Day 169- Presentations Day 2b and 6 words

My other English classes finished up their presentations today. I still had 3 in one class who somehow, despite the weekend and iPass yesterday, couldn't finish their presentation on time. Two of them are not going to pass the class anyway, so I wasn't really surprised.

My creative writing class did their last writing of the year. I am looking forward to reading their stories, and I hope many of them made some changes. I will do this part of the class better next year though. Their last writing of the year was to make a table of contents of their high school careers with subheadings. Then, they had to write a short summary of each year. After that, I shared a Google Doc with them, and they all had to write a 6-word memoir of their high school experience. I have shared some of them below.

Endings are only starts of beginnings.- Mr. Brown

Was not what I had expected

Made me ready for any obstacles.

It went fast, just too fast.-

When one door closes, another opens

Scariest freaking time of my life.

Blinked; graduation day about to happen.

Day 168- Presentations Day 2a

Today was a black day, so I only had one group of seniors meet. My blended class finished up their presentations, and it took right up until the final bell. I have enjoyed this class this year, and I won't see them again until we collect Chromebooks later in the week and then again at graduation. This has been a fun group, and a great blended class.

Today was also the last Monday of the year. Hoorah!

Day 167- Presentations Day 1

Today was the beginning of presentations for all my English classes. The groups of students in each class performed as I thought they would. My blended class had stellar presentations, and they were all on time. My second period class had the most late presentations and probably did the poorest of all my classes, which I expected. This class just doesn't have much pride in their work or work effort. My last period class actually surprised me and did a nice job with their presentations and had minimal who were late.

In creative writing students had a writing day to finish their short stories. In the future, I will do this part of the class differently and have more writer's workshop type sharing and reading of the stories, no matter how much objection I get from the students. I think it will make for better stories and peer review. I have read parts of all of the students stories, and while some are stellar, others are way off point. I conference with the ones struggling today and hope they rectify their wrongs. The deadline is 3:00 p.m. Monday, and any edits made after that will result in a 10% deduction for being late.

Day 166- "It's a magical world Hobbes, O'l buddy, let's go exploring." -Last Calvin and Hobbes comic strip

English 12 found themselves another lab day. The presentations start tomorrow, and they will be completely random on who is called. If the presentation is not ready, they automatically lose a letter grade. Some are panicking, and these are the ones who did not use the first work day wisely. I have a fairly good idea who will be ready and who won't tomorrow, and I can probably tell you right now which class will have the most students with late presentations. I'm guessing period 2.

Creative writing had their last non-fiction writing day. I showed them the last Calvin and Hobbes comic strip written, and told them it was the end of that strip. They then had to use that as springboard for a non-fiction writing piece.

Day 165- 10 days left

I'm still not counting down the days yet, just making an observation of how many days I have left this school year. Today was another great black day where only my Read 180 and the lab class met. My blended class had a virtual work day on their projects. I'm sure there is no way I'll have a blessed schedule like this next year.

Day 164- 11 days left

11 days left, but who is really counting? In all my English 12 classes they had a work day for the projects and presentations which will count for a project grade and a final grade. I hope they put forth the work and effort needed to do well on these.

In creative writing, they had a final descriptive writing assignment titled "After the rain" where they had to use very vivid, descriptive writing to describe a scene or the feelings or sensations after a rainfall. Their poems were stellar, and I'm hoping they put together all the elements they learned with descriptive writing to make this their best piece all year.

Day 163- "Your day of reckoning is coming, when an evil wind will blow through your little play world and wipe that smug smile off your face." Seinfeld

Today was the Fallen Angels test in my senior English classes. We also returned to our regular scheduled programming, and today felt amazingly short, although it was just 36 minutes shorter. Hopefully they all did well, but I'll see after I grade them.

For creative writing, this week I am doing a final writing for a few of the areas we covered, and they are to make it their best effort in each genre. Todays morsel of writing was on poetry, and they had to write 1 long poetic piece or 2 short ones using many of the elements we covered during our poetry unit. I'm looking forward to reading these and seeing how they have grown as writers this semester.