The Last B Day of the Year - 5/22/2014

Honors English II

All grades have been posted for the quarter with the exception of a few websites which were given extensions.  Please make sure to finish your site by the approved time so that I can grade it and finish my work for the quarter.

Our review session for the EOC will fall on Thursday the 29th, beginning at 11:06.  If you are exempt from the morning exam (A2 class) you are expected to be in class for our review.  It's important to be at the review since we have not seriously done deep review for the EOC.  Our exam will be the next day, Friday morning.  Be to school on time.  If you miss the beginning of an EOC you may be asked to come back on a make-up day.

ESL English III

Our review period will fall on Monday the 2nd of June, beginning at 11:06.  With your exam happening the very next day, Tuesday the 3rd.  Again, be on time, have all of your materials, and be well rested!

If any of you have textbooks you must turn them in before the review period.  I will be issuing fines for any missing texts at the review session.

Homework for B-Day Students - 5/20/2014

Honors English II

Please begin turning in your books.  After our presentations on Thursday I want to run through and check to make sure that all textbooks have been accounted and collected.  If not, I will issue fines and letters stating how much you will owe if the book is not returned.  Feel free to turn in the books early if you need to.

Next class we will be presenting our websites - make sure that they are thoroughly completed as you will be assessed during your presentation.  Make sure that you use the rubric and identify your two focus questions so that I know where to weight your grades.  Ask for help if you need it, but be aware that we are on the last minute related to this project.

Remember to make sure that you've shared your website to mrmillerjhs@gmail.com -- to make sure you could also e-mail me a link, but I prefer you just share.

ESL English III

You will have your final quiz on Night next class.  Be prepared for that by studying through your notes - it will be a short answer quiz so that we can prepare for our NCFE which will have short answer questions.  Study and prepare!  It's our last grade of the year.

Homework for the Weekend - B Day Students

Honors English II

This weekend you should all be preparing for your final major assessments in class. Your final quiz on Night will fall on Tuesday with the presentation and assessment of your websites on Thursday. I'm more than happy to help you with your websites. Send me emails or come meet with me to get on my calendar. 

In addition I would start to look over things in preparation for the EOC. We will discuss this more as it draws nearer. 

ESL English III

This weekend you should all continue reading Night. I would also study and review your multiple choice practice questions as we keep doing more. Consider the correct answer and try to understand what makes the answer correct over others. 

B Day Homework - 5/14/2014

Honors English II

I hope that today's brief conversation helped you all to see the larger point that Wiesel is making about himself and a lot of survivors from the camps after World War II.  We'll continue to look at the text as a whole next class before we have our final quiz on Tuesday of next week.  For tonight, I would suggest continuing to review the text as well as work on your websites.  You have your rubric for completing the websites, so make sure that you are moving forward with that final project.  In addition, make sure that you email me or contact me in some way to ask for help with these sites.

ESL English II

We began reading chapter five today in class to see more of what life is like in the camps.  Next class I'll be giving back your project drafts so that we can revise those before our final few classes.  Continue reading forward in Night.  Watch how Elie's character is continuing to change and how his relationship with his father is shifting too.

Remember to get all missing or make-up assignments in to me by Friday.  If you can't get your work in by Friday, let me know so I can expect your work.

B-Day Homework - Super Late - So Sorry - 5/12/2014

Honors English II

Incredibly sorry that I didn't get this posted.  I had a presentation which threw off my afternoon and this just flew out of my mind.  I'll also blame cutting the grass since I was too exhausted to do anything after that.

To those of you who submitted your papers yesterday, thank you.  The resubmission window is open and Friday is the last day to submit those items.  Friday is actually the last day for all items for everyone.  For tonight finish reading Night.  We'll be taking our final exam on Wiesel's narrative on Tuesday the 20th and then present our website projects on Thursday the 22nd.  The extension for the websites is due to the technical problems we were having in the labs.

