persephone myth. They are working on developing scripts of the myth to be developed for performance during the week of 1/22.
Week of 1/7/08: This week, students learned reading strategies for connecting to prior knowledge and questioning challenging text. We also practiced the characteristics of effective ISAT reader response writing and how to adapt our writing processes for that test format. We read excerpts of The House on Mango Street--"The House on Mango Street," "Hairs," "My Name," and "Mango Says Goodbye Sometimes." We focused on issues of language and identity in Mango Street, including how we use language to "name" our worlds (Block 4 read Julia Alvarez' "Bilingual Sestina" for comparison). Students participated in a classroom art gallery walk of Diego Rivera paintings, and we worked on reading images critically for meaning. We continued our four-line grammar and vocabulary study.
Week of 12/17/07: This week, students in Block 3 worked on assessing their own personal essay writing; their self-assessments will guide their revision and be kept in their writing folders. We then began a writing workshop geared for producing new work. Students delved into workshop in genres of fiction, poetry, and playwriting by using personal experience, personal habits, their dreams, and their observations to produce. Students turned in their writing packets, and these will be kept in their classroom writing folders to spark future projects. In addition to writing workshop, Block 4 also discussed how to revise introductions using quotations, how to unify paragraphs, and how to write conclusion alternatives for our essays. Students conferenced with me about essays through email. Have a wonderful holiday break, and see you next year!
Week of 12/10/07: We read models of successful personal essays, and wrote first drafts of a personal essay discussing one of our core personal beliefs (Block 3). We used guided peer assessment to help revise our historical essay, and students conferenced with Ms. Rekkas about their challenges with composing this type of writing (Block 4).
Week of 12/3/07: We discussed and wrote about symbolism in To Kill A Mockingbird as well as comparisons/contrasts of opposing themes that present themselves in the book (such as past/present, justice/injustice, innocence/experience). The poems "Courage," "If," and "The Road Not Taken" were read against To Kill A Mockingbird for common thematic links, and we compared the interviewee's statements in "Growing Up Black in the 1930s in McCulley's Quarters, Alabama" with Mockingbird for common contexts. Through comparing the lessons we identified that Scout learns during the course of the novel with those of our own lives, as well as thinking about whether we agreed or disagreed with certain quotations, we reflected upon our own beliefs and personal insights during in-class writing assignments. We learned how to distinguish among writing personal essay, personal narrative, and personal memoir in preparation for a personal essay writing assignment (Block 3). We read and discussed Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" with a focus on author's theme and message to readers. We learned about how to develop a literary argument through the structure of claim-evidence-warrant in our body paragraphs. We talked about how to form debatable thesis statements focused on the themes of our historical books, and conferenced about unique issues in our writing drafts (Block 4).
Week of 11/26/07: Students completed their "Cosmic Safari" interdisciplinary unit with Legacy. I will be returning to To Kill a Mockingbird with Block 3 and begin historical essay writing pull-out with Block 4 on Monday, December 3.
Week of 11/19/07: Students are working on "Cosmic Safari" interdisciplinary unit with Legacy. Have a happy Thanksgiving holiday.
Explorers - Blocks 1 and 2
Week of 5/27/08: Students responded to takes on writing by Anna Quindlen, excerpts of memoirs by Sandra Cisneros and Tobias Wolff, and a "memoir" poem by Jeffrey McDaniel. They worked in partners to analyze the form and meaning of a memoir excerpt on a name by Jhumpa Lahiri. Students drafted their memoirs during writer's workshop. Our focus this week was on drafting effective leads using character, plot/action, setting, and dialogue.
Week of 5/19/08: Students completed book talk presentations, and began brainstorming potential memoir directions through storytelling with their peers. We discussed how archetypes are mirrored in the stories we tell, as we learned about a Baghdad correspondent who reenvisioned her experiences through comparison with a famous television show protagonist. Vocabulary stem study for the year ended this week.
Week of 5/12/08: Students continued their word stem study; our cumulative word stem test will be next week. They presented engaging book talks to their peers, and we will complete presentations early next week.
Week of 5/5/08: Students used class time to develop a roundtable discussion on the memoir they were assigned. They gave some stellar presentations to the class! Vocabulary study continued; book talks begin next week.
Week of 4/28/08: Students continued their vocabulary and grammar study. We continued our focus on memoir with finishing our discussion on the James Howe story example. Students in Ms. Rekkas's room played a scavenger hunt with the story, determining where the author's language centered on a person, place, emotion, event, metaphor, chronological cequence, artifact, or theme--all common elements of memoir writing. Students also explored how to consider the nuances of different synonyms of adjectives in their own writing. Students began their groupwork assignment of analyzing a memoir through a roundtable discussion for the entire class, which will take place during the middle of next week. Book talks are scheduled for the week of 5/12.
