Off to Thanksgiving Break - Blue Day

AP Language

Today was our day to finish our work and conversation on The Great Gatsby. We focused on conclusions and arguments - it's important to notice how Fitzgerald is completing the novel by making his various points clear to us as an audience. There are so many messages in this novel - consider the ones that you understand the most thoroughly. You don't have to understand everything, but you need to understand something and thoroughly.

We finished class by focusing on our motif trackers. These should be mostly complete when we return to school so that you can complete your visual and the questions at the back of the tracker. We also have vocabulary due the week that we return. The week we return is for summatives and wrapping up the unit. We'll soon move on to Unit 4 and The Crucible.

Note that if you were not in class for the writing day, then you'll need to come on 11/30 to complete your double timed write. If you are not satisfied with your writing scores there will be a reassessment option. Enjoy Thanksgiving. There's no work assigned, but if you are behind then you should get caught up.

AP Research

Easy day today in AP Research land. We took a quick assessment to check our ethical practices and alignment to our guiding principals of beneficence and non-maleficence. The rest of our class time was given over to preparing for our IRB meetings.

Remember that all of your documents to support your research proposal should be completed by the week of December 5th. The IRB will meet, review proposals, and then give approvals and/or edits. Remember the principal of alignment between the steps of your proposal. Check your surveys for bias and leading questions. Working with your peers is great during this time as they will often see your blindspots.

Enjoy Thanksgiving! I hope that it's a restful and relaxing time! Eat lots of pie!!

Looking at the Weekend - Ending Week 13

Good Day Students! Welcome to the end of another wonderful and productive week.

English Students - This weekend is made for you to get mileage out of your projects. In AP Language a clear goal is to construct your analysis. I'm available all next week, and especially on Monday, to help you with this work. Vocabulary cards, finishing Huckleberry Finn, and preparing for our novel assessment are also key tasks. For English 10 it's clear that we need to be creating our content for our graphic novels. Start to write, draw, and create. If you still need to complete the brainstorming, be sure to get that done too!

AP Research - Today was all about ethical choices in research and method design. Remember that much of this is so individual to your own inquiry projects because of the design of your own individual methods. Ethical choices related to what we do and why we've done it as well as how we do it. Your job as a researcher is to make sure that your assessor is always aware of the ethical choices that you have made.

Focus this weekend on the TEDTalk about ethics in research and data. There are some great insights related to this conversation that I think will give you further information to ponder. Next week your goal is to complete your Inquiry Proposal form for the IRB meeting on December 14. You have to submit the proposal form as well as any/all forms, surveys, questionnaires, tools for your method. You should put everything in your PREP and share that folder with me to present on your behalf.

As I said today in class, this is a good time to use Mondays and our working days to get meetings with me. Next week you'll have Wednesday to work and Friday we'll be together for a quick check on ethics.

Homework for B-Day / 5 November

AP Literature

As we discovered in class today, this book isn't all gloom and doom. There's a bright side to absurdism too as it leads us to a certain amount of satisfaction with our life as it is. We recognize what we can fix and what we can't. We also learn to accept ourselves for who we are, no matter what others may say or think.

Take this with you as you go into Chapter Two. Look at how Mersault and others react to the idea of change. Why is change an important idea in this book? How could it connect to our philosophies?

Don't forget that if you missed the Part One test that it should be made up this week. We are also missing annotations from some of you. If your pop-culture/philosophy project is missing, be sure that it is complete and shared/turned in to Ms. Metcalf by the end of the week.

AP Research

Today was all about making sure that we work with a mind on making the most ethical choices that we can given the limitations that we face. Remember that this class is a process and that it will reveal a lot of moments for us to reflect on the work that we have done so far. Take this time to reflect. Have you checked for ethics in your BoK? How about your expert advisers? Are you asking the right questions? Are you citing everything?

Next class we're going to have a workshop on method and development of the method. I'll also be conferencing with each of you about your work so far this quarter - be ready for our conversation!

Homework for Monday - A Day - 4 November

Welcome to Q2! We're going to keep the party going as we move toward our breaks in this quarter of the year.

AP Research

Today we had a very thorough lesson on ethics as it pertains to designing our method and making sure that we always work with ethics in mind. I've posted today's slides as well as the TEDxVictoria talk on ethics and honesty in research/science.

These issues are all important for us to consider as we develop our means of completing our research and fill out our proposal to Durham Public Schools. Remember that part of submitting our work to outside review is to ensure that we are working ethically.

Tonight, prepare for our workday next class. I'm going to sit down and speak with you about your expert advisers. Are you prepared for that conversation? Are you completing your proposal? Are you making decisions with justification? We should be working and chipping away regularly - that's how we will get this finished!

Russian I

Today in class we reviewed the process for completing First and Second Conjugation! Now we know a lot about how to work with verbs. Remember that we either drop ть or we drop it like it's hot. Then we add the ending. Remember the key questions:

1. Who is doing the action?
2. Is it first or second or a mutant?
3. If you know these questions you can do the conjugation.


To review tonight we have an exercise focused on just second conjugation and then a mixed one! Do what you can and be ready for another help session! We'll have our quiz on Friday.

Advanced Russian

Today in class we were working all together to review the essentials of aspect and then we split to look at our individual topics in more depth. Remember that there will be a quiz on Friday related to new vocabulary (Russian III and IV) and key words related to aspect (Russian II). Start preparing now for this quiz.

Tonight you should continue to work through exercises to practice with your skills. Russian IV and III have exercises on paper. Russian II are on page 215. Be sure that you find the key words to choose the aspect, then use the list of verbs to find the right verb and put it in its proper form. Don't forget - lose the coin toss - show me your work!


Next class we're going to the post office! Be ready!