Final Grades

I have final grades calculated for Russian 2/3. I won't be able to enter them until the 8th of June in PowerSchool, but if you'd like you can see me before or after school. 

Exams Upcoming

Russian II/III Students

Your exam will be held on Tuesday morning at 7:30 in my classroom.  Please make sure that you are on time and prepared for the exam. 

If you have any textbooks or class materials, please bring them.

Exams Have Begun!

Please follow the exam schedule and ask if you don't know where or when to be.  At this point, grades have been finalized for the fourth quarter with a few exceptions.  Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Reminders for B-Day Students: LDOC - 5/25/2016

And with that the school year has come to a close.  Thanks for a great finish today.  Remember that if you are exempt from my final exam (AP English III) then you are essentially done for the year.  If you would like to come to the review and take the exam, it can only help you.

If you are not exempt from the exam I expect to see you at the review session.  I also expect to see all English II students at the review since none of you are exempt from state testing.

Homework for A-Day Classes - LDOC - 5/24/2016

English II

We're all done!  Remember that we have our review session and our EOC still ahead.  Our review session will fall on June 3rd at 11:32.  Our EOC will be on Monday, June 6th at 7:30 in room 212.

Russian I

We're all done too!  Our final review session will fall on June 1 at 11:32 and our exam will be on June 2nd at 7:30.  You will have listening, reading, writing, and speaking along with your grammar questions and tasks.

Remember to keep your practice up over the summer, especially for those of you who are exempt.

Russian II/III

And we are done too!  Yay for your work and accomplishment today in our talk show.  Our review session will be on May 31st at 11:32 and the exam will follow on the next day at 7:30.

B-Day Homework and Reminders - 23 May 2016

English II

To those of you who have missing assignments or would like to revise your essays for a new grade, please make sure that anything you still have gets turned in next class - Wednesday, the 25th of May.  This is the day that we will finish everything for class including: Escape from Sobibor and your viewing guide for the film, our EOC review game, and a few quick reminders for the end of the year.

None of you are exempt from my final exam - so you should all be at my review session.

AP English III

Next class we will be having our character cafe - please make sure that you have your character study sheet complete.  You may drop off food and props and costumes in the morning - just make sure that it is in a bag and that your bag is labeled with your name.

I'll be finalizing exemptions and all of that next class so if you need to know, you should ask.

Homework for the Weekend - A Day - 20 May 2016

There is only one more A day left in the year before we begin examinations!

Russian I

This weekend you should spend your time reviewing verbs.  You have your verb charts to go over regular verb conjugation.  Work through your Russian I verb list and complete the conjugations that go along with the verbs.  Also, remember the cases that pair with the verb to create whole sentences.

We'll continue to look at these on Tuesday and do some more practice with them then.

Be reminded that since Tuesday is the last day of class any retakes or submissions of missing work or completing missing quizzes due to absence is Tuesday.  That is your last chance.

Russian II/III

Over the weekend you should spend time preparing for our talk show on Tuesday.  Make sure that you have your costume, your props, your introduction to your character and any notes that you may have made to help you with the speaking.

Also, make sure to answer the questions which Myah is preparing for you.  Those questions and answers will be a very useful tool to prepare yourself for Tuesday.

Be reminded that since Tuesday is the last day of class any retakes or submissions of missing work or completing missing quizzes due to absence is Tuesday.  That is your last chance.

English II

Remember that you all will start with me on Tuesday.  We're going in reverse order that day.  On Tuesday we will finish our website presentations and then go on to finishing Escape from Sobibor and our viewing guides on the film.

Be reminded that since Tuesday is the last day of class any retakes or submissions of missing work or completing missing work due to absence is Tuesday.  That is your last chance.  Some of you have missed a lot of class recently - please finish strong.  We'll go over our exam schedule on Tuesday.

Homework for B-Day Students: Weekend Edition - 19 May 2016

There are only two B-days left in the regular school year!  Yay!  So exciting!

AP English III

Have fun this weekend - that's your homework.  On Monday we'll finish up with Flannery O'Connor, sign up for our food items for our character cafe on Wednesday and round out the year with course evaluations.

English II

If you have any missing assignments or need to take this weekend to finish your website project it is important that you settle that work no later than Wednesday.  Monday will be the day that we will finish our presentations and get back to watching Escape from Sobibor.  On Wednesday we'll finish the film, play some review games, and round out the year.

Homework for A Day Classes - 18 May 2016

Russian I/II/III

You all have your assessments next class to prepare for.  Hopefully after today's class you are feeling ready for them.  Here are some quick questions to ask yourself to check your preparation:

Russian III Students:

• Can you identify the different endings for participles and use those endings to indicate the voice and tense of the participle?
• Can you recognize the verbal root to the participle?
• Do you know how to find the antecedent for a participle?
• Can you rewrite a participial phrase as a который phrase?