With the website projects, remember to use e-mail to communicate with me on those.  If you've shared with me I can get in there and help you to format and incorporate things.  Also remember to use images and videos, but to cite all sourced information.

ESL English III

I was happy that many of you performed well on the practice multiple choice.  We'll be doing more of those in the days to come.  For tonight, continue to review those questions and strategies.  If you got a question wrong, look at the right answer and try to ask yourself why the answer you selected isn't as good as the one labeled correct.

Next class we will have our (hopefully) last day in the library and you'll be printing all of your items for submission.

Homework for A-Day Students and a Few Announcements

AP English III

You have something very rare this weekend - nothing to do for our next class.  Enjoy this weekend.  Enjoy the fact that you've taken your AP Exam.  I hope that you all felt confident and prepared!  Next class we'll start to have some fun with our final five classes together.

Russian I:

Your Verb Conjugation Unit Exam will fall on the 15th and 16th.  Next class we will continue to review and practice some of our new vocabulary on numbers (which will not be on this exam) as well as a few more conjugation drills (which will be on this exam).  In addition we will continue to work on our final letter drafts for the 21st and 22nd - the day we have our written examination.

For tonight/this weekend continue to study and prepare.  Complete the additional translation assignment if you would like to submit that for extra credit or make-up credit for a previously missed homework/classwork assignment this unit.  If you have no missing assignments I will apply extra credit to a previous assignment.

All Students:

Remember that all missing work needs to be completed and submitted ASAP.  Nothing will be accepted past next Friday the 16th for any classes.  If you don't know your status in regards to missing assignments, see me.

English II Honors:

I'm going to move your quiz on Night back to the 20th so that we're all done with AP Exams.  This will also allow us to finish the novel before the quiz.  Please make sure that your parallelism assignment is ready for me next class.  You should also be ready to begin constructing your websites!

Homework for the Weekend - B Day - 5/8/2014

Honors English II

This weekend you all will be doing some textual analysis between chapters two and six focusing on the idea of parallelism.  Your goal within this activity is to investigate the similarities in order to see the underlying differences.  First, set up your paper:  Create four columns (item/chapter two/chapter six/analysis).  For the items, you must analyze Elie and the group/community, you may then choose two other items you see as parallel.  With each chapter, find a quotation which helps you to see the parallelism between the item in chapter two and in chapter six.  Lastly, analyze and explain the larger difference you've identified.

This is a high level activity in analysis and pattern recognition.  Great skills to develop before our EOC.  Also, remember that paper resubmissions are coming due.  If you would like to resubmit, get that settled.

ESL English III

Make sure that if you have a native language to English dictionary that you bring that with you to class so that we can work on strategies for using that tool effectively.

Homework for the Weekend - B Day Students: 5/2/2014

Honors English II

This weekend I want all of you to focus on your research projects since we will not have time to go back to the media center until Thursday the 8th to continue working on those.  This weekend you should aim to finish answering three of the five questions about your country.  Make sure that you have citations for all of your information.

With this project we will concentrate on having all of the notes and content collected first before we begin building our websites.  For now, concentrate on collecting information and images to help you make your websites complete.

Make sure as well that you have finished the reading of chapters one through five over the weekend.  We will move through the second half of the novel starting next week.

ESL English III

For the weekend I would like for all of you to finish reading chapter four.  Continue to build on what we were discussing today about life in the camp for Elie as well as how he is changing as a person.  We will continue working on our research projects in class, next week.

B-Day Homework: 4/30/2014

Honors English II:

Tonight you need to complete reading of chapter five in Night.  This goes to page eighty-five in the "blue books".  As you read, you'll need to reflect on your notes related to Jewish holidays, Wiesel will talk about these a lot.  Also, continue to add to and consider our work on motifs/topics and conflicts:  How is he developing the conflicts and showing more motifs/topics?  Are there symbols coming in to the conversation as well?

