Week of 12/6 - 12/10

We turned in the Fahrenheit 451 packet and took the test this week. For the majority of the week, we were in the lab, working on the "Create a Perfect World" project. Everyday was a different lab room so some people got lost. We took some time on Friday to go over our tests. Because we were working so hard, Ms. Nickow changed the due date for the project to Monday 12/13. =]

Week of 11/8-11/12

Every one of us came to class ready to learn and excited for the short week!

On Monday, we finished watching Of Mice and Men after Ms. Nickow had to turn it off right before Lennie killed Curley's wife. After finishing up the movie, we revisited our Of Mice and Men Anticipation/Reaction Guide to compare our answers about what we anticipated was going to happen and how we feel about situations after they've happened.

Next came Tuesday. We met in the computer lab to start on our expository papers. We had the option of picking from prompts provided by Ms. Nickow, or we could choose our own prompt as long as it was approved by Ms. Nickow. Before starting our papers, we quickly discussed how to write a good thesis statement. We then got busy working on our papers and getting our thesis statements approved by Ms. Nickow.

Wednesday was another day to have class time to work on our papers. We spent the entire class period working, in hopes to get as much of our Shareable Draft done as possible.

Fortunately, we got to have a four-day weekend! We had Thursday off because of Veteran's Day and we had Friday off because it was a teacher institute day.

Overall, we had a very productive week! We got a lot done with such little time.

Week of November 1-5

This week marked the beginning of second quarter; we’re already done with one-fourth of the school year! On Monday, Ms. Nickow handed back our independent reading assignments from first quarter. She had found some common errors in the papers, so we quickly went over usage of that vs. who, filler words, how to punctuate a title, and font selection. We then revisited Aristotle and pathos, ethos, and logos, trying to incorporate these methods of persuasion into our arguments for the upcoming debate.

Tuesday was a late start day, and the day started off with the introduction of a new seating chart, followed by the announcement that all independent reading journals must be written on the form that can be found on Ms. Nickow’s website. Ms. Nickow then went on to ask us to fill out an informal evaluation for her so that she can improve her teaching methods. We were then given the rest of the day to finish up preparing for the debate.

With Wednesday came the debate, and many interesting arguments were brought up. All groups were well prepared, and there was no clear winner for most of the debates. At the end of the day, Ms. Nickow asked us to evaluate our own individual performance in the debate, considering factors such as whether or not you were able to bring up all the points that you wanted to bring up.

We started watching the movie version of Of Mice and Men on Thursday and continued watching the movie through Friday, making the end of the week peaceful in comparison to the heated debates we had on Wednesday; Ms. Nickow decided to stop the movie right before Lennie killed Curley’s wife.

Week Of October 25th-29th

After having quite a few hectic weeks we actually had a regular schedule all five days! On Monday we learned about rhetoric. After taking a few notes, we were put in groups of three and every group had a different passage from John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. Then we proceeded to think about why Steinbeck put these passages in his novel, hence learining about rhetoric. On Tuesday we turned in our independent reading assignment essay for the quarter. Most of us got a big surprise with the ending Of Mice and Men. Venturing further on into our week we started to learn about debates and persuasion only to find out we were going to hold a debate of our own. After the topics were distributed to their assigned student groups, we wasted no time getting to work finding points to bring up in our debates. For quite a significant part of the week we rigorously worked on our debate points. We thought about which of Aristotles three elements of persuason would best appeal to our audience and be the most powerful elements to use, logos pathos or ethos.

All in all we started the week with rhetoric, handed in our essays and ended the week and the quarter preparing for our debates.

Week of October 18-22

This week was quite an extraordinary week. We had a late start on Tuesday and an early dismissal on Wednesday, but we were still able to accomplish a lot. On Monday, we got a preview of this year's musical, Cinderella. It was a fun experience. We got to see behind-the-scenes and we learned about how a musical is put together. Even though there were few props and scenery, the actors were able to make the scenes come alive through their acting and singing. For homework this week, our class was assigned to read chapters one through three of the book Of Mice and Men and complete the discussion questions.

On Wednesday, Ms. Nickow put us into groups and each group was given a different paragraph to discuss. Afterwards, each group presented their answers and thoughts to the questions about their paragraph. The activity made us use higher-level thinking because the questions were not simple. It also helped us understand the book better.

The discussion problems assigned for homework were finally put to use this Friday. We had a class discussion and many people contributed their own thoughts. It truly helps to discuss a book with other people because then you can hear other opinions and viewpoints about it. Overall, our class was very productive this week and we made a lot of progress in the book Of Mice and Men.

