June 6th-10th - Last Week of Classes

I've decided to just compress this week into one post.

9th Grade - Monday and Tuesday were focused on the final draft of the "Romeo and Juliet" essay. Students had the laptop cart to work on editing for their final draft on Monday, and the entire essay was due at the beginning of the class period Tuesday (Entire essay means final draft+peer editing sheet+rough draft+outline).

Tuesday was an opportunity for extra credit for students who had their essays completed on time. After turning them in to me, the essays were redistributed along with a copy of the rubric. Students were asked to grade each other's essays according to the rubric, and then to staple the rubric they completed to the back of the essay.

After I grade the final drafts, I will look back at the students' grades, to gauge their understanding of the rubric. The closer the grade the student gave is to mine, the more points of extra credit they receive.

Wednesday-Thursday-Friday are focused on preparing for the final, which is based around the idea of perspective. While working on this last "Romeo and Juliet" essay, many students had a difficult time seeing from the eyes of an audience that does not have the same ideas/opinions as the students, so we are doing a small activity to work on building up this skill.

Students must pick a controversial issue off a list, and then will spend two days researching it. For the final, they will need to write about their issue, but I will not tell them whether they are writing persuasively FOR or AGAINST it until the test itself - students will have to think about their issue and research it from multiple perspectives.

10th Grade - Sophomores have been working on finishing A Separate Peace, finishing an additional chapter per day until we finish the book tomorrow. We have had one informal quiz and our final formal discussion this week, and any notes taken during these formal discussions are usable on the final exam. We also played a game on Tuesday, based on details from the novel.

The last formal discussion was very much based in the novel, and focused on these questions -

1) Is Gene reliable as a narrator? We know he lies, so is he also lying to the reader?
2) Why is Finny unable to ever really stay mad at Gene? Or do you think that he actually does get angry at Gene?
3) Why did Gene push him off the tree? What leads you to this conclusion?
4) Why do the boys call this tribunal/court into session? What purpose does it serve?
4b) How does this mirror the war around them?
5) Why doesn't Gene cry at the end of CH 12?
6) If we look at these characters as symbols, what is Finny symbolic of? Gene? Leper?

The final exam will require short essay responses (approx. one paragraph in length) to questions based on the three class discussions.