2019-2020: Third Quarter

Beginning of third quarter is always like the beginning of first quarter. We usually have an influx of new students who don’t know the school culture. I spend a lot of time reiterating school rules. But, luckily enough I have been really good at organizing my school work and planning out so that each week doesn’t feel like a rushed job. I’m excited to share some of my favorite novels with students this quarter and to begin opening them up to harder topics about themselves and the society around them.

Contemporary Literature

This quarter we will be reading Red by John Logan and For Colored Girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange. Each of these is a performance text, play and choreopoem. Color is a big role in both texts, whether it be actual paint color or race. How things are perceived and processed by others. Their final for this quarter will be a Tic-Tac-Toe project. Essentially they will receive nine options in the form of a three by three box and they have to choose three options in a row (vertically, horizontally, or diagonally). Some choices are harder or more time consuming than others so I had to strategically place options in the board so everyone has to do at least one difficult portion of the project.

Red by John Logan

This will be a three week unit. Every week we will read one to two scenes of the play, have reading guides, and discuss what was read. The play is a bit dense considering the topic of 1950s artists and what they believe art is. Using the reading guides to help students make sense of what is being discussed and the importance of students and teachers learning from one another, just like it is represented in the play. We also do a mini dive into the different artists of the time, such as Mark Rothko (who the play is centered around) and Jackson Pollock. Each has a different style of abstract expressionism. Students will have the opportunity to work as a whole class to try out Jackson Pollock’s style of painting and create one giant canvas.

For Colored Girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange

The concept of a choreopoem will be very new to all my students because the form itself is relatively new, even though it was written in 1974. I’ve seen many teachers shy away from this book just due to the topics involved, (Suicide, Rape, Abortion, etc.). I plan to give my students an evaluation form ahead of time to see what topics they are comfortable with talking about aloud in class in order to be sensitive to those who may not want to talk about their opinions with the whole class just yet. We will also be doing a compare and contrast with the 2010 film adaptation. I may or may not do an activity day involving the five love languages, but I do see the value of it when reading a novel such as this when discussing boundaries and miscommunications that can happen just due to misunderstandings.

English Techniques

This quarter for English Techniques, I am slowly moving towards more writing activities rather than reading. Although this class is meant to be centered around developing reading skills, with myself being the only current English teacher, there is a lack of writing being done in the school overall. One of the main things all students need to leave with when they graduate is a personal statement, which is why we are concentrating on Non-fiction writing (Prose, biographies, and autobiographies) first. Then we are moving on to The Walking Dead. Weird transition I know. I am still working out the kinks in how I want this class to flow, but I feel as though, The Walking Dead is a good reading resource that can lead to interesting writing projects.

Non-Fiction Writing

Students will have a worksheet every week that centers around three topics; Non-Fiction Prose, Biographies, and Autobiographies. Each worksheet is then accompanied by a mini project assignment. Non-fiction prose has them writing a half page to page writing of an experience they’ve had in a style of their choice (diary, letter, memoir, or essay). For biographies, I plan on giving them a fill in the blank slides presentation. They will have to find certain information on somebody famous of their choosing based on what is required of a biography. Finally they will write a two page, typed, personal statement about themselves. This will allow them an opportunity to showcase themselves and possibly use it for a job or college essay later on.

The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman

We will be reading book one and two in the series. Each book should only take a week to a week and a half to read. Students will be using these at starting guides to writing their own survival guides for the zombie apocalypse. We will also be discussing and debating what are the most practical approaches to survival. One of those ways will be through a group activity. Each student will get a list of resources they have available to them and rank them according to importance towards survival. This allows for critical thinking skills and problem solving. This will the culminate in an essay on survival; what are the resources they would need and a plan that can be easily executed.

2019 1st Quarter Plans

This year I started with a new resolve to have a general idea of what I was going to teach each quarter for the whole year. This makes planning day to day a lot easier and quicker. My husband is on deployment for this school year so it’s just me and my son, so the less time I have to spend planning, the more I can spend teaching and with my son.

