Mid-Summer Blues Mixed with Excitement for Fall

The hottest part of the summer always brings with it the blues. Anyway, I'm reworking several lessons for the beginning of school, and I can't wait to see if they will be successful. SO...I've been making sentence strips, vocabulary cut-outs, and a host of other "elementary" school type manipulatives. Ugh! I can't believe how much time it takes to make all of this stuff, and I'm extremely thankful that I do not teach elementary school. :) I definitely would not want to depend on myself to make all of these items for every day of the week--all year long. I can happily do this for unit enrichment, but for every day??? However, I'm looking forward to my mixed English and history class which will be using the majority of my handmade manipulatives. The class will be working in "Labs" (think centers or stations) one or two days each week, and the material making/locating for those is making me crazy...crazier than normal! The labs will be reading (English, literary nonfiction, and history materials), writing/grammar, geography, computer, vocabulary, and fun/games. Oh how I wish that the English department could use the ipads; I've found so many apps that would be great for my labs! Anyway, I'll be updating my blog with information about all of my classes, so stay in touch.

WEB 2.0 Symbaloo

Teen Read Week~ We're Zombified!

My PreAP English 9 class is gearing up for Teen Read Week (YALSA). This year's theme is "...it came from the library". Our school's librarian, Ms. Madison ( ) is hosting a door decorating contests and we're in it to win it! Our door's theme comes from one of 1st blocks most loved authors, John Green! One of my students read his novella, Zombicorns, and we decided to use it as our inspiration. Part of the contest involves writing haikus that are also tweets about a zombie apocalypse, so today we haikued and tweeted for about fifteen minutes.
 Here are a few of our twaikus:
 • You can't run from them...It's impossible to hide... The ZOMBIES will feast! #TRW12
 • Zombicorns are there... Everyone in town is scared... Run everybody, run. #TRW12
 • Eating people's brains...while driving your friends insane... Zombicorns are here! #TRW12
 • They came in the dark... and ate lots of people's brains. Not a very good day. #TRW12
 • The dead are living...craving human flesh and brains...people running for their lives! #TRW12
 • Blood runs down the streets, the walking dead plague human life, every man for himself!#TRW12

2012 CIP

The First 6 Weeks of School

    Six weeks of school are behind us now! PreAP English seems to be rolling along. The new pacing guide's activities are keeping the students actively engaged in lessons that revolve around the theme of "justice vs. injustice". The main piece of this unit is Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Students have been practicing effective sentence structure and the correct use of quotations in writing as the language component. All of the students are using DIDLS (Diction, Imagery, Details, Language, Syntax) graphic organizers to help prepare them for a literary essay at the end of the unit.

 In world history, the year began with a geography unit. It was followed by a unit on the early Renaissance then the era of exploration. We're currently working on Absolutism and the later Renaissance period. Students completed a projects about various explorers last week which were both  informative and entertaining. 

    The novels class have been actively engaged in reading every single day. We've had a great  time!This week we're taking a break. We're watching Secondhand Lions starring Robert Duval (Boo Radley) then they're writing tall tales. These students are completing at least one novel every three weeks,  and they're completing two DIDLS and two projects during each 3 week period. Their Thinkbooks are filling-up fast! :-)

GREAT GATSBY Trailer (2012) Movie HD

Book Quotes