Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Post date: Jan 13, 2015 10:33:51 PM

Genius week has come to a close and the beginning of a new semester is now about to begin. I'm anxious to get back to the routine of "teaching," but at the same time I really enjoyed the projects presented during Genius Week. It also has forced me to look at things I need to change in my classroom regarding projects that I could hand out. These kids are amazing and they came up with some mind-blowing ideas, products, movies, etc. I would encourage any school to consider adopting Genius Week. It definitely has some challenges, but the overall successes far outweigh any obstacles.

To review what we did on Monday:

English 10: We are in the process of seeing if the schedule is set or not. We began by cleaning out our binders. We didn't keep any papers. Often papers will transfer from one quarter to the next. Not this time - clean slate, it's a new day. We then went over the Unit Plan for Persuasive Speaking (page 1); we assigned vocabulary related to Mythology (page 2), and we tried to begin our discussion of persuasion (page 3).

In American Government we also cleaned out our binders. We kept all the unit plans (Chapter 1, Our Founding Father's Vision, and Our Living Document). They are all blue. We also kept the study guides for each chapter (pg. 13, 24, and 42). Where you keep these pages is up to you, but you will need them for the end of the year. We then discussed the events that occurred in Paris and also President Obama's plan to offer free community college for two years. There will NOT be current events this week, but we will jump start it again on Monday. We want to know what the incoming Congress is like, so an on-line questionnaire (on Moodle) should be completed for Wednesday. It's a graded assignment.

In Literature 9 we again cleaned out our binders. We kept the yellow sheets that were our unit plans for nonfiction and short stories. We also moved over the vocabulary for "The Gift of the Magi" and "Sweet Potato Pie" (pg. 1). We reviewed the lives and contributions of O.Henry and Saki. Then we wanted to see what we remember from the story "The Gift of the Magi" so we completed a few questions. We started to fill out a story map, but time got away from us.

Now Law has begun. It's been a long time since I had a sizable group. We started our notebooks (which will not be collected), and we just kind of got acquainted with an elective course. Since several people were gone because of Homecoming, we really didn't get too far.

Back to "traditional" education. I hope it can be as exciting as Genius Week was!