Today students turned in the first polished draft of one memoir piece, received graded homework (except 1st period), signed up for a date to present a vocabulary poster, and started on their reading homework for tonight.
If you hadn’t turned in a summer assignment because you had just gotten it at the beginning of the school year, it was due today! Every day after today, you will lose 5 points on it, unless I have told you otherwise.
Our schedule:
1. Students wrote a question or comment on a sticky note to turn in with their polished draft. This could be anything you’re worried about, confused about, or proud of. This is just an opportunity to explain yourself and pat yourself on the back if you need to. I will take what you write on the sticky into consideration when grading.
2. We passed back some homework and some summer assignments. Not all students have received their summer assignments. Everyone should have a summer assignment back tomorrow. All graded work will be kept at school in a homework folder. Students may check out their homework folders to take home to show parents/guardians. This way, work is readily available to look at for meetings about student progress, etc.
3. Wordskills poster sign-up. You can read the directions to making the poster here. You can check your Wordskills word part and presentation date through the Grades page (to be updated). I will post the word parts here as well.
4. Homework. You can download the homework directions here. If you do not have the reading, you should download Rewriting Sentences from Memoirs Cheat Sheet. All honors students need to choose 3 consecutive sentences from each piece to copy down and rewrite with their own experiences. Students enrolled in standard need to choose 3 consecutive sentences from each piece to copy down. Then, choose one of the three chunks to rewrite with your own experiences. Standard will have copied 9 sentences and rewritten 3. Honors will have copies 9 sentences and rewritten 9.
Students started their reading about places. This week, after focusing on the name and an episode, we will write about place. I gave students three great examples of place writing from Spalding Gray (It’s a Slippery Slope), Barack Obama (Dreams from My Father), and Annie Dillard (An American Childhood). Any students absent need to pick up these readings from the Make-up binder in the classroom
Example of homework:
“We roamed. We had given ourselves the freedom of the woods as soon as we knew anothers’ names. We walked and memorized the zeniths and nadirs of the piney forest floor.” (from Annie Dillard, first 3 lines)
“When the rain began to fall, my friend and I might roam into the surrounding woods to talk about books and study the Michigan chill washing black over the stars, or recite aloud Kafka from the four-dollar paperback purchased at the only bookstore within miles––”The Bucketrider!” he would announce with impressive gloom, and we’d study the face of the interlocutor before us, youthful yet secretly jaded as it continued onto the next story at hand. / I enjoyed such nights––then as now. But if the talk began to wander, or cross the border into blatant courtship, we would soon find reason to plunge back into the text. We had grown comfortable in our literary and literal solitude, the safest place we knew.” (from Dreams from My Father, bottom of p. 3)
Tomorrow is picture day. If you want to get a class picture package, you need to bring a check tomorrow.
ALEXA GARVOILLE 