Lastly, I want you all to do some pre-research on our upcoming research task:

1. Select five countries invaded by or under the control of a Nazi or Nazi style government.  
2. Were there concentration camps in the country?
3. Were there active resistance fighters in the country?
4. Were there groups other than Jews persecuted in this country?

For our research we will be looking at anti-Nazi movements in the occupied countries.  Be prepared to start that on Friday!

ESL English III

Tonight I would like for you to continue your reading of Night.  Pick up from where we left off in chapter four and continue reading to page thirty-eight.  This is halfway through the chapter.  Look at your questions and answer questions one through six.

Homework for B-Day Students - 4/28/2014

Honors English II

Tonight as I begin to read and edit your essays, I would like for you all to move ahead with your reading of Night and other important documents.  First, complete the reading of chapter four in Night (those of you in the blue books will go to page sixty six).  As you read, continue to pay attention to the crises that Wiesel faces, his use of irony in the text, and any other trends or patterns which you see as significant.  Further, you will also need to read Wiesel's acceptance speech for his Nobel Prize.  As you read this, annotate with an eye toward the questions at the top of the speech.

English III ESL

I would like for you all to finish the reading of chapter three.  We were able to accomplish part of it in class, now it's up to you to finish.

Homework for B-Day Students - This Weekend (4/24/2014)

Honors English II

Over the weekend you have two major tasks ahead of you.

1. Complete your final drafts and assemble your draft portfolio.  In the portfolio you must submit the following documents - Final Draft with Rubric, Rough Draft with Comments, Outline.  Remember that you will get points for each item, so have them all there.
2. In Night you will need to read chapters two and three.  Continue to look for irony in several areas of the text as we started to discover those areas today in our discussion.  

ESL English III

This weekend you should complete the reading of chapters one and two in Night.  As you are doing your reading, answer question three, using notes to help you make sense of the scene on the train.  Then, look over the other questions for chapters one and two - you should be able to answer all of these.  If you cannot, go back and reexamine the text to find the answers.

B-Day Homework/Reminders - 4/22/2014

Honors English II

Tonight for homework there are a few things for you to do concerning our new unit - Night by Elie Wiesel.  First, I would like for you to read chapter one of the text in preparation for next class.  Chapter one in the "blue books" will take you until approximately page fourteen.  Pay special attention to the creation of VOICE in the piece as well as TONE.  Tone will be especially important here because it is a memoir, thus the tone is actually what Wiesel is himself feeling.

In addition, I gave out the rubrics today for your final drafts.  We will go over formatting and citations in class on Thursday, so come prepared to ask questions.  I would recommend bringing your drafts too.  These papers will likely be collected from you on Monday to give me the time to finish reading my AP students' papers first.

Make sure as well that you complete the viewing guide for Die Welle and that your answers are thorough and complete.  I'll check these on Thursday for a grade.  I hope you all enjoyed the film.

ESL English III

I would recommend answering the questions based on what we were able to read today in class.  I also would suggest continuing to read Night at your own pace.

Field Trip Reminders:

• Be to school by 5:20 at the latest.  We will be departing at 5:30 on the dot.  If you are late you will be left.
• Wear comfortable walking shoes, jeans, a t-shirt and a light jacket.  I'd also recommend bringing a towel or a blanket to sit on if we have class outside.
• Bring about twenty dollars for food.  We will go to restaurants in DC for lunch and stop in Virginia on the way home for dinner.  There is a gift shop at the museum if you'd like souvenirs.
• Bring snacks for the bus, but remember that you will need to be neat and clean on the bus.
• You'll need your copy of Night as we will be doing some study of the book.  Bring something to write with as well.  I'll provide you a notebook to record your observations during the trip.

Spring Break Announcements!

My break started about twelve minutes ago!  Your breaks will start tomorrow!  Here are all of your tasks to take you through break for all classes.

Russian I

Over break you need to spend time reviewing and learning the vocabulary for chapters one through four.  We will retake the most recent quiz again after break, so thorough vocabulary study will work well for that.  I'm posting here the links to the audio files for the vocabulary.

