Week at a glance Jan 31 - Feb 4, 2011

Curriculum focus: organizing and planning a written piece (11.7.1.3), composes persuasive writing (11.7.2.1c), adapts writing by identifying, analyzing, and understanding audience (11.7.2.2), writes using one or more text structures when appropriate to a achieve a specific purpose or to address a specific audience: problem/solution (11.7.2.4d), and develops clear and purposeful ideas with sufficient evidence and/or relevant detail to satisfy purpose using sufficient evidence, examples, anecdotes, quotations, expert opinions, and/or statistics (11.7.2.1d)

This week we will start working on the Career Project. The Career Project is a presentation students will assemble and create using research they gather this week in the library. The assignment, guidelines, rubric, and resources are all posted under the Course Materials section to the right. The main thing that students should keep in mind is that our time with computers is limited. Students will need to be focused and working efficiently in order to be successful with this project. If anyone has any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me.

• Mon: Career Project - overview, expectations, rubric, and guidelines. Begin research for the Annotated Bibliography.
  
• Tues: Career Project - meet in the Library. Continue the Annotated Bibliography. Aim to have at least one source and five facts by the end of the hour. Writing process grade assessed at the end of the hour for the first source.
  
• Wed: Career Project - meet in the Library. Wrap up the Annotated Bibliography.
  
• Thurs: Career Project - meet in the Library - annotated bibliography with a minimum of three sources with five citations each (15 citations total) due. Begin synthesizing the researched information into pieces to be on the presentation . Type facts with citations, headers, and Works Cited page.
  
• Fri: Career Project - Last day in the computer lab! Finish synthesizing the researched information into pieces to be on the Career Project presentation. Search for relevant graphics or pictures to enhance the presentation.

Week at a glance Jan 24 - 28, 2011

Curriculum focus: identifies, interprets, and analyzes the use of figurative language (11.1.K3), uses information from the text to make inferences and draw conclusions (11.1.4.K5), compares/contrasts themes in texts (11.1.4.K7b), compares/contrasts author's use of literary devices (11.1.4.K7k), uses paraphrasing and organizational skills to summarize underlying meaning of the text (11.1.4.K9e), analyzes and evaluates how an author's style work together to achieve purpose: irony, symbolism, tone, mood, imagery, allusion (11.1.4.K11c, d, e, f, h, and j), and analyzes contextual aspects of setting: historical, social, cultural (11.2.1.K2).

Root words for this week (root - definition - examples):

1. cad/cide - to fall - accident, coincidence, deciduous
   
2. geno - creation - genesis, genetics, genocide
   
3. meta/muta - change - mutate, metamorphosis, metabolism
   
4. somn - sleep - insomnia, somnolent, somniloquacious
   
5. vor - eat - voracious, carnivore, herbivore, omnivore

This week is a transition week. We finally begin our 2nd semester root words, we wrap up our unit over American poetry, and we preview our next major unit: the Career Project. We'll start the week with a look at modernism and surrealism in American poetry. We'll analyze how writers like Pound, Williams, and Eliot used free verse to show us their ideas. On Wednesday, we'll begin the American Poem assignment, in which students will compose their own free verse American Poem. We'll wrap up the week with a root words quiz, an opportunity to share students' American Poems, and a preview of the Career Project.

• Mon: New root words - quiz on Friday. American Poetry - Modernism and Surrealism. Read and discuss Pound and Williams; begin discussing Eliot.
  
• Tues: American Poetry - finish Eliot discussion. Begin Modernism and Surrealism assignment.
  
• Wed: American Poetry - Modernism and Surrealism assignment due by the end of the hour. American Poem assigned, due Friday.
  
• Thurs: American Poem - workday in class.
  
• Fri: Root words quiz. American Poem final draft due by the end of the hour. Preview Career Project assignment.
  

Week at a glance Jan 17 - 24, 2011

Curriculum focus: identifies, interprets, and analyzes the use of figurative language (11.1.K3), uses information from the text to make inferences and draw conclusions (11.1.4.K5), compares/contrasts themes in texts (11.1.4.K7b), compares/contrasts author's use of literary devices (11.1.4.K7k), uses paraphrasing and organizational skills to summarize underlying meaning of the text (11.1.4.K9e), analyzes and evaluates how an author's style work together to achieve purpose: irony, symbolism, tone, mood, imagery, allusion (11.1.4.K11c, d, e, f, h, and j), and analyzes contextual aspects of setting: historical, social, cultural (11.2.1.K2).