Russian II Students:

• Do you know when you should use a double negative expression versus a singular negative expression?
• Where do prepositions go when working with negative expressions?
• Do you know the difference between не and ни?

Russian I Students:

• Can you identify your parts of speech in Russian?
• Can you identify genders for these parts of speech in Russian?
• Do you know which words are irregular plural words?
• Can you form the plural from the singular in the nominative case?
• Do you remember what your conjunctions are and what they mean?

These quizzes will be your final assessment before the Final Examination (except for your speaking assignment for Russian II/III).  Make sure that you show your best on this.

English II:

For our final two classes we will be presenting our research projects and then watching a film to finish our study of the Holocaust and genocides.  Pay attention to the reminders below as your are finishing your websites tonight.  Remember - everyone should be ready to present next class, even if your website isn't perfect.  

Homework for B-Day Students: 17 May 2016

AP English III

Tonight you all need to work on two things at the same time - the work which will finish out our year.  First, you have your compare and contrast assignment on Mean Girls and The Crucible.  Remember that you are focusing on a motif and then elucidating that motif using evidence related to characters or conflicts.  Recall that you have to be making a clear insight about our society related to this motif.  Prove and relate that point!

Further, we also know our final day of class will be on the 25th of May.  You'll have your Character Cafe this day.  Bring in your snack/party item as well as your costume for our day.  You also have your entry ticket to the party which is your completed "Character Bone Structure" activity sheet.  The answers on this sheet should be based on the text in which the character is found or the author him/herself.

English II

We have our website presentations beginning next class.  Half of you will present on Thursday and the following half will present on Monday to finish our year.  Please make sure that you have used the rubric to prepare your final product.

The key things to remember are:

• you must have at least two focus paragraphs for your website
• you must deal with the other questions/pages - if you can't find information, address that fact and move on
• your must have at least one photo per page
• you must cite where your information has come from
• you should have an introduction to your website on the home page
• you can have notecards for your presentation

This is your final major grade of the year - make it count!

Homework for Monday - 16 May 2016 - A Day Students

English II

Hopefully with our workshop today in class you all were able to finish a good chunk of work on your websites.  Make sure that by the end of the weekend you have really:

1.  finished and uploaded your two focus paragraphs with parenthetical citations
2.  finished your citation page
3.  uploaded an image for each page

Tonight - please finish the Elie Wiesel writing and stay focused on his use of subjective and objective language. Remember as you read that you should find at least one objective example and one subjective example per page.  Remember that as we discussed in class, some paragraphs can have a mix of objective and subjective language - remember to think about the difference between facts and feelings.

We will start website presentations on Friday.  It is important that you finish everything by then.

Russian I/II/III

You'll be having quizzes on Friday.  Make sure that you are all preparing yourselves based on the grammar ahead of you on your quiz.  Here is a brief outline:

• Russian I - plurals in the nominative case and conjunctions
• Russian II - using double negatives in Russian
• Russian III - recognizing and being able to analyze participles in Russian

We've been spending a lot of time on all of these goals recently, so hopefully you are feeling prepared.  I also spent time going over what you are missing (if anything) at this point in the year.  Remember that I won't take any late work past the last day of class which is Monday, the 24th of May.

Homework for B-Day Students: 13 May 2016

English II

Hopefully with our workshop today in class you all were able to finish a good chunk of work on your websites.  Make sure that by the end of the weekend you have really:

1.  finished and uploaded your two focus paragraphs with parenthetical citations
2.  finished your citation page
3.  uploaded an image for each page

This weekend - please finish the Elie Wiesel writing and stay focused on his use of subjective and objective language.  Remember as you read that you should find at least one objective example and one subjective example per page.  Remember that as we discussed in class, some paragraphs can have a mix of objective and subjective language - remember to think about the difference between facts and feelings.

We will start website presentations on Thursday.  It is important that you finish everything by then.

AP English III

Take some time to sum up the observations that you made from today's viewing of Mean .  If you turned in your copy of The Crucible then feel free to use this online version.

We'll finish this next class and have a brief writing workshop before we move on to looking at one of my favorite American authors, Ms. Flannery O'Connor.

Also - here's the link to the Russia trip.

Homework for A Day Students - Weekend Edition - 12 May 2016

English II

Given today's workshop you really have all that you need to finish your websites and begin moving toward your presentations.  Remember that for the websites you will need at least two paragraphs that answer the research questions.  You'll need to show me how you are using facts from research by including parenthetical citations in your paragraph whenever you use a fact from your research.

