May

22

Your teacher desires a word with you

May 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment

One of my favorite passages in all of literature is Puck’s speech at the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. After he has caused all the mischief that and conflict that drove the play, he apologizes to the audience–sort of. Actually, he suggests how the audience should think of all the things that have just [...]

Mar

3

Tell us your best thoughts about A Separate Peace

March 3, 2008 | Leave a Comment

React, respond, and share your best thoughts about A Separate Peace. Write 300 words, minimum. This is a personal reflection, which means I want to know what YOU think and how YOU react to what we read.
For help knowing what to write about, use the Study Guide you helped create as we read. Look particularly [...]

Jan

28

Predicting A Separate Peace

January 28, 2008 | Leave a Comment

The first assignment for you to complete as you read A Separate Peace is to predict what you think will happen. In one sense, predicting is an easy thing to do, since it’s hard to be criticized for being wrong when you’re trying to predict the future. Who among us can predict the future with [...]

Nov

6

Thinkmarks and themes in Night

November 6, 2007 | 1 Comment

Believe it or not, we’ve almost finished the book. For this blog article, I’d like you to write a two part entry. The first part looks back to what you’ve read and done during the past two chapters, and the second part looks back further to consider the themes you think are most important. That [...]

Oct

15

Have I learned to speak?

October 15, 2007 | Leave a Comment

And here ends our second speech, and now we’ll take a break.
But before we move on, I’d like you to pause a moment and consider what you learned and explain where you learned things.
Realize that when you’re looking to explain what you learn, you should not consider only the material I as a teacher [...]

Sep

18

Speech!

September 18, 2007 | Leave a Comment

One speech down, three to go. Speeches are one of the biggest obstacles students face in high school – they and research papers tend to be the demise of most who do not make it through English, and particularly English 10.
So how do you feel about speeches in general, and how do you feel about [...]

Sep

11

Notable Quotables

September 11, 2007 | 1 Comment

We can’t say everything perfectly, but some people seem to have said some things perfectly – sometimes. And that, I think, is a confusing way of explaining why people love quotes. They’re like our modern proverbs – the sayings and quips of wisdom and humor that we collect, treasure, and repeat.
To introduce ourselves further to [...]

Sep

7

Blogs? What’s a blog?

September 7, 2007 | Leave a Comment

We begin the year with blogs (using Learnerblogs), and we’ll use them throughout the year. But here I’ve started you on a blog in the first days of school, and I haven’t even explained what they are!
So I want you to begin by telling me what you think about all this – before I even [...]

Sep

4

Obstacles

September 4, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Give me a landscape made of obstacles
These are the words of Dana Gioia, from his poem, “Rough Country,” which is our poem of the week and the way we will begin our year. We will take a tiny bit of liberty with his poem and pull aside that line and make it our own, [...]