Oops!

Oops, I knew it would happen sooner or later! I forgot to blog last night. I think I even thought about it but decided to watch a movie while massaging my pregnant wife's back.

Last week was kind of crazy what with 2 days on 2 hour delays. We had a modified "A" day on both of our delay days. Thursday remained fairly normal. In class we read a little bit from Part II, but we spent most of our time taking a one question quiz.

I asked:

What are the pros and cons of living up to or down to society's expectations and standards?

Some of the responses were focused only on Tally's world, which was okay, but the responses I really enjoyed saw the connections between our society and Tally's. As we move on through the story, we will be looking at that same question. This novel has been a lot of fun, especially in the questions it poses about our world.

Oh and I totally missed our campus visit on Friday. My daughter got sick Thursday, and I stayed home with her Friday!

Getting Ugly

College classes are underway again, and we're off and running. This past week we spent the majority of the first class discussing Uglies. It's opened the door to really evaluate the world we live in by examining the world in which Tally lives. The world of Uglies seems so unlike ours at first, but as we took a closer look, we were able to see many connections.

The second class of the week didn't go as well as I had hoped, but I think it more of less worked. We wrote a journal about our Ugly nickname, the characteristics that make us unique or special. We talked about how we're not ruled or owed by that trait. It allowed us to go back to our earlier conversations about whether it's worth sacrificing our individuality.

Overall, I'm pleased with our progress in the book. It's been a lot of fun, and it fits in so well with our global issues unit. What's coming in science and social studies is going to really click with what we've already been discussing in my class. I'm also excited about our big project coming up!

Friday was a "Who Am I?" rotation. In my class we talked about figurative language, metaphors, similes, and personification. We focused on metaphors and wrote personal metaphors, which we then added images to and created a page for the "Who Am I?" book.

This week is probably going to be a bit crazy. We have an A Day on Tuesday (barring snow cancellations), Mike Wiley performance on Wednesday, B day on Thursday, and UNC at Asheville Friday.

Welcome Back!!

It was so good to be back at school this week.  We really seemed to hit the ground running, but not without being purposeful in our use of the extra time before college classes started.  Sometimes it's easy to forget that the kids have not spent an extortionate amount of time with everyone.  They know most of their class at this point, but they don't know all of their class as well as we'd like.

We lengthened all three daily high school classes, Monday through Wednesday, with the understanding that the extra time would be spent getting to know our knew groups and each other better.  It was definitely time well spent.  I enjoyed getting to know more about them, and I managed to work one of the activities right into a lesson.

The first part of the week we created similarity wheels, which showed us that while we are very different we have a lot of common ground.  From there we discussed the idea of BEAUTIFUL.  They wrote a journal about what qualifies something for them as beautiful.  Then we discussed how our society defines beautiful for us and how that definition has changed over time.  We then created beautiful collages, which I turned into a wall of beautiful.  It's really cool to see the back wall covered with images that "mean" beautiful to us.

The second class of the week we started reading Uglies, by Scott Westerfeld.  I'm really excited about teaching this novel.  It fits so well into our Global Issues unit.  We will be integrating with Science and Social Studies in a much more direct way, which is fun!  The novel poses so many good questions about our concepts of beauty and waste.  It's an interesting look at what our future could easily become.

This week we'll really get into the discussion of the first 7 or 8 chapters and continue reading the novel.  I hope the kids give it a chance.  It's a really good novel!

Oh and Mrs. Grogan, the junior English teacher, and myself are planning a swap day!  This will give me a chance to get to know the juniors better, and she will have a chance to get to know the freshmen better.  

I'm looking forward to this week!