I apologize for missing last week! Here's a brief recap.

H1:
We were introduced to the essay (found on the Hum. 1 page) on Tuesday. The students spent the rest of the week working on their drafts. We talked about thesis statements on Wednesday. If they need help with thesis statements, I have a couple of documents on the Student Resources page. 

H2:
We began the week with a timed writing to get us back into practicing for AP exams. In the latter half of the week, the students were introduced to their essay over The Kite Runner and have been working on their drafts since then. 

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This week in H1:

We're still behind on making handbooks. The wrong size covers arrived, so now we have to wait until the correct ones arrive to start assembling.
This week students will be creating open-ended discussion questions over ALL of our texts in preparation for Friday's seminar discussion. 6 total level-2 questions on Zootopia, the excerpt from Internment, the poem "Hanging Fire" and the article/TED Talk over "The Dangers of a Single Story." 

This week we're pairing our analysis of Zootopia with other readings intending to draw out some similar concepts and perhaps discover thematic strains in all of them. 

We have picture day on Wednesday and our first vocabulary test on Thursday. Seminar day on Friday! I can't wait to hear all the discussion! 

This week in H2: 

Our Google forms were due on Monday morning. I'm hoping my chickens gave some thought to what they want to study for the entire year. I think that they are really going to love this. 

We're continuing through The Kite Runner and will finish our reading and discussion this week. Chickens, I hope you love this book as much as I love it. It is such a rich and beautiful novel; I hope this is one of those stories that stick with you. 

Sophomores have their first AoW due this week as well as Vocabulary test #16! As much as I've been harping on it in class, I really hope that y'all have been reviewing your words from last year. 

Seminar discussion on Friday! Seriously, there isn't a day that I love my kids more than on seminar days. I love, Love, LOVE hearing everyone's conversations on days like these. 

It's highly unlikely that anyone will read this, but blogging has been stuck in my teacher brain for a while now.  Usually reserved for when I'm grade-crastinating, I've decided to try something new. My hope is that I'll share a little insight as to why we're doing what we're doing in class. For any parents who may venture over here, I hope that this fills in the blanks for you when you ask your child what he/she did at school today and you get monosyllabic answers. Let me take a moment to apologize to my own parents for being that kid. Eek, gad! 

This week in H1:
Freshmen, you're going to get your first look at our syllabus! I spend way too much time on this for the amount of "what are we doing today?" questions that I get throughout the year. Here's why you'll get a testy look from me...THE SYLLABUS HAS ALL THE ANSWERS! Seriously...it runs our lives. We will not deviate from the syllabus unless I explicitly tell you. I hope you love it as much as I do. 

We're going to take some non-traditional approaches to literary analysis through various visual texts (art & film) this week. My hope is that you'll be able to transfer those skills to our literary texts that we'll be reading together later this week. 

You'll also get a taste of our vocabulary study and one of my favorite assignments, AoW (Article of the Week). Although, now that I've changed AoW to every other week, the name doesn't quite make sense. Oh well. 

All in all, I think this will be a great week for all of us-can't wait to get started! 

This week in H2:
We had such a rich discussion on Friday over chapter 1; I'm so pumped about getting into the rest of the novel with you guys! I hope that y'all are actually reading the book. Please, for the love of all things good and holy, READ THE BOOK! 

Our discussions will be centered around characterization, thematic development, symbolism, motifs, as well as using grammatical elements for literary analysis. WAIT...WHAT? You'll be surprised at what you can glean when you start to isolate some of the writer's choices. Trust me, English teachers can't make up all this stuff! 

You'll be introduced to Tone Tuesday activities, resuming Wordy Wednesday and AoW, and as a bonus, you get to be my living lab experiments for a new year-long thematic study! Try to hold back your tears of joy. You. Are. Going. To. Love. This.