May 23-24-25 Daily Plans

I decided to compress these all down into one post because of the scheduling for the week.

9th Grade - 5/23

We focused on finishing the character map assignment started last friday, and those will be posted on the walls this week to replace the Greek Gods Poster Projects that have been up this semester.

The rest of today's class was spent reading and translating Act 5 as a class; there are only three scenes, but as they conclude the play, it is very important that students understand the context and plot of these last few scenes. We made it to the final speeches in Act 5 Scene 3.

9th Grade - 5/24

We finished the play today, and had a short discussion reflecting on the story overall. One of the key point I made sure to return to is that this is a play - it is intended to be viewed, and viewed in one sitting. Reading it over a period of time and translating as we go along is a fairly inauthentic way of reading it, but necessary since the language structure is so different.

In terms of setting up for our final Romeo and Juliet assignment - students were asked to develop lists of tragic scenes in the play (along with the rationale for them being tragic). Students also had to list of personality traits for Romeo, Juliet, and any other characters they felt were vital and explain why these traits led to the tragic scenarios.

The final assignment will require students have a good base of evidence for both of the previous topics.

Finally, we began watching the 1996 theatrical version of the play - "Romeo + Juliet."

9th Grade - 5/25

Today was dedicated to watching the majority of the film in class. We will finish in the first half of tomorrow.


10th Grade - 5/23 and 5/24

Since I did not have all of my classes available this week due to the MAP test, we held off on officially starting our final unit on the novel A Separate Peace. Sophomores that were here received the final S.S.R. project assignment sheet - it is due anytime before June 10th, but will not be accepted after that!

We also used one of the two MAP testing days to watch part of a documentary on the Iraq war, which we will connect to A Separate Peace when we start reading it. When watching this documentary, students were also asked to think about the critical thinking unit we have just finished.

Specifically, I explained to the students that were here that any filmmaker will always have a bias, and in war documentaries, this can be much more apparent.

10th Grade - 5/25

We officially started our unit on A Separate Peace today. Students completed an opinionaire about several different topics that emerge in the story - several questions were about war, citizenship, and personal responsibility, and several questions were focused on ideas involving friendship and competition.

We used part of the class period to also review the last B.O.E. exam taken by the students. While the B.O.E. was low in terms of point value, the scores for these exams are heavily weighted and students that did not perform well should retake it to improve their grades.