Week of 4/21/08: Students continued their vocabulary and grammar study. We began our study of the memoir unit with an introduction and discussion of a representative memoir example by James Howe. Students will participate in memoir writing workshop with pull-out beginning next week.
Week of 4/14/08: All online postings related to the Holocaust unit were due Friday, April 14. Students concluded the Holocaust unit with a viewing and discussion of the film, "Life is Beautiful." We continued our vocabulary and grammar study.
Week of 4/7/08: Students completed Journal #5 on obedience and a writing assignment/Socratic discussion on the heroism of the "Righteous Gentiles" rescuers of Le Chambon and elsewhere in Europe. Students had a minilesson on adapting their journal responses to include answering embedded questions, making thinking explicit, and using real-life examples effectively. In addition to working on their online discussion posts, students continued their vocabulary and grammar study.
Week of 3/31/08: Students learned about subordinating conjunctions and complex sentences with Mrs. Franks. After reading the Jonah Kadish reflection (related subject of rationalization/our choices in bullying situations), students completed Journal #4. Also for our Holocaust study, they also looked at Hannah Arendt's assessment of totalitarianism and the nature of obedience/conformity as indicated by a famous social psychology experiment. They took a Word within the Word stem quiz, and received a new list for developing notecards.
Week of 3/17/08: Please see Explorers Field Notes for additional details. We continued our online postings on Moodle. Students did a fantastic job this week in their online postings on stereotyping. They should be posting twice-weekly by each Monday. They know their current status of postings, and know what entries they need to make up.
Week of 3/10/08: Please see Explorers Field Notes for additional details. We continued our online postings on Moodle.
Week of 3/3/08: Students began their online discussion postings on Moodle; our first round are due on 3/10. Students received Word within the Word List #3 for memorizing word stems. They also considered the role of the bystander in being complicit with those committing crimes through discussion and through the whole-class reading of Martin Niemoller/"The Hangman" poem.
Week of 2/25/08: Students considered the question of identity and what forces shape who they are. They worked in groups to share their identity charts and discuss their thinking about identity. Students participated in the inner and outer circles of Socratic circle discussion after reading the parable "The Bear Who Wasn't." We continued our grammar and word stem study.
Week of 2/11/08: We worked on Socratic circle discussion skills by exploring a text by Thucydides from "The Peloponnesian Wars." Students now know the difference between dialogue and debate, and investigated the difference between descriptive and rhetorical language through individual, small group (through collaborating on an advertisement for an unsafe product), and whole class work questioning Thucydides' text. We discussed issues related to women's rights by investigating the rhetoric of a speech by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and used claim-evidence-warrant to question how three different texts (an excerpted Newsweek article on the virtual community of Second Life, writer's memoir on Los Angeles, and W.E.B. DuBois' "The Souls of Black Folk") considered essential themes of community, economic status, competition, transience from one place to another, and personal identity.
Week of 2/4/08: We began our fiction writing workshop during class. Students received their self-assessment guidelines for their stories (due 2/14 or 2/15, depending on block). In order to gain expertise in the tools that fiction writers use to tell stories, we used minilessons to look at several short fiction pieces--A.M. Homes's "Things You Should Know" for ways to expand the sense of time in a story through compressing/abbreviating language, the first two pages of Daniel Keyes's "Flowers for Algernon" for plausibility, and Rob Carney's "Traveling Alone" for setting/how a character's interpretation of place can tell us a lot of information about who that character is. Each student conferenced with Ms. Rekkas at least once about their writing progress. We continued our ISAT extended reader response preparation with a third prompt and sample test questions. We established the expectations and set individual and class goals for Socratic Circle discussions, which will occur during each of next week's classes. Students also reviewed their Greek/Latin stems and received their new list for the week.
Week of 1/29/08: We established expectations for our fiction writing workshop, and students questioned "what's hard about writing good fiction?", elaborated on the considerating in creating a character, determined how to address the "So What?" question, or the "problem" of a story, and began developing fictional characters. Writing workshop began with a status of the class meeting and writing conferences with Ms. Rekkas. Students' final fiction drafts are due Thursday, February 14 for Block 1 and Friday, February 15 for Block 3. We continued ISAT extended reader response preparation, with students completing two prompts with the opportunity for turning in rewrites. Students continued their Word within a Word vocabulary study/4-line grammar study on complex sentences, and Block 1 received progress reports on Thursday 1/31.
