Friday, March 20, 2014

Post date: Mar 21, 2014 7:23:08 PM

March is always a chaotic month for me. I just am thankful that I survived the month. I feel like I'm in survival day-to-day. That's o.k.

Literature 9 finished up our short story unit. I feel like most of the short stories read were a huge hit. We studied irony, point of view, and cause and effect structure in our Drill the Skill. We also finished up the vocabulary related to the short stories. We are into the first five chapters of To Kill a Mockingbird. I actually heard one of the students admit that he/she was sorry we stopped reading during the three-day weekend. Wow, that made this literature teacher feel good. I hope that they learn to love this story as much as I do.

In English 10 Parliamentary Procedure finished with a unit test. Students performed the simulation much better than they did on the test, but the parliamentary test is quite difficult. We're working on verbals right now, and that is o.k. as long as it's done in bursts rather than an entire class period. We are now reading Romeo and Juliet. I enjoy teaching this play so much, even though I've only taught it only once.

In American Literature we finished the prose section of Romanticism. We're now working with the poets, and we'll be moving onto realism (Mark Twain, etc.) We're working on our novel project. We finished one classic book, and we've started to read our second.

American Government is something entirely new for me as well as the students. We're in the midst of a legislative simulation. Students submitted a bill, and then it was submitted to an appropriate committee. Now we're on the House or Senate floor, and everyone should be preparing to debate the various issues. I am so proud of how the students are reacting to this simulation. It makes me want to consider implementing more projects of this kind in the future.