By Monday's class you should have at least one paragraph uploaded to your website.  I would also recommend going ahead and finishing the citation for the resources you used to write this paragraph.  Put that on your citations page.  Also make sure that your images are complete.

Russian I

This weekend you should finish working on exercise 3.8 which has you combining sentences using our conjunctions of И, А, НО.  Remember as you use these conjunctions to combine sentences that you will want to cut down on how much of the sentence you are holding on to as you combine.  Remember to look at what we did today in class as you are working through your homework as examples of how to work through this exercise.

Remember that we will have our unit exam on unit three on Friday, May 20th.  This will be the last major grade of the year.  Today we finished learning any new content.  From here on out it is all review.

Russian II/III

All of you have your two minute introductions to your characters due on Monday.  With this I should see that you have put the work you've done to research vocabulary for your character.  You should all be prepared to speak to the class and state who you are and what your motivations are for the show.  Remember to think about the mini-introductions we see on talk shows; we get the dirt, the background, the full story from the person's perspective.

Outside of this, Russian III Students have an additional homework assignment.  You should do the translation exercise on Past Passive Participles in their short form.  That is exercise 11.12.  Use the list of PPP on page 472 to help you out.

ALL STUDENTS:

You have only until the last day of class which is May 24th for A Day students to complete any missing work or to resubmit anything.  Past this date the gradebook will be locked to any changes with the exception of the final exam.

Homework for B Day Student - 11 May 2016

AP English III

I hope you crushed it.  I hope that there was nothing left for you to give and you put it all on the paper.  Good work.  Remember to bring your things for our study of Mean Girls on Friday.

English II

Tonight for homework you should finish the rough draft of your first focus paragraph for your website.  Remember that you need to clearly answer the research question, provide evidence to support and clarify your answer, and then explain that evidence.  If you are using any information from your research, it should be cited.

Additionally, you may want to go ahead and finish up your MLA citation for your citation page based on this paragraph.  For example, if you've used one source to write your focus paragraph you will want to create your citation for this source on your citation page.

We'll have a writing workshop next class to start finishing up this assignment.

Homework for A Day Students - 10 May 2016

English II

Now that we have gone over the requirements of the website project I hope that you will all be actively working on completing these over the next few classes.  We will only be working on them in class for about two more sessions.  They should be finished by the end of next week.

Next class I'll be checking your research cards.  You should have five cards total - with one on each topic and an extra on a topic where you've found a lot of information.  Five cards is the minimum.  Do more if you need to.

If you have any missing work, like the paper - make sure to turn it in sooner rather than later.

Russian I

For homework you should complete the masculine nouns, moving from the singular to the plural.  There are some of the irregulars that we learned today within this list, so make sure that you use your notes as you are working.

Additionally, you have the study guide for the final exam.  Remember that it will cover Chapters One, Two and Three from our textbook.  You should be reviewing the information in these chapters and the study guide.  If you can't do something, then make sure to ask soon so that you can review.

Russian II/III

For homework tonight you should all be focusing on the new vocabulary within your chapters.  Level Three students also need to keep working on exercise eleven.  You're moving on to sentences 7-13.  For these sentences remember to analyze the participles for (gender, active/passive, present/past, case, and antecedent) as well as being able to translate the participle.

If you can, try to change the sentence into a который sentence - you may have an easier time managing the grammar using a который construction.

Level II students should continue to focus on new vocabulary and negation - you will have a final unit quiz/test soon on these concepts before the end of the year.

Homework for B Day Students - 9 May 2016

Happy Victory Day!  С Днем Победы!

If we were in Russia we would be at a parade today, but we're in America so we're at school.  Here are your reminders going in to Wednesday.

English II

Make sure that you have finished your research cards for Wednesday.  You should have five completed cards and at least one on every topic.  Now that you know how to do your citations for the website, you should go back to some of your source material and try to do that work now too.  Next class we'll be focusing on finishing up our research before we are writing and constructing the websites in earnest.

AP English III

YOU HAVE YOUR AP EXAM NEXT CLASS!  YOU'RE GOING TO BE AMAZING!  KILL IT!

See you on Friday when we'll be working on Mean Girls...

Homework for the Weekend - 6 May 2016 - A Day Students

Russian II/III

Make sure that your character development sheets are ready for me on Tuesday.  Remember that all of the questions should be answered in Russian and are meant to help you fully realize the character that you are embodying for our final speaking presentation.

Russian III Students - You have the second task of going to our exercise and rewriting the participles as который clauses instead of as participles.  Next class we will continue to work on participles and delve into the difference between active and passive voices.

