27 September - End of the Week

English 11

Great day to end the week today as we worked on our reading projects, set up our websites for our English 11 portfolios, and got started with our first few words from list two. We ended our day with Scattegories! It's always fun to build a bit of community through some games.

Remember that in this class, projects are how you can study best for tests. In your project, you're finding and explaining our unit devices. Your goal is to find all of the devices in your project. Follow the same guidelines that we did in our practice assignments. Annotate via comments. Next week we'll have more time to work on our projects and we'll finish preparing for our exams.

Have the best weekend! Keep working on your projects if you have the time. I'm excited to see you on Tuesday, which is your only day with me next week.

25 September - Wacky Wednesday!

English 11

Pretty solid day today in English 11 as we worked on reading and understanding one of my favorite authors, James Baldwin. We'll look at him again throughout the year in a few different moments. We read in order to discover our literary devices, elements of story telling, and to discuss Baldwin's rhetorical situation. We finished class with a brief analysis of Baldwin where you selected a quotation, annotated for devices, and then paraphrased and evaluated it. I'm looking forward to seeing your work. Remember that this is a miniaturized version of the project, which we'll work on more on Friday. 

Friday is all about our project and learning some new vocabulary words from list two. Be ready for a fun day of putting projects together. Remember that working on the project is a way to study for our test. The test is going to happen on October 7.

23 September - Kicking Off the Week

English 11

Today we had time for our first round of feedback and grades. I know that there was a lot of information provided to you today, so here's the basic recap. You get two types of grades - summative (70%) and formative (30%). We generally get grades in three types of skills - reading, writing, and oral communication. Today you got back grades and feedback on reading, writing, and oral communication. We looked at the feedback, understood what it meant about where we are right now, and understood how grades and feedback can help us get to where we want to be. Now what we'll do is start the journey for improvement.. 

The bulk of class after that was focused on our first poem - "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus. What we did in this part of class was do a close reading of the poem to identify key literary devices from this unit. We explored how they created tones and added to the character of the Statue of Liberty in the poem. Then, we put it all together to understand the theme for the audience. Keep in mind that this type of thinking and reading is what we'll need to do in our project as well as how to be successful in class. Continue to practice with this as you work with your project.

Next class we'll take time to do our last reading of this unit and also have time to work on our projects. It's time for us to start preparing for our unit assessment, as well. Be ready to move on to Unit 2 in the next few classes.

19 September - End of the Week

English 11

Great end to the week in English 11 as we took our first vocabulary quiz, participated in some review, and got started with our first project to demonstrate our skills and identities as readers. Next class, I'll be giving a lot of feedback based on the work we've done so far. If you have any missing assignments, be sure that they are complete BEFORE Monday's class so that I can get you scores and feedback. If you need to come to Lion Time, use Securly and make an Appointment Pass for Monday. I can also work with you on Wednesday or Friday.

Take time to review the project requirements. The main idea is that you're annotating three excerpts of your choosing for our narrative elements. We'll keep working on this throughout next week. It'll help us to prepare for our unit test. Soon Unit 1 will be over. Our next unit looks at The Harlem Renaissance. Over the weekend, focus on completing any missing work, making a plan for this week's Lion Times, or working on your project. As always, whatever you need, feel free to ask! Enjoy your weekends!

17 September

English 11

Another solid day today in English 11 as we finished studying "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" by Tim O'Brien from his novel called The Things They Carried. If you're interested in reading more from this book, let me know if you'd like to check out a copy. It's a fantastic collection!

In class we did some practice SOL problems before our reading time. I loved the engagement, the notes, and the ideas that you all got to when it came to our discussion on American problems reflected in the story. At the end of class, we took time for finishing missing work and preparing for our quiz on Thursday.

Focus on learning your vocabulary for next class. You have a quiz coming! Remember to complete the practice assignment for a grade - I attached it here. We'll get into our first projects next class and some feedback on the first essays. Here's to Thursday!