This week we'll continue on with our American Poetry unit and finally wrap up our Definition Essay unit. It may be a bit bumpy at first as it turns out I do indeed have Jury Duty on Tuesday. Jury duty will unfortunately postpone our 2nd semester root words for one more week. I will hopefully be back in class for the rest of the week as we continue to analyze the unique qualities of American Poetry.

• Mon: No school - Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
  
• Tues: American Poetry - The Search for Identity. Study guide due by the end of the hour.
  
• Wed: American Poetry - The Great American Melting Pot? Study guide due by the end of the hour.
  
• Thurs: American Poetry - American Dreams - readings and discussion. Pass back Definition Essay rough drafts and discussion issues to revise.
  
• Fri: Definition Essay - Meet in the computer lab. Typed rough draft due by the end of the hour.
  

Week at a glance Jan 10 - 14, 2011

Curriculum focus: differentiates between connotation and denotation, determines meaning of words based on context clues (11.1.3.K1), generates ideas from personal experience (11.7.1.1), selects a topic and relevant details for form, purpose, and audience (11.7.1.2), composes narrative writing (11.7.2.1a), writes using descriptive text structure (11.7.2.4a), develops clear and purposeful ideas with sufficient evidence and/or relevant details (11.7.1.1c), organizes ideas in a logical structure (11.7.3.2), writes with energy and enthusiasm using appropriate tone and word choice (11.7.3.4), creates text that flows easily with a variety of sentence structures (11.7.3.5), uses standard writing conventions effectively to enhance readability (11.7.3.6), and produces final written products that are of a quality to present to others (11.7.3.7).

Root words for this week (root - definition - examples):

1. cad/cide - to fall - accident, coincidence, deciduous
   
2. geno - creation - genesis, genetics, genocide
   
3. meta/muta - change - mutate, metamorphosis, metabolism
   
4. somn - sleep - insomnia, somnolent, somniloquacious
   
5. vor - eat - voracious, carnivore, herbivore, omnivore
   

This week, we launch into the second semester of our root words unit. Students will be learn five new roots, definitions, and examples, review them throughout the week, and have a quiz on Thursday. We'll also begin a brief poetry unit that highlights many famous poets in American literature and challenges students to analyze and interpret their poems. The purpose of the unit is to do a study of five themes common and unique to American literature, as well as to study American free verse as a poetic style. Our unit will eventually wrap up with students writing their own free verse poem centered around one of the five American themes. This week, however, will wrap up with students typing their Definition Essay in the computer lab.

• Mon: American Poetry - unit overview. Songs of America: Whitman and Hughes. Study guide due by the end of the hour.
• Tues: American Poetry - Free verse: Whitman and Frost. Study guide due by the end of the hour.
• Wed: American Poetry - Modernism and Surrealism: Pound, Williams, and Eliot. Begin discussion of poems.
  
• Thurs: Root Words quiz. Finish American Poetry - Modernism and Surrealism: Pound, Williams, and Eliot. Study guide due Friday.
• Fri: Meet in the computer lab and type the Definition Essay. Typed final draft due by the end of the hour.

Week at a glance Jan 3 - 7, 2011

Curriculum focus: differentiates between connotation and denotation, determines meaning of words based on context clues (11.1.3.K1), generates ideas from personal experience (11.7.1.1), selects a topic and relevant details for form, purpose, and audience (11.7.1.2), composes narrative writing (11.7.2.1a), writes using descriptive text structure (11.7.2.4a), develops clear and purposeful ideas with sufficient evidence and/or relevant details (11.7.1.1c), organizes ideas in a logical structure (11.7.3.2), writes with energy and enthusiasm using appropriate tone and word choice (11.7.3.4), creates text that flows easily with a variety of sentence structures (11.7.3.5), uses standard writing conventions effectively to enhance readability (11.7.3.6), and produces final written products that are of a quality to present to others (11.7.3.7).

Welcome back! This week we'll hit the ground running with our first essay of the semester: a definition essay. A definition essay in an essay in which we thoroughly explain a word or phrase, including connotations, denotations, and personal connections. This may sound vague and abstract now, but it will make much more sense as we work step-by-step together in class. Look for a copy of the assignment and rubric to be posted on this site by Wednesday.

• Mon: No school - staff workday
  
• Tues: Course overview and review. Definition Essay - assignment overview and expectations. Graphic organizer due Wednesday.
  
• Wed: Definition Essay - check graphic organizer. Creating and informal outline and first paragraph. Informal outline checked by the end of the hour.
  
• Thurs: Definition Essay - creating a rough draft. Use time in class wisely to generate a handwritten rough draft of the essay.
  
• Fri: Definition Essay - peer review and student/teacher conferences. Rough draft due by the end of the hour.