Russian I

This weekend you have your work on singulars and plurals in neuter and feminine gender.  Please complete the chart/worksheet by organizing your words by gender and then applying the notes we did today in class to create the plurals.

English II

Your homework is the same as what we have below for the B day classes.  We're going to six cards instead of five since we had a bit more time in the library today.  Remember that they should be organized by topics and reflect your sources.  Right now you should have at least two sources (one is a website and one is a book).  Next week we'll start plugging the information to the websites.

Homework for the Weekend - B Day Students - 5 May 2016

Happy Cinco de Mayo!  Here are your reminders going into the weekend.

English II

I'd like for all of you to spend time this weekend working on your research cards for our project.  By Monday, you should have five completed notecards.  If you are having trouble finding information on one of your topics (remembrance or resistance, for example), then spend time and develop more notecards on another topic so that you can meet your overall goal of five cards.

Next week we will start to put the information we've collected onto our websites, so it's important we work hard now to collect this information.

AP English III

This weekend I want you to spend your time reflecting on your portfolios and the written work that you have prepared for me this year.  Spend time especially with your timed writings.  Consider some of the consistent feedback you've received this year and make concrete plans to improve on those areas of your writing before we get to our exam on Wednesday.  For Monday's class we will be finishing The Crucible and then reviewing some last minute tips before the AP Exam.

Homework for A Day Students - 4 May 2016

English II

Good work today in the library related to your projects.  Keep working on the research if you didn't reach your goal of three research cards.

The required homework for tonight is to read the article on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and answer the attached questions.  Remember that some of the questions are interpretation/me questions so you won't find the answers directly in the story.

Remember as well that if you have missing work it is important to get that turned in ASAP so that we can wrap up the semester well.

Russian I

Please finish the exercise that we began in class - checking the sentences for nominative case words and then changing those words from singular to plural.  We are identifying and changing only adjectives and possessive/demonstrative pronouns from singular to plural.  Also remember that everything changes to plural - all genders.

If you haven't yet presented on your country - you'll be doing this next class.

Russian II/III

With today's class being small due to AP testing we will be doing a lot of today's work next class.  Russian III students, we will be reviewing the homework exercise next class, so make sure that is prepared.

All students should continue to develop their characters for our final speaking assignment.  Remember to use the worksheet we reviewed today in class to sketch out and prepare to embody your character.  All answers should be in Russian.

Homework for B-Day Students: 3 May 2016

AP English III

Next class we will be having our quiz on Acts I-III of The Crucible.  In order to prepare for this assessment you should spend your time reviewing your characters, the study questions for Acts I-III, and the work that we did today on Machiavelli.

Your quiz will have multiple choice questions, quote identifications, and a short answer where you are drawing connections between the ideas of Machiavelli and the ideas of Miller in The Crucible.

English II

Today we had some time in the media center to begin our research on genocides around the world.  Next class you will be continuing to work on the research before we start working on the websites again.  If you would like to continue working on research at hope you are more than welcome to do so.  Keep using your cards as you keep doing research.

For homework I want you to read the small selection about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during World War II.  With the reading, make sure that you read carefully, and highlight information to help you answer the questions.  You will need to answer all the questions at the end.  I will check this for completion next class.

Homework for A- Day Students: 2 May 2016

English II

For tonight you have two articles to read about life in a Jewish ghetto.  As you are reading the articles make sure that you are underlining and taking note of the living conditions in the ghetto for the Jews.  These are your copies so you can feel free to underline on the articles themselves.

You might want to compare and contrast the conditions that are seen in these readings to the conditions that Anne and her family endure in the Secret Annex.

Many of you didn't have essays today.  Get them in to me ASAP!

Russian I

For homework tonight you have to work on exercise four in chapter three.  For this exercise you will not be following the written instructions.  For the exercise, you will be focusing tonight on rewriting any words that are possessive or demonstrative pronouns or adjectives in the nominative case from the singular to the plural.  If the word is in any case except nominative, do not work with it.

For any nouns that you will need to change, leave a space.  We will deal with nouns later.

You should do this work on your own paper.  We will continue with our presentations next class as well.

Russian II/III

Tonight we have exercises in our textbooks focusing on the new grammar that we are learning to round out the year.

• Russian III Students - Work on exercise eleven, but only focus on numbers 1-6.  In this section, identify your participles and their antecedent.  Identify the type of participle being used and attempt to translate.  This is more of a reading and analysis assignment - we'll deal with more of the grit later.

• Russian II Students - For homework you have exercises eleven and twelve.  For these, focus on your rules related to double negatives as well as your vocabulary around negative expressions.  Remember that the use of the double negative is key in Russian!