Audio Files - Leaping into Russian

For the most part, the vocabulary is at the beginning of the chapter.  You will be held responsible for vocabulary in chapters one through four after the break.  Make sure to find ways to make this meaningful - label things in your house, use the vocabulary daily.  The more you interact with it, the more you'll actually learn.

AP English III

Over the break you will need to finish your reading and annotating of Invisible Man.  Also, I would suggest putting forth work on your motif projects which I gave to you today.  These projects aren't due until the 29th of April - so the week after we return.  I would like to see a lot of you the week after we return with drafts and ideas for this project so that we can review them together.

Furthermore, remember that when we return on 4/21 we will have a SYNTHESIS timed writing and I'll be checking your journals.

Honors English II

Over the break you should acquire yourselves a copy of Elie Wiesel's Night and work on the final drafts of your change essays.  Remember that these are due from you by the 24th, the day after our field trip.  I have given you this due date so that it is impossible to procrastinate (though I'm sure some of you still will).  I'll have the rubric for you on the 22nd so that you can use that to make some final tweaks.

ESL English III

You don't have any homework over the break to complete.  We will also be reading Night by Elie Wiesel, if you would like to get a copy and start reading before we return, that would be a good idea.

With that - I'm off to South America!  I won't be able to be reached past tomorrow morning so if you have an e-mail or a question, best to ask it sooner rather than later!

Homework for B-Day Students: 4/9/2014

B-Day Students - Today was your last day with me!  I hope that it was good for you because it was for me.  Here are your reminders for what you need to accomplish before Friday's class as well as a bit of information on Friday.

Honors English II:

Tonight I would like for you to read "War" by Luigi Pirandello which is in your Elements of Literature books.  The piece itself is very short, but be sure to read the biographical and textual information.  Once you have done that, please respond to the following question:

Both Pirandello and Levi focus on the impact that war has on a group of people - what do you see as the most important similarity and difference between these two pieces?  How do these similarities or differences help the authors to show a larger point about war's impact on humans?

This question should be answered as a comment to this post or via e-mail.  I will check them at 11:00 AM EST - any answers not posted by then will earn a zero.

Next class you will watch a film called Die Welle (The Wave) - it's an interesting German film about a classroom experiment which goes horribly wrong.  The substitute will give you a viewing guide.  Please work on the guide in class and then keep it as we will need to finish the film before starting our study of Night after break.  If you are going to buy a copy, be sure to get one soon.

ESL English III

Tonight you have no homework since you finished your essays in class.  Next class you will finish watching The Kite Runner as well as work on some journal writing.  Enjoy the day!

Homework for B-Day Students: 4/7/2014

Honors English II

Tonight for homework I would like for you begin by reading Primo Levi's "A Good Day" from Survival in Auschwitz.  As you read this piece, pay particular attention to Levi's use of tone since it will be one of our focuses in our seminar on Wednesday.  Once you finish the piece, answer question seven on generalizations.  To complete this writing assignment, I would like for you to do a 1Q1P assignment.  In this, you will only use one quote (1Q) from the story to write one page (1P) answering the question thoroughly.  This requires that you find a deep and meaty quotation which you will analyze and explain thoroughly to answer the question on generalizations.  If you hand write your assignment will need to be double sided, if it is typed, please double space.  No more than one page will be collected from anyone.

Beyond that, make sure that you have your rough drafts for our workshop next class.  Final drafts will be collected after Spring Break.

ESL English III

Some of you forgot to turn in your movie posters today.  If you are in this category, you need to turn them in at the beginning of class on Wednesday.  Next class we will spend some more time working on our writing assignments before we go to the computer lab to type our three paragraph essays.  You can get ahead by finding your moments from the story and work on your explanation.  Think to yourself, "How does this moment show the theme that I have found?"

