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!

Winding Down

The end of the semester is rapidly approaching, and I'm just not sure where it went. We've done so much, and yet I still feel like I have a lot to cover.

This past week was eaten by the County Writing Test and wrapping up loose ends. We started the week reflecting on the second nine week grading period and working more on the parts of speech. My students can tell me what the definitions are but have trouble identifying them in context.

So we used the poem Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll to help see how the parts of speech work in a sentence. They had to look at what the nonsense word was doing in the sentence to figure out what part of speech it would be. I hope it's helped to make sense of the parts of speech so that we can move on to parts of a sentence.

The second class of the week consisted responding to a prompt. The ninth grade writing test is a county wide assessment. Students are given a prompt and a series of related quotes to work from. Overall, I think they did well. Some were better than others, but that is to be expected.

Friday we did a morning rotation that focused on giving and then watched The Ultimate Gift in the afternoon. It was a really good movie and day.

One week to go...

Novels, Romeo & Juliet Speed Round, and Burger King Crowns

Well I didn't blog last week since we only had one actual class day. We spent our time reflecting on our Shakespeare banquet, performance and film, and we wrote a 32 second script for Romeo and Juliet. We didn't get time to make use of our scripts on the day we wrote them, but we did use them this past week.

At the beginning of the week, we turned in our NaNoWriMo novels, reflected on the experience, and designed covers for our books. During Friday's celebration, we displayed our covers in the cafeteria. It was fun watching everyone who came through, including culinary students, checking out the novel covers.

Later in the week, we journaled a little about things we were grateful for and things we'd like to thank a soldier for. We will be writing letters to Marines currently stationed in Iraq. My baby brother is a Lance Corporal in the Marine Corps and will act as a distribution point for our letters and other care package type items.

We also tried to perform our 32 second versions of Romeo and Juliet. It was a lot of fun trying to get the performances down to 32 seconds. The videos from the attempts are on my YouTube page. Most groups started out over a minute. On a couple of occasions we had to cut a few lines to make it all work out. We even performed some of them backwards. The idea is a tribute to The Reduced Shakespeare Company, whose play/film we watched at the banquet.

Friday we spent the morning celebrating our noveling experience! Joyce Hostetter, a local author, came to speak and join in our fun. We all had Burger King Crowns, which the sophomores and juniors were begging me for in the morning. (I wouldn't let them have them until lunch.) We got to hear about ten novel excerpts. Every one was fabulous! It was a great morning! We got finished a little earlier than I had planned, but that gave us time to enjoy a HUGE cake that Dolly's parents made for us and cookies Cady brought in to share.

After the celebration, we took a brisk walk before lunch. After lunch, we went caroling at the Share Center. The kids had made Christmas Cards that they gave to the residents as we went up and down the hall singing. I have to admit that if the though is what counts, we did great. But if the sound is at all important, not so much. We had a couple great singers in my group, but overall, we were rough. Nevertheless, we brought smiles to many a face!

I can't believe that first semester is almost over already!

Romeo & Juliet Banquet

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!

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!