Jan. 5th Daily Plan

9th Grade - 

We continued our unit on poetry by adding several more poetic terms, another famous poet, and then worked on writing Haiku's in class.

The class did a short worksheet to reinforce the idea of connotation that we worked on yesterday; focused on how some words have a secondary, associated meaning other than their literal definition (ex. the word "riot" and "demonstration" may refer to the same event, but the implied meaning is not the same)

Poetic Terms - denotation, imagery, metonymy, onomatopoeia, closed form


Cultural Literacy - Basho - Basho is the originator of the Haiku form. Previously, the Haiku was the "hokku," which served as the introductory lines of a longer, collaborative poem called the "renga."


Haiku - a poem in 17 mora, a Japanese part of speech similar to syllables. In English, the Haiku is written in three lines, with a 5-7-5 syllable pattern. Generally there is an thematic element of nature, and the aim is to create a "snapshot" in time. The third line often serves as a "cut" or "shift" that doesn't necessarily break the flow of the poem, but concludes or changes the meaning.


Students wrote several Haiku's in their in-class journals, based on images presented in class.

10th Grade - 

We continued studying the concept and application of inference using short stories and passages in class today. We finished the short story "High Horse's Courting," and reviewed the seven inferential questions in relation to this text.

In addition, we looked at several other questions of causal inference. These were divided into four categories.

Motivational - Why? (Fairly clear, what is the character's motivation in performing an action?)

Psychological - Why did . . . what happened when . . . (What causes a character's reaction in a story? How to events change the way a character acts?)

Physical - Why did . . . what happened when . . . (Similar question structure to psychological, but has a clear physical reaction. Ex. What happens when someone falls off a cliff? There is a clear, physical consequence that can be inferred).

Enabling - How did . . . (What are characters capable of? Ex. If you know a character is a surgeon, what skills do you infer s/he likely has?)

We practiced developing these inferences by reviewing short passages about various characters, followed by making assumptions about what the other aspects of their lives would be based on the limited information provided.

BOE EXAM ON INFERENCE TOMORROW!