A Peek at my Week

I am linking up with Mrs. Laffin for a peek at my upcoming week.

1. In my Senior Lit. class, I am post-testing on Monday and hopefully my students show growth from the pre-test they took at the beginning of the year. Then we are continuing with reading Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes (LOVE this book, but there are some sexual situations and strong language, plus it is about a school shooting, so I only recommend it for upper high school). 

Then on Friday I am discussing bias, and we are beginning to watch Michael Moore's documentary Bowling for Columbine, which we will examine for bias, as well as use it as a supplementary material for our novel to spur some discussions. It discusses some possible reasons our society as a whole has become more violent over the past few decades. I always teach the term bias with this documentary and have students fill out a handout writing down examples of bias in the film, because it is very one-sided (as all of Moore's stuff typically is). But it is a great discussion-starter and brings up a lot of relevant issues. After we finish it in a couple weeks (we don't watch it every day), students will type a response to it.

2. With English III, they are also post-testing Monday. I will have SO many short essay tests to grade this week and still have about 40 junior essays to grade from last week. Ah the life of an English teacher!

Then I am incorporating some more non-fiction by bringing in a supplemental article that discusses some myths about Christopher Columbus (this is an American lit. class and we are at this time period in our books). We'll do some pre-writing/brainstorming about what the students know about Columbus, then they will read this article and fill out an annotation chart. {I have tried getting them to annotate the actual reading pieces, and they are not. They will highlight random things willy-nilly to try and get points, but aren't taking it seriously, so I am now having them fill out an actual chart.} 

I have them number the paragraphs of the article and break it down into chunks of about 4 or 5 paragraphs at a time. For each chunk, they need to list and define unknown words, summarize in 2-3 sentences, and write a question or comment they have on those paragraphs.

Then, I will put them in groups with ten discussion questions regarding the article and each group will answer their questions in a PP, which they will show and discuss with the class the next day. I'm always looking for new ways to do discussion questions and class discussions, rather than just giving questions on a worksheet, so we'll see how this goes! Never tried it this way before.

3. On Wednesday of this week, students have an 11:30 dismissal and are testing in the morning. As a junior homeroom teacher, I am proctoring the practice ACT test. Then in the afternoon I have ELA CC committee stuff and some meetings at my school.

4. On a personal level, I am SO excited for tomorrow! I am shopping for fall clothes, and we also have a couple we're good friends with visiting our city with their two little girls and we are meeting up for dinner. Yay! Besides that, I will be busy grading, grading, grading.

So what's on tap for your week?