10th Grade

Hey-o! Welcome to the last week of your sophomore career. What fun, what fun. Here’s the plan:

Monday: We’ll be diving right in with you grammar final on Monday. Good times.

Tuesday/Wednesday: Depending on the class (1st period Tuesday, 3rd and 5th Wednesday) we’ll be working on writing our poems for our poetry reading on Wednesday (1st) or Thursday (3rd and 5th). In case you didn’t get the directions, here they are.

Wednesday/Thursday: We’ll be presenting our poems for each other and eating cookies. Lovely, right? See the above in case you don’t know what day you’re presenting.

Friday: As per my end-of-the-year tradition, I’ll be offering a series of word problems for extra credit on Friday. They are only offered in class, during class, so don’t even bother asking if you can do them at home. And with that, we’ll walk happily into the sunset, a year older, and a year smarter.

Hey all. In case you missed it, or were not able to participate in the peer editing exercise we did yesterday, you can find a PDF of the directions here. Enjoy!

Hola! I hope that you had a wonderful sun-filled weekend. I also hope that you wore sunscreen. It’s going to be an interesting week, as we move to finish the Things Fall Apart essay and deal with the realities of the End-of-Course exams for math and the bizarre schedule that will result. So, that said, bear with me. Here’s your week:

Monday: As we stated previously, Monday is a day dedicated to peer editing your Things Fall Apart essays. Remember, I won’t accept a final draft that hasn’t been peer edited, so this is your chance to have somebody do you a solid.

Homework: Revise your essay! You’ll only have a little bit of time in class on Tuesday/Wednesday to do so.

Tuesday/Wednesday: I’m giving you time in class to revise your essays based on peer feedback. The essay is due on Wednesday.

Thursday: After our first grammar review (of everything we’ve done for the whole year…) we’ll be starting our last unit of the year, one centered on the art form of slam poetry. I’ll be introducing the form, and we’ll be watching and handful of videos and listening to a few pieces. I promise it will be super fun.

Friday: We’ll be working our way through our first assignment with slam poetry. We’re going to be using an analysis method that I stole from a friend of mine at Bellevue High School called TPCASTT that will help us make sense of what we’re reading/watching/hearing. I’ll post the assignment shortly.

All-

Here’s your week. Keeping it short here.

Tuesday: After play previews I’ll be handing out the prompt for our final essay on the novel Things Fall Apart. You can find it here. I’ll spend some time reviewing the requirements, but I should mention that I’m especially concerned with your ability to connect your selected evidence to the author’s purpose. This didn’t happen nearly enough in the previous round of essays, so I’m especially keen to see it happen here. Also, note that the essay will be due, without exception, on June 7th.

Wednesday: I’ll be giving you class time to work on your essays on Wednesday, after our weekly grammar installment. We’re still working on prepositions, and will transition to reviewing for the grammar final beginning next week. You must have part one (the introduction) of our essay checklist complete by the time you leave class on Wednesday. I will not be signing it afterwards, and it is worth 10 points.

Thursday: Again, I’ll begin the day with more work on prepositions, then will be giving you the rest of the period to work on your essays. You must have at least Body Paragraphs 1 and 2 signed off on before you leave class. Again, these are worth 10 points.

Friday: We’ll begin the day with our grammar quiz, then will move into some more time to continue work on your essays. I need to sign off on Body Paragraph 3 and the Conclusion before you leave class on Friday. Note that you must have these essays typed up for class on Monday when we’ll spend the period peer-editing them.

Homework: Type essays for Peer Edit on Monday.

Hey all-

The set of response questions that I had posted for today (Wednesday) includes a homework response that asks you to craft a 1 page response to the final chapter of the text. Skip that. All I want from you is the first section, the in-class response questions.

Hey s’mores! I’m in Oly today, presenting a bunch of stuff to OSPI about testing and student achievement, so I’ll trust that you take a close look at the week ahead. We’ll be finishing the novel this week, which means (of course) that you’ll have your end-of-novel exam on Thursday before the long weekend. Here’s what the week looks like:

Monday: This will be an in-class reading day. You must get through at least chapters 20-22 for the start of class on Tuesday, as we’ll be going over a set of questions regarding the work. As you read, look especially closely at the character of Mr. Brown. You’ll notice that he isn’t necessarily all bad. In fact, he does some pretty cool things for Umuofia. Make note of what he does, as his actions will be central to our conversation on Tuesday.

