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.

Day 162- "The world has moved on" The Gunslinger

Today is the last day of our extended schedule. 2:56 will no longer be our ending time and we will revert to the glorious dismissal of 2:20. I never thought I would be so glad to see 2:20, but that prodigal time returned with the hope of salvation of surviving these last few weeks. A group of us who are regular Friday revelers in the end of week partook in a celebration of the end of the wretched extended schedule at our normal local establishment. One of our esteemed colleagues had an hourly email countdown going, which kept us forging on.

Today was thematic as the celebration at the end was only the culmination of a fairly routine black day. Read 180 and the lab class were the only academic classes I had today, and 3 of those 11 kids were absent. Not too shabby.

Day 161- "I couldn't tell if there was too much to see, or if my eyes were getting bad. Maybe I just didn't want to see some of the things I was seeing." Fallen Angels

White Thursdays are great because they are the Silver Surfer to black Fridays! English 12 reviewed the book, characters, themes, etc as we have the test on Monday. This drew the ire of many of the students as their prom is this weekend and they claim they won't have time to study. After I wiped the single tear that fell from my eye in sorrow for them, I told them they had tomorrow, before prom, and Sunday to study. They were not amused.

Creative writing was quite a bit of fun today. I had them write two love letters to inanimate objects or places. The examples I gave were their phone, bed, or Starbucks. They did a really good job of personifying these places and showering them with adoration. I just hope their significant others get as much love and adoration as their inanimate objects of affection.

Day 160- " Sweet Jesus, war does terrible things to people." Gangs of New York

Today on this red Wednesday, English 12 discussed war atrocities we have read about in the book and also others in Vietnam history such as the My Lai Massacre. We had a really good discussion on how war changes the rules of normally accepted behavior, and how this is also seen in sports as well. The class was divided up in groups and each given an atrocity in the book or real life to read over and discuss, then share out with the class. I was fairly pleased with how well the classes did with this.

For creative writing, I gave the a writing day to work on their short stories as they are beginning to panic a little bit. They don't know panic yet.

Day 159- I'm out of catchy black day titles

Not much to report on this black day. My blended class met for us to talk about archetypes and the upcoming end of the year project. Other than that, Read 180, the lab class, iPass, and prep filled the minutes that turned into hours.

Day 158- "Ka is a wheel." The Wind Through the Keyhole

In English 12 today we discussed archetypes. Not surprising, the overwhelming vast majority of my students had never realized that archetypes appear across stories, but once we started talking about them, they began to see it. They did a really good job of finding the archetypes in Fallen Angels and Slaughter-House Five. Hopefully this will carry on with them through their lives and they will see these patterns in other stories.

In creative writing, we wrote a resignation letter to something or someone. Some students chose a relationship, others chose a job, but most of them chose to resign from high school. This was a fun assignment and they did really well with a creative resignation letter to something or someone.

Day 157- "If there is hope, it lies in the proles." 1984

In English 12, my numbers finally rose back to near normal as ECA testing for the re-testers was winding down. Due to the many absences the this week for testing, we spend the class reviewing and catching up on the last four chapters and updating character maps. I also handed out the papers for their project for this book and discussed what was expected of them for it. They will have a couple work days in class, but I wanted to give it to them before hand so they could start working on it now since we are being blessed with mini laptops for our work days.

In creative writing, I had my last observation of the year. I knew it was coming as everyone else in my department had already been observed, and I had a feeling it was coming during creative writing as rumor has it people want to see what I do in there. I pulled out my marathon writing lesson which has the beauty of being a totally different animal every time I do it. I had a couple prompts preloaded, but the students came up with the rest. They had some very thought provoking prompts, others that were very applicable for this time in their lives (How do you feel about high school coming to an end?), and seemed to enjoy the ones I had chosen as well. I showed my age, and the age of my evaluator, by putting the word "wonderwall" as a prompt and being the only two people in the room who knew the song. The students were brilliant today, sharing out with each other what they wrote, not being afraid to share or open up, and some of them wrote more than they had all year. I was very excited with how they did, not because of the evaluator, but because the wrote for over an hour and they loved it! Days like today, well, they give me the hope to carry on.

Day 156- "I see a red door and I want to paint it black." Rolling Stones

Second black day of the week. I'm tired. My blended class met today and we got caught up in the book and talked about what is coming ahead. Most of them have AP testing next week, so even on days we should meet there won't be many of them available. I answered questions about the project and we went our separate ways. iPass, prep, and the Read 180 lab with a skeleton crew of kids because of ECA testing rounded out my day.

Day 155- "I guess at the end you start thinking about the beginning." Mr. and Mrs. Smith

I had 8 kids show up for my second period 12b class because of ECA testing, so today was a reading day for them. I'm not sure the rest of the week will get any better.

In creative writing, we read an article called "Goodbye to All These Things" were the author writes about the ending of something and reminisces about the beginning. We took this mantra and wrote our now pieces about a time we said goodbye to something and how it all ended.

Day 154- "Hates him with the fire of one thousand suns." 10 Things I Hate About You

With the way we administer the ECA to our special education and EL population, my classes will be disrupted for most of the week. In English 12, I had 8 kids in my first period class, so it was probably a good thing that we were finishing up our Dear America video. I'm hoping we get at least something accomplished this week.

In creative writing, the kids had a blast with today's writing. We wrote a memoir on someone we dislike or are afraid of. They really took this and ran with it. I actually had a couple kids who were too upset with the person they were writing theirs about to finish it in class because they were so upset they were getting angry. Who knew I could provide that kind of therapy in class.