April 14th Daily Plan

9th Grade - Freshmen put some finishing touches on their graphic life map assignments, and attached them to posterboard provided in class.

The rest of class was dedicated to reading a Stanislaw Lem short story. The rationale behind this is that we are looking at the ideas of choice, consequence, and identifying the difference between planned actions and complications in a plotline. The Futurama episode used was a very simplistic example - it is designed as a 1/2 hour TV show, and therefore the plot must be appropriately simplified. This short story is definitely more complex, and the differences between what is planned and what complicated the plan are more subtle.

This is a good intermediate step before beginning "Romeo and Juliet," which is the main text we will be working with. The goal is to have students able to clearly discern between intended and unintended events in a story. We will continue working with this short story tomorrow.

Homework - Have an S.S.R. book!

10th Grade - Sophomores were introduced to the major assessment for this unit - The Portfolio Assignment. Over the next month we will read a series of texts related to critical thinking skills, and requiring that students think about their own learning processes. I expect that students will write a one-page response paper to each of these texts that we read in class, outlining specific questions we will discuss for each one.

The first text, which we started today, is by Stanley Fish, entitled "How to Recognize a Poem When you See One." To prepare for this, students had to interpret a poem written on the board in small groups. After analyzing this poem, I explained to the class that it was something I had written by taking lines from random books on my desk, and there was no "intended" meaning to it. The question then becomes - are the interpretations created by the class still valid, or does the writing lose meaning because I did not intend a deeper meaning?

Fish's essay is based around this concept - whether we construct our own meaning into every situation, or if some things are self-imbued with purpose. We began the Fish essay, and will continue/respond to it tomorrow.

Homework - Have an S.S.R. book!