Week of 1/22/08: Block 1 continued their independent study presentations this week. We began ISAT extended reader response preparation, with students drafting practice prompts using the mnemonic device of Idea, Evidence, Interpretation, Extension. We continued Block 1 students read a short story by Karen Russell and continued developing the skill of creating literary arguments through single paragraphs using claim, evidence, and warrant. Block 3 students began writing workshop, where students have choice in determining creative writing topics of interest/drafts that they will develop in their writer's notebooks and include in final portfolios.
Week of 1/14/08: Block 1 students began their impressive independent study presentations this week. We used our depictions of early childhood memories from our families' kitchens and our own writing to connect with a brief excerpt on memory from Marcel Proust, where the writer finds himself transported through time. We read a brief excerpt of an essay on photography by Henri Bresson to investigate how moments are preserved--yet memories evolve--with the instant click of a camera. Brief excerpts from Alan Lightman, Virginia Woolf, and T.S. Eliot helped us consider how language can convey starts or stops in time. We used questioning and creating mental pictures to tackle the tough, high-vocabulary texts. Students are working on crafting literary arguments--claim, evidence, and warrant--abbreviated to a single paragraph. To further practice reading strategies next week, we are leaving the figurative language of fiction and poetry to look at the literal language of nonfiction that is concerned with time.
Week of 1/7/08: This week, we reviewed the components of the independent study project and book review. During a presentation by Ms. Rekkas, students critiqued the approaches of various Harry Potter reviewers for effective reviewing (according to the requirements of the book review rubric). After a model by Ms. Rekkas of the independent study project, we read the study's product (flash fiction) and applied the reading strategy we learned this week of how to question challenging or obscure text in order to figure out what information is needed to make meaning of the language. We applied this strategy to a novella excerpt by Aleksandar Hemon that assumed prior knowledge about two settings, Chicago and Sarajevo. We continued our four-line grammar study and defined conjunctions--coordinating, subordinating, and correlative. Students had class time to work on independent study and conference about their progress (Block 1). Returning to small group for the end of the week, we learned and applied our questioning reading strategy to a comparative reading of Sandra Cisneros's "My Name" and Julia Alvarez' "Bilingual Sestina" (Block 3).
Week of 12/17/07: We continued our four-line grammar analysis, and also analyzed the parts of speech in Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky.” Students completed final proposals for their research products, and we conferenced about research questions to shape them into higher-order thinking questions. We learned how to reference web sites in our research through the FAQ page, and used time in class to continue our project research. We discussed our project direction through product conferences, where we discussed the expectations for product components. Students, please email over break with any questions that arise during independent study. Have a wonderful holiday break, and see you next year!
Week of 12/10/07: We clarified our research questions in our domain of study, and continued our search for relevant source information. Conferences were held with students to further hone topics for study. Through reading and responding to "In Defense of Curiosity," we looked at Eleanor Roosevelt's argument critically and evaluated the scope of our own potential efforts in independent study (Block 1).
Week of 12/3/07: We shared our character portfolios through presentations and began intensive work on developing subjects for independent study. We initially used open-ended questions and group brainstorming, then description, comparison, cause-and-effect, and problem solving techniques to define our topic of study and organize our study domain (Block 1) Students began work on developing an independent topic of interest for writing. (Block 3)
Week of 11/26/07: We learned how literary arguments are constructed (claim->evidence->warrant) and debated the merit of the author’s (of the book Everything Bad Is Good For You) claim in “Brain Candy,” an article from The New Yorker about the learning potential in pop culture artifacts such as video games, using graphic organizers and pair discussion. We considered how Golding’s “big ideas” from The Lord of the Flies could be rendered and expressed through alternative media as we continued discussing the book. We learned a vocabulary strategy to create contexts for remembering vocabulary words, and used this strategy with our vocabulary from The Lord of the Flies. We went over the requirements for the first book review (due January 14) and our presentations of The Lord of the Flies character portfolios (due December 4).
Week of 11/19/07: We finished our reading of The Lord of the Flies, and students received their long-term final assessment for the book. (They will be FBI investigators who are creating dossiers about one of the individuals on the island, and they will present their findings to the other members of the team.) We discussed passages from the The Lord of the Flies and looked critically at an excerpt of Golding's autobiography (Scenes from a Life) where the author reflects on his formative experiences with reading; we connected his memories to our own. We read Sandra Cisneros's "Eleven" and compared how Golding and Cisneros approach coming-of-age themes. Students demonstrated their knowledge of grammar through a grammar quiz. Have a happy Thanksgiving holiday.