This whole week seemed dedicated to two things, working out issues with novels and getting ready for the banquet.
We spent some time discussing our novels and hang ups we were having. I'm hoping for some strong finishes. Collectively we have written over half a million words in our pursuit of novel writing. It would be amazing to break a million words!
We also performed Romeo & Juliet in the most ADHD manner I've ever seen. It was a hoot. I would have liked less reading, but part of that is my fault. In an attempt to be as fair as possible in the distribution of parts, It took me longer than I would have liked to get the assignments out.
Then of course the end of last week I was out of the classroom. That being said, the videos of the performances are a lot of fun. Check them out!
Happy Thanksgiving! I have a lot to be thankful for this year!
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Where in the World was Mr. Miller
First and foremost, I have to say that I hate to miss school. Maybe it's a control issue, maybe it's something else, but I cannot stand to be out for any reason. Unfortunately, there will always be times when it is necessary to be gone from school, whether it's because of illness or other obligations. I suppose that I am grateful that my lack of attendance this week had everything to do with a conference and nothing to do with illness.
Monday we went to the civic center to see a play, "The Red Planet." It was an interesting take on life on Mars in the future. My favorite part was the robot. The actress who played the humanoid robot did a fantastic job.
We had a short blitz schedule on Monday. I focused on returning assignments and trying to assign acting the Part roles in as fair a way as possible. I really wanted to get them assigned earlier, but I felt it was important for the students to have some say in what they were doing. Most got their first or second choice. I wish they all could have, but it just didn't work out that way.
Tuesday was a day off of school but not much of an off day for me.
Wednesday through Friday, I was in Hickory participating in The New Schools Project Symposium. Wednesday was a peer visit at Challenger, and Thursday and Friday were filled with a series of activities and conversations.
While I was gone, my classes got a chance to finish viewing the '96 version of Romeo and Juliet. They also had some time to work on either their acting the part assignment or their novel. I believe that things went well.
Friday was filled with preparation for our banquet next week. I hate that I missed any of it! I cannot wait to get back to school tomorrow!
Monday we went to the civic center to see a play, "The Red Planet." It was an interesting take on life on Mars in the future. My favorite part was the robot. The actress who played the humanoid robot did a fantastic job.
We had a short blitz schedule on Monday. I focused on returning assignments and trying to assign acting the Part roles in as fair a way as possible. I really wanted to get them assigned earlier, but I felt it was important for the students to have some say in what they were doing. Most got their first or second choice. I wish they all could have, but it just didn't work out that way.
Tuesday was a day off of school but not much of an off day for me.
Wednesday through Friday, I was in Hickory participating in The New Schools Project Symposium. Wednesday was a peer visit at Challenger, and Thursday and Friday were filled with a series of activities and conversations.
While I was gone, my classes got a chance to finish viewing the '96 version of Romeo and Juliet. They also had some time to work on either their acting the part assignment or their novel. I believe that things went well.
Friday was filled with preparation for our banquet next week. I hate that I missed any of it! I cannot wait to get back to school tomorrow!
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Novels Away!
The first week of NaNoWriMo has been a huge success in my opinion. We spent time working on our novels this week as well as delving further into Romeo and Juliet. The beginning of the week we reviewed parts of speech again with a special emphasis on personal pronouns. We also worked on understanding how conflict and problems work to create tension in our novels.
Three of the four classes watched the first 25 minutes or so of the 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet. On Friday we saw all but the last 30 minutes or so of the 1996 version. It always amazes me at the different takes on each version. I've had classes in the past that didn't care for the newer version and other classes that found the older version cheesy. I'm looking forward to hearing what this year's classes think when we have seen both versions.
We also went over our Romeo and Juliet performance project. For the project, they can work alone or in a group of up to four. They will need to rewrite the dialogue or monologue to be included as part of a modern day adaptation of the play. The monologues and dialogues are relatively short, and I suggested that they check out No Fear Shakespeare and sparknotes for help.
They will be performing as part of our entertainment during our banquet on November 21st. We will rehearse earlier that week. I'm really looking forward to what this very creative bunch will come up with.
The latter half of the week we focused on our novels. Students worked on their novels for about half of the class and the rest of the time they worked on new blog or met with me to discuss the grammar and plot worksheets they worked on earlier in the week.
Well, this seems a little less detailed than my normal blogs, but I have a lot on my plate. I need to try and get grades into the computer for progress reports. I've been working on my national boards. Oh and I'm working on my NaNoWriMo novel as well....I'm wearing out my keyboard that's for sure!
I'm off to work on my novel, 21,000 words and counting!
P.S. I don't think I've ever linked this before but here is my youtube account. I've not posted everything I have, but there are quite a few videos from our Olympics earlier this year and from our Grandfather Mountain trip. Enjoy!
Three of the four classes watched the first 25 minutes or so of the 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet. On Friday we saw all but the last 30 minutes or so of the 1996 version. It always amazes me at the different takes on each version. I've had classes in the past that didn't care for the newer version and other classes that found the older version cheesy. I'm looking forward to hearing what this year's classes think when we have seen both versions.
We also went over our Romeo and Juliet performance project. For the project, they can work alone or in a group of up to four. They will need to rewrite the dialogue or monologue to be included as part of a modern day adaptation of the play. The monologues and dialogues are relatively short, and I suggested that they check out No Fear Shakespeare and sparknotes for help.
