End of Week 5 - Blue Day - 8 October 2020

Dear Students and Families - It's the end of another great week at Fairfax High School. We're reading, thinking, and creating, and it's all wonderful to see. This week we're really focused on our writing skills and revising our work as we are moving to the end of our first units. See below for reminders this weekend related to your classes.

Also, remember if you're coming to FHS on Monday to check-out your books for the year, I look forward to seeing you in-person (even though you'll be socially distant). Remember to stay in your car, wear a mask, and to have your information on a piece of paper (name, class period, teacher name) to give us to process your check-out faster.

AP Language

Today was our day to finish our first round of Writing Bootcamp where we focused on the essential elements of an argumentative essay as well as the smaller elements of effective paragraph structure. I've included a recording below to help review this information. This means that all Writing Diagnostic revisions can be completed - to be rescored, submit by 10/19.

We also began the end of our unit by beginning work with the final project - This is (my) America. In this assignment you are using texts to present your definition of our nation. Remember to follow the rubric and guidelines posted. This is your chance to show your knowledge and skill at argumentative writing, so all of our Bootcamp lessons should be applied. This project will be due 10/26.

Lastly, if you have anything remaining from Mini-Project 1 - What's the Situation? Be sure that it is submitted (or resubmitted) by 10/13.

English 10

Today we got a bit brainy as we broke down and thought about where our ideas come from and the way in which we're developing a personal culture or viewpoint. Our article by Neil Gaiman brought up a lot of big ideas related to culture clash and reflecting on ourselves and our ideas. The slam poetry during our journal also had us consider where our ideas come from and how we're affected by our past and our struggles.

Be sure that you've submitted all work from our weeks up to this point including any writing tasks, the work on South Africa, and today's questions. We'll be transitioning to our novel next week, so this first unit is ending. We'll take time to develop our projects before we move to Iran and learn about the culture and people of the country before reading Persepolis. 

Homework for A Day Classes - 27 September 2016

Russian II

Tonight for homework I want you working with the new knowledge around ходить/быть/гулять and our review of cases.  Write five situations in Russian using one of these verbs.  Write a full sentence using the verb and the proper case.  Then, write a sentence which is synonymous with a new verb.  You will have to change cases most likely.  Total, you'll be turning in ten sentences.

Russian III

Tonight you are focusing on dates and times in your life.  First, think about five significant dates in your life and write them out in Russian.  Only use words, no numbers.  Follow the rules in your textbook for cases to use with this.  Then, from these dates, make them more simple and tell me only about a year or month on which the event occurred.

After that, tell me about three moments of your daily routine.  Write the times both in standard format (hour/minute) and then in the Russian way.

Russian IV

Tonight you should finish the exercises on verbal adverbs and study the information in your textbook on verbal adverbs and participles (they are related concepts).  Be able to understand how they are used and the meaning that they carry.  These show up rarely in Russian, but they are good to know.

Russian II-IV:  We will resubmit on the verb quiz next week - use this time to study and review and to ask me for help.

Russian I:

Tonight you should be spending time with your greetings and introductions vocabulary to prepare for our dialogue day next class.  Additionally, you may find it helpful to view this video about the Russian alphabet and the sounds of the alphabet.

Use the video here to help you review.  Remember that you have to find the space for yourself to review and work with the language in order to get stronger.

English II:

Tonight you should take the time to finish any of your missing assignments that you didn't finish during the in-class workshop.  Additionally, we have a question to consider.  From our reading today of Dr. King's "Letter from a Birmingham City Jail" what do you think that King would say to Helmuth about his internal conflict?  Why do you think that King would say that?

Homework for B-Day Students: April 14, 2015

AP English III

Big discussion today from which I hope you learned a lot.  For tonight, make sure that you have finished your consideration of chapter twenty three since we've not yet talked about it and make sure that you have thorough annotations and reading done for chapter twenty four.  You'll have to finish the book over the weekend, so you may find it helpful to just go ahead and get it done now.

Don't forget as well that the window is open for resubmission of papers.  If you have a required resubmission you are required to meet with me to discuss your paper and develop a revision plan.  If you don't have a requirement to resubmit I would still recommend meeting with me to discuss the work you need to do.

We'll be getting to The Things They Carried likely at the end of next week.  You may want to get your copy today or tomorrow - if you order from Barnes and Noble you can help send students to Russia if you use my code.  See the poster outside my room.

English II

You have no work to turn in for me next class, but it would be a good idea to write about or just think about the similarities between Hotel Rwanda and what we've learned so far about HaShoah and The Diary of Anne Frank.  Additionally, make sure that you study your vocabulary.  It'll help you to really learn the vocabulary if you focus on it every day.

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!

English III Homework - 10/28

I hope that you all enjoyed our introduction to Transcendentalism today. Tonight, for homework, I want you to think about the following question. It may help for you to write a response, but I will not be collecting this for a grade. We will use this as a springboard for discussion tomorrow.

What is something that you allow to control your life. How would your life change if this thing were no longer around?

Remember that the idea here is to think about something that you have some control over - your parents or school don't really count. Things like cell phones, facebook, and other obsessions would.

Think creatively!