Contemporary Literature

This year I’m teaching one of my favorite classes, Contemporary Literature. In this class I focus on novels that are young adult and usually written in the last 30 years or so. Most students tend to pay more attention when it’s a newer novel and easier to relate to. The first novel we are reading this school year is Monster by Walter Dean Myers. Although it is created for a lower grade level, most of my students have been through the justice system and can relate to the novel. Starting the school year with this novel also helps encourage participation because students who have read it before can chime in more and because it is more dialogue based, students take on parts to read aloud. This helps in building a classroom culture of students reading aloud so it is not on me all the time so when we move on to other novels they are more likely to continue to read aloud. Along with our theme of Justice and Stereotyping, we will be watching the Netflix Original show “When They See Us” and the second half of the quarter we will read Dopesick which is another Walter Dean Myers novel that deals more with Isolation.

English Techniques

This class is always hard for me to plan out for because I feel that it needs to be remedial focused, without making it obvious to students. Once students figure out the reason for them being in the class, they instantly become disinterested and most times discouraged. This first half of the quarter I decided to focus on all the basic concepts (Main Idea, Theme, Plot, etc) but do it in a rapid fire way so students feel the sense of review, without it being drawn out. From there we will move on quickly to reading the play The Laramie Project by the Tectonic Theatre Project. Like Monster, this is a great way to encourage participation. Students like reading the different roles and discussing hard topics like homophobia and murder. The story is gripping because so much of what happened 20 years ago, still happens today.

---

I’m excited for this year and to see what my students bring to the table.

3rd Quarter Plans – 2019

I’ve noticed that I focus a lot of my blog on topics related to teaching, but not exactly my classroom and experiences. This is obviously something that needs to be remedied. If I am claiming that this blog is meant to help me reflect and become a better teacher, I need to start focusing on what matters, my teaching. First though, my school schedule consists of forty-six minute periods and I teach three periods of World Literature in the morning and two periods of English Techniques in the afternoon. On Friday’s we have a half day and classes last twenty-seven minutes. Just a little time context. These are my current plans for this quarter.

World Literature

In my World Literature class we are reading about African Literature from our World Literature text book. I try to change up how much we use the text book and how much we read from a novel. Since I have no novels in our school collection by African authors about Africa and its culture and traditions, I decided to stick with the text book. Even though a good portion of my class is African American, they lack the history and understanding of the African culture. As we do readings, I give students a notes packet that they fill out as we read. I’ve noticed that my students lack the skills for note taking, so I provide them a sheet that points out major themes, ideas, and vocabulary for them to focus. As we move through different readings, the packet will be less informative in that they have to provide the majority of the information. It also helps me to keep track of what notes they’ve taken for quizzes. With each reading students will focus on how they can connect it with their own lives. This will lead to an essay/ art project where they reflect on one particular story that they connected with the most.

The second half of the quarter, we will be focusing on short stories/mysteries written by Latin American writers. This not only covers another culture, but another genre that students have not really read before. We will also watch a Latin American psychological thriller, more than likely “Open Your Eyes”. Then we would have the discussion about the impact of this genre has on the Latin American community and then the world as a whole. More than likely students will have the choice between writing their own mystery or an essay analyzing the genre as a whole.

English Techniques

My English Techniques class is a reading comprehension course in order for students to boost up their STAR scores. The STAR test is a computer adaptive test that assesses the students “Word Knowledge and Skills, Comprehension Strategies and Constructing Meaning, Analyzing Literary Text, Understanding Author’s Craft, and Analyzing Argument and Evaluating Text”. I treat it as an introduction to literature course. We cover all forms of literature. This first half of third quarter we are focusing on literary nonfiction (biographies and autobiographies). Students will have reading packets with overviews of each type of literary non-fiction and we will read excerpts from popular novels, such as Michelle Obama’s “Becoming”. Students will use the skills and techniques they’ve read to write a section of their own autobiographies as their final.

The second half of the quarter students will work on analyzing Persuasive Texts. Students will be continuing to read an look at non-fiction text but in the form of those that are trying to persuade others in one form or another. Students will look at Ads, Blogs, Reviews, Commentaries, and Editorials. Each week there will be a focus packet on one of the categories listed. Students will also view commercial ads, especially Super Bowl made ones since that is a high advertisement time. For their final students will have to create an assignment to persuade me and/or classmates into buying or believing something they are passionate about.

I can’t wait to see how my students react to the work we will be doing together this quarter. Hope to follow up before mid quarter grades.