They will be performing as part of our entertainment during our banquet on November 21st. We will rehearse earlier that week. I'm really looking forward to what this very creative bunch will come up with.
The latter half of the week we focused on our novels. Students worked on their novels for about half of the class and the rest of the time they worked on new blog or met with me to discuss the grammar and plot worksheets they worked on earlier in the week.
Well, this seems a little less detailed than my normal blogs, but I have a lot on my plate. I need to try and get grades into the computer for progress reports. I've been working on my national boards. Oh and I'm working on my NaNoWriMo novel as well....I'm wearing out my keyboard that's for sure!
I'm off to work on my novel, 21,000 words and counting!
P.S. I don't think I've ever linked this before but here is my youtube account. I've not posted everything I have, but there are quite a few videos from our Olympics earlier this year and from our Grandfather Mountain trip. Enjoy!
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Debates, Prologues, and Novels!
This past week was full of fun things. We started Monday with our mock presidential debates. All participants did a fantastic job. The entire morning came across very professional and at the same time very entertaining. The student's did a fantastic job staying true to their invented candidates even when time allowed for unscripted questions to be asked. After lunch that day, we had a special presentation from a Argentinian educator. It was very interesting to learn more about that country.
Tuesday and Wednesday then became our first class of the week. We began with written and oral presentations of the Prologue to Act I of Romeo and Juliet. Overall, all four classes did very well. There were a handful of students who were not prepared and have had to or will have to retest to improve that score. As we finished with our presentations, we set up accounts on The Young Writer's Program side of the NaNoWriMo web site (both sites are overloaded right now due to the high volume of participants).
Although Friday was a little different, Thursday and Friday served as our second day of the week. We took care of some retests, but focused a lot of attention on where to begin our novels and Act I of Romeo and Juliet. I gave out writing handbooks that we will use to get us through our novel writing in November. We looked at several pages in those workbooks, and in our journals we answered some important questions about the characters we had created:
What does my character want?
What is in his/her way?
How can she/he get around that obstacle?
What could go wrong with that plan.
The workbooks are for the students to use as they need them; however, there will be times throughout the month when I go over areas addressed in the books directly. It will be okay if something we do together a student has completed on their own. The remainder of the class was spent reading the first scene of Romeo and Juliet. I tried to break it down for them and with their help so we all knew exactly what was going on. This upcoming week we'll work more on Romeo and Juliet and our novels.
Friday morning we had an extended assembly where I showed some videos from three of our Friday activities: Grandfather Mountain, The Renaissance Festival, and Shake-N-Bake Museum. After our regular first through third period A day, we went to the cafeteria to kick off our novel writing. We went over tips for success in November. We locked away our internal editors. And I showed the webpage I set up to get everyone excited about starting their novels on Saturday. All of the teachers helped to create survival packs that we gave out before we spent some time planning our novels more.
We took small groups upstairs to make caramel apples while the rest talked about their novels and used the workbooks to get a good start. I have been in touch with Joyce Moyer Hostetter, a local author who will be writing alongside us in November and coming to our December celebration. Joyce is also blogging about her experiences with this insane quest. I encourage you to check out her blog.
Remember during November, every student and myself have something to do everyday! Write, Write, Write! I just broke 6,000 words this morning!
Tuesday and Wednesday then became our first class of the week. We began with written and oral presentations of the Prologue to Act I of Romeo and Juliet. Overall, all four classes did very well. There were a handful of students who were not prepared and have had to or will have to retest to improve that score. As we finished with our presentations, we set up accounts on The Young Writer's Program side of the NaNoWriMo web site (both sites are overloaded right now due to the high volume of participants).
Although Friday was a little different, Thursday and Friday served as our second day of the week. We took care of some retests, but focused a lot of attention on where to begin our novels and Act I of Romeo and Juliet. I gave out writing handbooks that we will use to get us through our novel writing in November. We looked at several pages in those workbooks, and in our journals we answered some important questions about the characters we had created:
What does my character want?
What is in his/her way?
How can she/he get around that obstacle?
What could go wrong with that plan.
The workbooks are for the students to use as they need them; however, there will be times throughout the month when I go over areas addressed in the books directly. It will be okay if something we do together a student has completed on their own. The remainder of the class was spent reading the first scene of Romeo and Juliet. I tried to break it down for them and with their help so we all knew exactly what was going on. This upcoming week we'll work more on Romeo and Juliet and our novels.
Friday morning we had an extended assembly where I showed some videos from three of our Friday activities: Grandfather Mountain, The Renaissance Festival, and Shake-N-Bake Museum. After our regular first through third period A day, we went to the cafeteria to kick off our novel writing. We went over tips for success in November. We locked away our internal editors. And I showed the webpage I set up to get everyone excited about starting their novels on Saturday. All of the teachers helped to create survival packs that we gave out before we spent some time planning our novels more.
We took small groups upstairs to make caramel apples while the rest talked about their novels and used the workbooks to get a good start. I have been in touch with Joyce Moyer Hostetter, a local author who will be writing alongside us in November and coming to our December celebration. Joyce is also blogging about her experiences with this insane quest. I encourage you to check out her blog.
Remember during November, every student and myself have something to do everyday! Write, Write, Write! I just broke 6,000 words this morning!
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