Tuesday: We’ll be discussing chapters 20-22. We have a short discussion piece followed by some questions for your Response Journals.

Homework: Read chapters 23 and 24.

Wednesday: After a brief discussion about chapters 23 and 24 I’ll be reading the final chapter aloud. It’s a pretty moving piece, and I want to make sure that everybody gets to hear it. We’ll end the day with these response questions.

Thursday: Your end-of-novel exam is Thursday. We’ll be doing some writing on this text next week, specifically around the notion of Okonkwo and the Hero’s Journey (remember that?), so give a little bit of thought over the weekend to whether or not you think that Okonkwo can be called a hero in any way, shape, or form.

Hey-oh! Sorry for the slightly later than usual post. A series of meetings last night made it virtually impossible for me to get this done. Here’s the schedule for the week:

Monday: Monday is an in-class writing day. I’m assessing how well you understand some elements of the Ibo culture as described by Chinua Achebe in Things Fall Apart. You’ll be responsible for completing one of the two written responses for chapter 14.

Tuesday: After Grammar #51 about prepositions and their functions we’ll transition to part one of a bizarre assignment dealing with what you’ve observed about Achebe’s descriptions of Ibo culture. You can find the details here.

Wednesday: We’ll be turning in your illustrated quote from Tuesday, taping it to the wall, then connecting things with tons of string. It will be epic. We’ll have a short written response to it which I’ll have you do in your journals. You can find the response here.

Homework: Read through chapter 17 for class on Thursday.

Thursday: We’ll be discussing our little web project after Grammar #52, then there will be a short series of questions for you to do in your response journals. You can find them here.

Homework: Read through chapter 19 for class on Friday

Friday: After our Grammar Quiz we’ll transition to our last response journal entry for the week. You can find it here.

Well, here we are, nearly half way through May, and there’s still so very much to be done. This week will demand that you keep up on the reading (though I’ll be allocating some time in class to make sure y’all stay current). Here’s the plan:

Monday: I’ll be reading chapter 5 aloud to start the day, then there is a short assignment that you’ll need to complete in your response journals on the first few chapters of the novel.

Tuesday: We have our weekly grammar (on prepositions this week), then I’ll be allocating the remainder of the period to reading. You need to be through chapter 9 for the start of class on Wednesday. It’s about 40 pages, so if you need to set aside some time to get it done at home, make sure you do so.

Homework: Read through the end of chapter 9 for class on Wednesday.

Wednesday: We’ll begin with another installment of our weekly grammar followed brainstorming some themes that you are beginning to see develop in the novel, which you’ll need as I’ll be introducing one of the types of journal responses that I will be requiring for this novel. It is slightly different than what we’ve done before, so make sure that if you’re absent that you check the website. I’ll post the results of our discussion on Wednesday evening.

You can find the instructions for the Dialectical Journal here.

Homework: Free Response #1

Thursday: We’ll start the day with our vocabulary and grammar quizzes, then follow them up with some more time dedicated to reading. You need to be done with chapter 14 by the start of class on Monday.

Homework: Read chapters 10-14 over the weekend. We’ll have an in-class writing assignment on the chapter first thing on Monday morning.

Hey y’all. Rather than post the entire schedule, here’s a picture of it! Fun, right?

Also, the major handout for the week is the TKAM Essay Prompt. You can find it here.

Welcome back from Spring break, y’all. I hope that it was as lovely for you as it was for me. As we begin the last push for the year we’ll be finishing up To Kill A Mockingbird in the next 3 weeks, then transitioning into Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart and a unit on slam poetry. That said, here’s what the week looks like:

Monday: We’ll start the week off with some

Homework: Read chapters 12 + 13.

Tuesday: We’ll start the day with Grammar #42

Homework: Read chapters 14 + 15

Wednesday:

Homework: Read chapters 16 + 17

Thursday:

Homework: Read chapters 18 + 19

Friday:

Homework: Read chapters 20 + 21