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Period 2 was very interesting, because a lot of the students are working super fast. Half of them are already finished with their autobiographical short stories and are now moving on to the 2 longer short stories "Sweetheart of the Song Trabong" by Tim O'Brien and "Wildwood" by Junot Diaz. But period 2 is also the class for students who need the Regents exam, so we are going to have to do more Regents style lessons. I'm wondering if students from period 2 could give me feedback about prepping for the English Regents - what did they like about it? What did they not like? What was the hardest part of the test for them - multiple choice, writing the 2 paragraphs, or the critical lens essay? If I know more about how they feel about the Regents, I can better prepare them. So period 2 students, can your comments include a few sentences about how you think I should do Regents prep?
Period 3 was where I felt like a failure. This hasn't happened in a while, where the class just seems to get loud several times and I can't seem to keep all the students on task. I kept raising my voice (not yelling, I really try not to yell), to quiet everyone down, and it worked for a while, but then it would get loud again. I'm not trying to point fingers at anyone or throw subs, and if you are in period 3, DON'T BLAME ANY SPECIFIC PEOPLE IN YOUR COMMENTS. I will delete any comment that talks about another student. You can talk about yourself, you can talk about me and my teaching style, but don't get into any beef with another student on my blog, that's not cool, and it won't help.
Either way, I think tomorrow will go a little smoother, because I'm using a method for students to keep track of their progress - jupitergrades.
Jupitergrades is an online gradebook that many schools use. It has a login for students so they can see what assignments they have for a class, their grades on each assignment, and what their average is for each class. It's really great because students don't need to ask, "Mister, am I passing?" because they can find out for themselves. And they don't even need to wonder WHY they have a certain average - the numbers for each assignment are there for them to see. So I love how effective this is for students to track their progress, and I am bringing it into my summer school class.
Here is the plan for tomorrow:
Do Now: Write a comment on the day 3 blog post, then log into your jupitergrades account and look at your grades so far. If you have any issues, write an email to [email protected] to ask him questions about your grades. This way, instead of having mad students lining up to talk about grades in person, I can meet them 1 by 1 and already have answers for them, so it keeps the room quiet so everyone can work and concentrate. (10 minutes)
After students have commented on the blog, I want them to set up their own blog on weebly.com. I'm going to walk everyone through this, step by step, so they are not confused. This can give students a chance to also personalize their blog and add designs to it if they finish their work early. (15 minutes)
Once students have set up their blog, we go back to the different stages in finishing their work. These are the assignments that should be finished by the end of Thursday's class:
1) Pimple story rough draft
2) 2 peer edits of pimple story rough draft
3) Pimple story final draft
4) Peer edit "Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid
5) Peer edit "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut
6) Rough Draft of autobiographical short story
7) 2 Peer edits of autobiographical short story
8) Final Draft of autobiographical short story
And if students have already finished both 3 and 8, they should then post those stories on their blog AND write a reflection on those stories - what they like about it, what they don't like about it, how they felt about the process of writing it, and how they felt about the peer editing process.
Finally, if students have finished all of that, they will start reading the 2 short stories by Tim O'Brien and Junot Diaz. And if they finish those (there are a few superstar students who are working really quickly and diligently) then they can write a second autobiographical short story for extra credit.
The last thing we will do is a reflection on week 1 blog post. I will stop class at ten minutes before the end so everyone can write their reflection blog post. This way the computers can be on the desk and ready for the next class that comes in, instead of everyone having to go and put their laptops away.