B-Day Homework Assignments

ESL English III

For the weekend your priorities are to finish your movie posters and have them turned in on Monday to receive credit for this assignment.  Also, you will need to finish reading The Kite Runner this weekend so that we can finish the film and the study of the book next week.

Honors English II

If any of you were absent last class you will need to see me with your outlines and your answers to the questions on Ovid to get credit.  I'm available to go over your outlines on Monday or Friday, for your answers I just need to see them.

Over the weekend you need to complete your PHASES assignment.  Be sure that you have a clear quote from the text to connect the character to the age and a clear symbol.  Avoid using images of people - focus more on the symbolic meaning.

Our draft workshop for rough drafts will fall on Wednesday.  Remember to have fifty percent of your draft complete to earn credit!

Lastly, you're going to want to buy a copy of our last novel of the year Night by Elie Wiesel.  My copy is the one pictured below, so buy that one as it's a) the best translation available and b) the same as mine.

Powerschool Update!

Students -

At this point I have all grades in.  I've put in zeroes for missing work except in the case of major grades.  If you see anything missing you should get in touch with me ASAP.

Homework for B-Day Students: 3/26/2014

Honors English II

I've been very impressed with the amount of work that all of you have done on these projects and the level of thought that I see reflected.  I am working hard to get everything graded and updated soon.  If you were absent today or for some other reason missed your chance to present, please get that taken care of by Friday.  You'll have to come in outside of class and settle your debts.

Furthermore, tonight I'd like for you to do a bit of thinking and writing about Kafka and "The Metamorphosis" - consider the overall question on your outline sheets.  What do you consider to be Kafka's argument in this text?  What is he trying to communicate to his audience?  How does he show both sides of the situation and then convince his readers of a final conclusion?

Consider this thoroughly as we'll be opening class on Friday reflecting on this idea.

ESL English III

No homework tonight!

Homework for B-Day Students: 3/24/2014

Honors English II

Tonight for homework your goal is to complete your Mutli-Genre Projects and your artist's statement for our presentations which will fall next class.  Remember that you will need to show all three pieces to the class; so find a way that you can do that.  Also you will need to give me your three products - my suggestion is to burn it to a disk or to use a flashdrive which you don't mind giving up for a few days.

For the artist statement there are a few things to make sure that you do:

1. Make sure to emphasize why you have chosen the particular project for the text.  What has it allowed you to show about change in your text/texts?
2. How does your piece express the idea of change in the text/texts?
3. What are you trying to show overall about the idea of change across all of your pieces? This should appear in your "introduction".
4. Also, consider that you will want to transition between the different products in your artist statement.  Don't just start and stop!

Lastly, remember to go through your notes from today's discussion and go back to your outlines.  If there are questions/tasks which you cannot complete, be sure to ask next time as I want next class to be our last day on Kafka.  And don't forget to bring in all of your textbooks.  I want to check those.

ESL English III

For those of you whom I told about make-up work, be sure to complete that Wednesday at lunch.  For most of you it's relatively minor.  Also, be sure that you continue reading The Kite Runner.  Try to make it to the end of page eighty-eight.

Homework for B-Day Students: 3/20/2014

Honors English II

Tonight and/or over the weekend you need to complete your reading of Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" - use the guide that I provided to you in class today and complete all questions or note taking tasks within the assignment.  Remember that you don't have to necessarily write down your answers, but you should be able to discuss all of those points on the guide.

Also, don't forget that Wednesday is your last day this quarter.  Our MGP projects will be due that day and you will present them.  Don't forget about your artist statement which will accompany the three pieces that you create.  Be sure to ask for help and ask questions as you are creating your products.  Further, continue to draft and revise your outline as the fourth quarter will begin with that essay.

ESL English III

I was very proud of all of you and your attitude during class.  Everyone was very serious and determined to do the work and that meant we got a lot done.  Excellent.  If you still need to complete and submit your project, please do that on Monday.  I will not take projects past that day.  Continue your reading.