End of the Week - Homecoming Friday

English 11

It's Friday the 13th and the end of a busy week at Fairfax High School. Solid end to the week today in English 11. We had picture day, and we completed our first timed essay. Remember that in this class, grades replace. This first essay is often the worst of the whole year. As we learn and grow, we'll be rewarded for that. Continue to do your part. Be actively engaged in class, and focus on improvement! I'll have feedback for you next week.

Over the weekend, be sure to complete your syllabus form, your discussion board post, and study for your vocabulary quiz. Be sure to complete your practice assignment. If you were absent or need to get caught up. Make a plan for Lion Time next week. Request a pass on Securly and I'll approve. All the best for a great Homecoming and weekend!

Getting into September - Mid Week Check-ins

English 11

Thank you all for being so good while we had technology problems in class today. Unfortunately, this means that we won't have a recording for today posted over on Schoology. Oh well. 

Today's class started with a quotation response in our notebooks followed by our first graded class discussion. Y'all did a fantastic job reviewing the four authors that we've read so far and discussing some of their major conflicts, resolutions, and perspectives in their texts. We made some great connections between the various authors as well. Some of these connections were a bit ironic, but that makes them even more powerful. As we keep going through this unit and year, consider how more texts combine together to create richer meanings and ideas.

We started reading one of the longest pieces of this unit called "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" by Tim O'Brien. This is a war story that blends a bit of fact and fiction. We'll finish the story next week. To end our day, we looked at vocabulary. Remember that you have a quiz next week (Thursday). Be sure to complete your review assignment before Thursday. Don't forget that you also have your discussion board due this week.

On Monday we had a good day as we read and studied "The Gettysburg Address" by Abraham Lincoln to review the ideas of the rhetorical situation as well as the ways in which emotions are created in a text by an author for a purpose. We also closed out our first vocabulary list. We'll have time next class and Friday to prepare for next week's first quiz. Remember to focus on learning the words and their meaning. This will take you into most of the quiz. 

Next class is Picture Day! We'll take pictures at the beginning of class. After that, we'll take lunch and finish our day with writing. I hope you enjoyed today. See you on Friday!

5 September

English 11

Thanks for spending my birthday with me today, y'all!

Fantastic day today to end our week together in English 11. We did a bit of everything today. We started off by discussing genres and sorting them into being generally fiction or nonfiction. I love the way that you all are engaged in reminding and remembering key ideas from earlier English classes. From there, we applied our literary devices and narrative elements to understand that generally reading nonfiction is a bit more straightforward than fiction because fiction has a lot of artistry and details involved in creating message.

The bulk of our class focused on reading and understanding "Go Carolina" by David Sedaris. We were able to see elements of irony, conflict, characterization, and theme in the story as he talked about his experiences in speech therapy. I'm so proud of the fact that we completed a whole article in our class today. We finished with five more vocabulary words to end the day together.

Remember to get your syllabus form signed. It's also important that you study your vocabulary words regularly. You'll need to know the words and their meanings. Check out the recordings and uploaded slide decks to help you with this. We have some graded work coming up soon, be sure to keep up and stay accountable. If you've missed anything, please reach out!

3 September - It's Birthday Week!

English 11

Really great day today everyone! We're crushing it. Today we started off class with our new norms and guiding principles before taking time for our journal and then some time to explore some key ideas. Remember that our word bank of narrative elements are super important - it's important that you're learning this information as we move through the next few classes together. We'll have a test at the end of the unit about these ideas.

The resources to learn about the various narrative elements and the practice assignment will stay open for you through the unit. Keep researching and accessing. We paid the learning forward while we read and studied Gloria Anzaldua and the way she uses different narrative elements to engage the author and create a message. I loved what we discovered through our close reading. We finished class with five vocabulary words. Remember, when we hit fifteen you'll have a quiz.

For tonight, keep reviewing Schoology. Review the recordings and resources that I've posted. If you missed class, be sure to follow up with what you missed. Next class we'll be reading something pretty funny. I'm excited to show it to you. All the best for the afternoon. See you Thursday!