Well, it was a decent start to the Poetry unit today. We read a number of cool poems together, with the promise that we will read a lot more between now and the end of the course.
Here are the poems we did yesterday and today. I also got the due dates posted on here and on the wall in the classroom.
So ... today was a Culminating Task / Activity day.
Students worked on Activities/Tasks and we worked together, too. We did a very brief review of "Film shots" for one question of a part of the final task.
Should all be good.
We will continue to work diligently on these activities on Monday, but it's coming to an end, soon.
Then, we'll get back to Speak.
By the way, I posted the due dates for the first part of Speak today, too.
5.In a well written paragraph, describe two moral problems, social issues or relationship issues you expect to find in this film,
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Today we were in the library, still working away on our CA's together. We are in here one more day and then we are out into the portable for the last sections starting Friday.
I also put up the due dates for the CA and some links for the next unit on Poetry.
We had Batman in as a guest reader today ... not really, it was me, just with a bit of a throat issue. Not sure if it's a cold, but it certainly made my throat sound like
In any case, we are almost done the novel. We got to page 189. We got questions 29, 30, 33 and 34 for homework.
Speaking of which, I let people know about the dates for the Culminating Activity for this course. I do have them, but I also asked my students to use their electronic devices to write them into their own calendar apps. We'll work on it together in class during those days I asked the students to input into their own devices.
I'll post the dates later on, too, loyal non-student readers. Although you might ask and see if our students did, in fact, input the dates for themselves.
Right. For the current unit, we read to page 111 in the novel Flipped.
I did see the film in the meantime, and I have to say ... it was merely ok. Not something I'd recommend to people to watch instead of reading the book, but as an aide memoire, would be ok.
Stuff was due today ... and out of a class of a whole bunch, I got a few more in.
Sad, sad teacher. As an FYI, there are 33 teaching days left in this semester.
Before we started reading, we talked about perspective and this picture up on the big screen at the front of the room:
The painting is called "Nude descending a staircase" by Duchamp. It's actually a fairly famous painting and a student or two had already studied it in Art class this year. I mentioned "perspective" when looking at this painting and then mentioned the same thing when talking about Flipped.
We read to page 41 of Flipped and got questions 1-4 from the Unit Outline. The teacher also handed back a bunch of stuff that had been in the return box at the front of the room as well as freshly marked stuff too. Not every student got something back, but a number of students did.
Well, I went looking for today's post ... and I couldn't find it anywhere.
I do apologise to the loyal followers of this blog. I thought I had this done.
I did not.
We did the quiz on ATTWN and got to work a bit on the essay. I showed my students how I would do the essay on my phone while having my phone hooked up to the projector at the front of the class.
Today was a step forward to finishing the novel for once and all.
We took a look at the six steps of essay writing today.
I volunteered that I would be working on an essay in front of this class for the next few days. I did complete step one and two, but I didn't write them down, so I have homework for the essay writing for tomorrow.
I would ask that my students have the same parts done as me by the end of class tomorrow.
Tomorrow is, of course, Nov 18th and the second part of the assignments on And then there were none are due.
Today was to be a nice relaxing day. At least that was the plan.
Ah well, we watched to the end of the film, I encouraged students to finish up their work on Part 2 of the novel study ... and perhaps work on the start of their essay.
A nice day, in the bigger scheme of things. Things will continue as they have for us here. Or at least they should.
We did read until page in the book and didn't get any questions on the text as we watched a good chunk of the miniseries version of this novel. For some it was a chance to get work handed in to me, for others it was a nice opportunity for us to "get further in" to the book itself. It's a really well-done series. You can check it out at the BBC website.
I did also talk very briefly to the rest of my students about their marks I'm inputting for them this week for the midterm.
I did collect the Journal on the novel today, too. At least Part One.
We read to page 135 of the novel. We also got 18, 19 and 20 assigned from the questions from the novel study. We did chat about what material was owed, at least a little bit.
I will promise to get some more copies of the questions for class for tomorrow.
We did a couple of cool things today. The coolest was reading from the book - we got to page 124 in the book and ... had a firm talking to about behaving in class.
It is Friday, but I won't be posting that song here ...yet.
We did read until page 106 of the novel and got 13, 14, 15 and 16 for homework from the questions. Then we did watch some of the film/mini-series from the BBC.
I also mentioned the other things that are due soon today, too!
So ... there was a still a number away today. I'm honestly hoping you are keeping up with your courses, including this one.
Today we did a fair amount of work together on the Theme and Terms Study for And then there were none. We did also have an example of student work from a quiz. We took a look at the structure of a level four answer from a quiz that was done recently. It was a very good dissection and discussion of what worked and what did not work.
We also did a couple of fun things - on "How to use your phone for things other than Instagram" or "How to use your phone as a tool, not a toy". I showed students a few apps I use - Learn Swift, Polar Beat, ICE and At Bat to name just a few.
Learn Swift is an app designed to help people learn how to put together their own apps for the iPhone. Sky View Free is an astronomy app that shows the constellations, the planets and other interesting things. Polar Beat is an app that can monitor your heart rate as you exercise, as long as you have the heart rate monitor chest strap. (A student asked me; I have the H7 Polar HR Monitor). At Bat is an app that let me watch major league baseball games off of my cell phone with a monthly fee. I watched most of the Blue Jay 2016 season either on my phone or on my Apple TV at home.
I also had a few students repeatedly request to follow me on Instagram during the class. After some discussion and a first and then a second refusal to allow them to follow me, a third request was put in by four or five students in class. We then had a discussion of digital boundaries and appropriate use of social media. This type of activity is not something I ever encourage.
After we finished with the projected material, we got to read to page 98 of the text. It's almost halfway through the book, and we have some material due soon! (Due dates on the right side of the blog).
One other thing I said I would post for this class was this:
So we did some one on ones today - giving back essays, updating and discussing some things owed to the teacher for class and some even did quizzes for me.
Preparation for midterm marks being entered this weekend/Friday-ish.
Then we had a light discussion of the Theme/Terms study we need to get started in the next few days.
Actual picture from class today. Well, not really.
Yeah, I didn't. I was in a costume as were more than a few of my students.
But, I have a different idea about today. I'm all for wearing costumes that are appropriate, and we had those in class. However, I'm also about getting the work done when at work.
I'm sure the grown-ups reading this blog would tend to agree that even if you are at work in a costume, you are still at work. When at work, do the work.
So, we read and got questions to do. We got to page 89 in the text, and we got 12 and 13 as questions for homework tomorrow.
"There was no one else on the island but their eight selves...." - which is something you will need to answer question 13.
