25 August - Thursday

English 10

Another good class in the books. You all are proving yourselves to be quite the wonderful group of scholars. Today we spent some time getting to know each other more with a survey (be sure to submit it if you didn't during class) - it is for a grade. From there we spoke a bit about our concept for the year before we learned a bit about our culture in the classroom through our rules and procedures. 

We ended our day with some work on our goals for the year. I'm excited to see what you all are attempting to achieve for yourselves this year. Your goals are a part of your culture, so knowing them help me to know you.

Enjoy the weekend! I will see you on Monday.

22 and 23 November - Off to Thanksgiving Break!

AP Language

Today was a reading and working day for us in AP Language to kick off our mini-project on Rhetorical Analysis process. The goal for today's class was to select an essay to focus on for this project and to annotate the passage. Our next step is going to be to focus in on a particular passage from this article for our analysis prompt.

Over the break you should get caught up if you're missing anything. I'll have all scores in the gradebook and then if you'd like to do a resubmission, that window will be open. We'll start in on our study of The Great Gatsby after Thanksgiving. Feel free to start reading ahead if you would like.

English 10

Today's class was a very simple class. We were mostly working on our own to complete two tasks. First, the Youth Survey, which is an FCPS survey for 10th and 12th graders. Remember that you don't have to complete this survey if you don't want to.

After you opted out or completed the survey, you worked to complete and turn in your projects. If your album cover and tracklist are on paper, turn that in to the orange folder on my desk. Your paragraphs should be turned in to the space on Schoology. If your track list or album cover are electronic, feel free to turn in everything on Schoology.

I hope that all of you have a wonderful and fantastic Thanksgiving Break! There's nothing to do for this class over the break, but if you have any missing work, I would recommend getting it done now. 

Wednesday - 16 December - Grey Day

AP Language and English 10 - Find your reminders and notes below. Keep in mind that we are currently working towards completing our major projects for this unit. Please reach out in any of the ways that we have in this virtual school world to do so, and I'll do my best to provide help and guidance. As always, use rubrics and exemplars of work to guide your work toward a result. Also, keep in mind that you can always resubmit or reassess in this classroom to show your growth and mastery of skills.

AP Research

Today was a great day! The discussions we had were fruitful and engaging as we reflected collectively, in teams, and with our guest star, the amazing Ms. Anne Nolan! Remember to continue to reach out to her and others (we'll bring up Expert Advisors on Friday, briefly) in ethical and honorable ways. The IRB will meet again in mid-January to review your edits/revisions to your proposals and tools. I would suggest making a copy of everything you have and then applying edits to the copies.

Log your conference today and be sure to do this regularly. I'll share a template for this when we meet quickly on Friday. Then we'll complete our Catch-up Day; I will be available through the entire meeting period on Meet.

We are almost there everyone...we are almost there! Happy first snow!

Wednesday - 9 December - Grey Day

AP Research

We'll meet as a group on Friday for a working day together. This will give me the chance to check-in and conference with each of you so that we can make sure that everything is going in a good direction for submitting proposals and tools. Don't forget that we'll also have a small assessment on Friday related to ethical practices. 

Keep developing your proposal and tools. A quick email or meeting can help save you a lot of time and energy. This is also a good time to check in with your reflection questions and Body of Knowledge - you've got a lot of answers and resources there as well. As always, let me know what you'll need, and I'll do my best to provide it.

AP Language

We got through the activity today! Thank you to the classes yesterday for struggling through it and giving me feedback to make changes for today. Remember that you have a quiz on Friday on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Prepare by reviewing your notes, our slides, and other resources. The quiz will focus on identifications, quotations, and short answer.

Don't lose your project work while this is going on. If you haven't drafted your rhetorical analysis - be sure that you do now. Remember that the goal is to show how the author makes their argument clear to you via the choices they make. Our next step is the group essay, which is very simple. You should be able to complete everything in advance of the due date.

English 10

Good working and thinking today as we began our work in Persepolis, Part 2. We'll keep seeing how Marji responds to her new life in Austria and the new potential she has. We'll finish this part of the book pretty quickly, as you'll see next class.

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 A Day Students - 4 April

Advanced Russian:

Russian IV - Tonight focus on your survey for Russian language skills and competencies. Make sure to evaluate yourself honestly and thoroughly so that we can decide on a plan of action for the last classes before your AP Exam. Also, try to start getting into "Night Four" of White Nights - I'd recommend reading the first two or three sections and tracking your vocabulary.

Russian III - Tonight, now that you better understand how to use который, you will be able to understand the idea of participles. Read through your textbooks in Chapter Eleven and focus on the information around participles. Just read and take notes on your own - we will go over them a bit on Thursday.

Russian II - Tonight you also have reading in your textbooks. Go through the rules on forming plurals in all cases (they're pretty easy with the exception of genitive case). You may want to develop a declension chart or just take notes. We'll start practicing and using the plurals next class. Also, make sure that you've finished the first exercise all the way on your plural review sheet. Lastly, if you have a quiz to make-up or project work to upload, be sure that this is done ASAP.

Russian I:

Tonight to continue your reinforcement of regular plural formation in the nominative case, complete exercise 2A. Rewrite the sentences changing the boldfaced words from singular into plural.

English II:

Your homework is the same as 4B below - bring in an item that represents your personal culture (or a photo of it) for your homework. We'll have show and tell next class. You'll also be doing a bit of writing too.

Ms. Barber's Evaluation

English II and AP English III Students:

Ms. Barber is asking for your anonymous feedback on her teaching and lessons with you this past quarter. If you would like to give her feedback for her teaching portfolio, she asks that you use the link below on Google Forms.

Ms. Barber's Survey