Hey class, remember back in March when we were going to class every day? Remember the first VERY LONG POST I wrote you after school became what it is now? Like Einstein said, time is relative, and it has certainly been passing in a strange way this semester. I feel like I have known you for several lifetimes instead of five months. Somehow everything is moving faster than it ever has and slower than it ever has, simultaneously. What I'm saying is, summer is almost here. You've finished all your assignments, and even your late work will be done by the end of today. We have one more week together for enrichment, and then you'll be out on your own, transformed into juniors, starting on the second half of your high school lives. Every time summer rolls around, every time I clean up stray papers from my classroom and verify grades for the last time, I always sing the "Summertime" song to myself: "Summertime and the living is easy," like Etta James says. This week, your enrichment activities were to map out your own specific goals and make them SMART. For our last week of school, we're going to talk about English class specific summer goals to help you succeed in the rest of your high school language endeavors. There are 3 main areas for you to focus on: 1. Summer Reading 2. Annotation 3. Sentence Structure Summer reading is a reality of every grade-level transition at Bellaire. As for the annotations and the sentence structure, we (the English 2 teachers) asked the English 3 teachers what skills you guys would need to succeed in English 3 next year. They said if you had an understanding of annotating and sentence construction, you would be set up for success. Summer ReadingFor summer reading, you can choose to read any one of the following three books: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak, and Sunrise over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers. These books are for Academic English 3 and College Prep English 3. If any students are planning on signing up for AP English Lang, the books are different. If you are interested in AP English next year, please email or Remind me to set up a TEAMS meeting, and I'll tell you about the summer requirements for AP. If you have any questions about the summer reading, I will post a couple of English 3 teacher email addresses in Google Classroom for you to contact. If you want to read a murder mystery with strong and innovative point of view, try out The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. I read it in college and loved it. The video above is a promotional trailer for a stage production of the book. If you enjoyed reading Night in class, you will probably love The Book Thief. Marcus Zusak is one of the most compelling authors I've read recently. Highly recommended. Many of you are already familiar with Walter Dean Myers' work: he wrote Monster and Bad Boy. Sunrise over Fallujah takes place post 9/11 during the war with Iraq. I don't think it's possible to choose a bad book from this list. I will say, if it were me, I would choose The Book Thief: such a beautiful book. Happy reading!! AnnotationAnnotating a text means writing on it and engaging with it. If you are in a position to buy your own copy of your summer reading book, annotating that book is a really good place to start because you will have some activities and assignments associated with your book when you return to school in the fall. This video from Lisa's Study Guides gives a lot of specific strategies for annotating. I love looking at all the examples of annotating and notetaking on Pinterest and Instagram. Some students out there have elevated these skills to an art form. Your annotating doesn't have to be as codified, neat, or artistic as these annotation super-stars to work. Any form of annotating, no matter how messy, can help you engage with and deepen your understanding of any text you are reading. Sentence StructureYour English 3 teachers also recommended that you brush up on the different types of sentence structure. Sentence structure and grammar in general is a different kind of skill from literary analysis. In my experience, some students love it, some students hate it, and very often the students who loved literature hate grammar and vice versa. But studying sentence structure can have big, big payoffs for you, the kind that last your whole life. Understanding the way language works can help you create more sophisticated sentences of your own and communicate with the world more effectively. It can also give you the basic framework of understanding you need to make learning the structure of a second, third, or fourth language easier. Khan Academy has a free and easily understandable learning track for syntax, which is just another word for sentence structure. Here is the link. Well, guys, that's a wrap, LAST POST-wise. Stay safe, stay positive, stay healthy, stay curious. It's been my privilege to teach you this semester. Happy summering!
Well class, I have some good news for you: the deadline for grades to be submitted has been moved up, so the imagery DJ is actually your last DJ! We teachers learned that the last day for new assignments is Monday, May 18. The last day for you to turn in late work to me is Wednesday, May 20: basically a week from today. (Remember, if you pass my class this year you will never have to take the English 2 STAAR.) At the end of the day, the universe has decided that you don't need to submit a dialectical journal analyzing the theme of your free choice novels. I think they call this a "reprieve." But no one's stopping me from talking about theme... As D4Darious points out, theme is a complete idea, not just a word. For example, the idea "isolation" is not a theme of these coronavirus times. It's just a word, a subject. Putting the subject into a sentence makes it into a theme. One theme that is true for my corona days is this: "Isolation is an opportunity to reflect." What are some of the themes of your novel? Do you agree with them? What are some of themes of your novel experiences in reaction to a novel coronavirus? Think more about my theme: "Isolation is an opportunity to reflect." What do you want out of life? What do you value the most? What do you enjoy the most? What parts of yourself do you want to develop? How do you want to grow? Whatever your answers are to those questions, goal setting can help you figure out ways to accomplish your dreams. Goal setting is a strategy to help you. Because if you don't know where you're going, how will you know if you get there? If you don't have a destination, you can't really ever hope to arrive at the end. Take a few minutes this week to write about what you want out of life. You can use the time you would have dedicated to writing your last dialectical journal. Some of you have already mentioned your big goals in your structured journals: some students plan to hone their guitar skills, some plan to work to become better sports players, some students are learning about photography, cooking, sewing, gardening. After you have your big goal or goals, use the strategies in the video to cut your big goal into smaller goals. Make them Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Make your goals SMART. Then put those goals on a calendar. Like it says in the goal setting video, sharing your goals with others makes it more likely they will get accomplished. So I'm going to share my summer goals with you:
1. Read Harry Potter in French and listen to the audio book. 2. Plot my next writing project, a young adult fantasy novel. 3. Practice yoga four times a week. 4. Complete my last grad school residency and GRADUATE. 5. Swim in the ocean. 6. Teach five hours of yoga classes. If you'd like to share your goals, I invite you to do so either in your last structured journal of the year, or in a TEAMS meeting. Hello class! Only two more DJ's left: imagery and theme. Wednesday, May 14th, you will be analyzing an example of imagery in your free choice novels. Just as a reminder, imagery in literature is language that engages a reader by appealing to one or more of the five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and/or touch. In the above photo, for example you can see the green colors of the water and the grass. But the image also suggests other senses. A writer who wanted to appeal to the senses and bring the scene alive could discuss the sound of the waterfall, the smell of wet grass crushed under the feet of a character, the cold spray from the water on a character's face, and even the mineral taste of the droplets. Here is a very short video that reviews imagery a little further: With MRI imaging, scientists have learned that the same processes in the brain are activated with mental images formed in a reader's mind from skillfully crafted imagery descriptions that we use to perceive the actual world around us. This makes imagery in literature one of the most powerful tools authors have to help readers experience the worlds they create. It's the writer's job to choose the most relevant, powerful details to share with their readers. This week, as you read your novel and pay attention to the five senses, I encourage you to pay attention to your own senses as you experience your world. Engaging your five senses with your surrounding environment is a classic mindfulness technique that has been known to alleviate anxiety by grounding a person in the present moment. When you are engaging fully with the present, it's harder to worry about the past or fret about the future. As a kind of extra activity, I invite you to try going (safely) for a mindfulness walk. You can go on your own and try to engage all five of your senses as you walk. I invite you to take a photo on your walk and write about your experience for your Structured Journal of the week. Here is a 4 minute video by Head Space discussing the why and how of a mindfulness walk. The following video definitely engages all five senses. We'll discuss how in our first TEAMS meeting of the week. |
AuthorI'm a Houston high school teacher in the Spring of 2020. Welcome to my adapted, socially-distanced, quarantined English II classroom. Archives
May 2020
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