Due to team rescheduling, Genesis X Block video projects will be concluded during reading time before the end of the school year.

Genesis: Red Scarf Girl should be finished by Monday 4/20.  Two idea clusters (idea-evidence-interpretation) are also due Monday 4/20.

Legacy: Continue working on independent writing/reading.  Writing sample due Friday 4/24; letter-essay due Wednesday 4/28.

Explorers: Greek Mythology Project is due Monday 4/20.  Continue reading for your independent reading contract.  Don’t forget–Fahrenheit revisions are due before Tuesday to be reflected on midterms!

Genesis: Read Red Scarf Girl by Monday, April 20.  Letter-Essay #1 postponed until Monday, April 27.  We will be tackling the drafting of this piece during our class minilessons.

Legacy: Letter-Essay due Monday, April 20.

Explorers: Vocabulary sheet #2 due during your next class block.  Mythology Project due Monday, April 20.

Genesis: Block 5’s run-on sentence quiz is Thursday!

Legacy: Continue daily independent reading and writing.

Explorers: Continue working on Fahrenheit portfolio.

Genesis: Bring in a current events article of your choice/one that reminded you of a G/E classmate on Thursday (Block 2)/Friday (Block 3).

Legacy: Bring in a human-interest article that moved you to class on Thursday (Block 2)/Friday (Block 3).

Great job, students, on your endurance and focus to do your best on the ISAT this past week.

Genesis: In reading, we continued our word stem study and reading workshop.  We practiced inferencing skills through the reading and discussion of a riddle poem, “Metaphors.”  We also reviewed Socratic circle discussion strategies and read “Money Makes Cares,” a tale from China, to review these.  In writing, students worked on narrative drafting with showing details, run-on sentence correcting and editing.  They each had writing conferences to discuss revisions for their science fiction drafts.

Legacy: In reading workshop, students compiled a list of science fiction genre features.  They journaled on their current ethical, moral, and philosophical questions (which will inform their future science fiction drafts in writing workshop).  We held a fiction writers’ group to complete a craft study on our one-pagers “on details.”  The level of students’ interpretation and analysis was high and helpful to all authors.  Well done, Legacy!

Explorers: We reviewed ISAT reader response strategies (inferencing, investigating an author’s viewpoint on his/her subject) and narrative writing strategies (conciseness, use of dialogue and showing details).  We discussed Fahrenheit 451 in small groups and assessed our understanding of the novel.  A skill that students are working on is the use of fix-it comprehension strategies when encountering unfamiliar literary allusions (references).  We held our poetry celebration with readings and dedications of students’ patron poets, who included: Linda Pastan, Charles Bernstein, C.K. Williams, Robinson Jeffers, Frank O’Hara, Philip Larkin, Edward Lear, Kim Addonizio, Wendy Cope, X.J. Kennedy, Gertrude Stein, and Naomi Shihab Nye.  After a student envisioned the “censorship genre,” we compiled a list of features of the genre and applied our collection to both Fahrenheit 451 and Ha Jin’s “A Bad Joke.”

Genesis: Persuasive essay rewrites due and Caesar’s 4 quiz on 3/16.

Legacy: Graduation speech drafts due and SAT quiz on 3/16.

Explorers: Bring F451 and flash drive to class next week.

Genesis: Caesar’s 4 Quiz on Monday 3/16!

Legacy: SAT Quiz/Graduation Speech Draft due on Monday 3/16!

Explorers: SAT/WWW Quiz on Friday 3/13!

Genesis: Caesar’s English 4 Vocabulary Quiz on Friday 3/13!  Persuasive essay rewrites due M (BL 4)/Tu (BL 5) of next week!

Legacy: SAT/WWW Quiz on Thursday 3/12!  Graduation speech draft due M 3/16! 

Explorers: SAT/WWW Quiz on Friday 3/13 (Block 5) or Wednesday 3/11 (Block 4)!

Genesis: We finished planning and drafting our persuasive essays this week. We spent class time analyzing and critiquing persuasive essays for their rhetorical approaches. Our goal was to apply what we learned about effective persuasion to our own drafts. Students also practiced organizing and drafting their ISAT extended reader response and independent reading/conferences.

Legacy: We continued our craft studies with excerpts on details by author Francine Prose. Exemplar texts by Anton Chekhov, Herman Melville, and Virginia Woolf were used in guided reading. In addition, students used their details focus to draft short fiction pieces that will be analyzed in student craft studies. We also began readings of graduation speeches in preparation for our drafting in writing workshop.

Explorers: Students combined role, audience, format, and topic (the RAFT strategy) for a long-term creative thinking/writing exercise that will become part of their novel portfolios. We practiced ISAT extended reader response and narrative writing. We also supplemented our read-alouds with flash fiction stories.

Genesis: Persuasive essay preparation sheet / Reasoning Web due date moved to Wednesday 2/25.
Legacy: 1 pg. fiction draft due Thursday 2/26. Use Times New Roman 12 font, please.
Explorers: Thesis statement due Tuesday 2/24.