Week of October 11-15

It was a crazy week for Ms. Nickow's Egnlish class with the weird schedule! We had a well deserved day off of school on Monday for Columbus Day! On the other hand, the students came back to school on Tuesday to take our short story unit test. On Wednesday, we got an "uber" late start because the Sophmores and Juniors had tests. With the shortened class period, we received ten minutes of extra time to finish our tests from Tuesday. After the tests we took a district 211 survey to see what type of learners we are. On Thursday, we actually judged the book Of Mice and Men by its cover. On Friday, we got our only independant reading time due to the crazy schedule for the week. We ended the week looking at the themes and morals of Of Mice and Men. We made our predictions for the book using the cover pictures, themes, and morals!

Week of October 4 - 8

      The highlight of our week was the introduction of a 'Socratic Seminar,' a group activity where an open ended question was presented to the class, and we had to answer and elaborate on it as a class without any guidance from the teacher.  We were told to answer 3 questions from "A Sound of Thunder" that took up the whole class period on Tuesday!  In order for the seminar to be successful, each student had to come prepared, contribute,quote from the text, and build off of each other's answers.  It was really interesting to hear everyone's opinion, and how those opinions shaped each others.  In the middle of the week, we were supposed to discuss the story "Marigolds" and how/when one looses his or her innocence, but we ended up creating the word 'bubble pop' !  Towards the end of the week, Ms. Nickow revealed that our short story final would be on Tuesday of next week, and we had a game of jeoprady review to help us prepare!!  To sum it up, it would be a sad thing if you missed even one day of this week :)

Emily

Week of 9/27-10/1

We started off this exciting week doing a quote activity from our prior lesson on how to properly use quotes. The activity was that we each had a sheet of paper with either punctutations or sentences on them, and our job was to put them in the proper order so that the sentence made sense and was properly puntuated. We started off with easy sentenses, and progressed to longer complex sentences. We also presented our Glogs this week for "The Lottery," the short story we read. Later on in the week, we were to read the short story "A Sound of Thunder," a science fiction piece that tells a story of time traveling and how the tiniest changes can make a huge impact. We were suppose to choose 6 similes or metaphors, from which the story had provided a wide selection of, and jot them down on the worksheet. The next day we got to choose one and illustrate the simile or metaphor as its literal meaning, not implied one. We will be seeing many creative drawings from what I saw. On Thursday, we did an activity that was not only fun, but it really gets you thinking outside of the box. Its called Tableaue. In our groups we have to pose ourselves as still pictures, each of us representing a character, and posing a scene from the story. Once we pose, if we get tapped on the head by Ms. Nickow, we would have to talk like the charcter we are posing for, without moving. This not only got laughs out of the class, but it also got the people thinking out of what the story only tells you. So this week in a nutshell went by quick in English with fun activities and interesting stories.

Week of September 20-24

This week was a bit crazy, due to a late start on Tuesday and a half day on Thursday. Regardless of that, we got a lot done! We got into groups and had fun making videos for "The Lottery" vocabulary words. Continuing in the same vein, we tried using Glogster to make posters for what our version of "The Lottery" movie would be like. Unfortunately, it seems that the school's computers aren't too keen on Glogster, causing us a multitude of problems. Ms. Nickow gave us an option to make an actual poster if Glogster wasn't working. On Friday, we had our vocabulary tests on "The Lottery" and root words. After a hectic week at school, everyone was excited for the weekend!

Week of September 13 -17

This week we focused mainly on a story titled "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. The story begins with a small village, of about 300 people, and every June 27th the same tradition will be held. What this tradition holds? A wooden box, a black mark, and one death.
On Monday, we talked about each classmate's article, or idea, of a connection to The Lottery. For homework we were assigned to pick one paragraph from a critique's article of The Lottery that we found most interesting. The next day, we did an activity that let each person share their paragraph and the others would have 1 minute to explain why the person chose that paragraph separately. Later in the week we discussed some words from The lottery, that we were unfamiliar with.
Apart from The Lottery, we learned, or recapped, on the 3 types of irony (Verbal, Dramatic, and Situational). We also took a look at some prefixes and suffixes such as per, co, trans, and plex.

This week began as we turned in our Venn Diagrams about our villains and how they compare to Zaroff, the main villain in The Most Dangerous Game. We then proceeded to write a paragraph on our villains and why they are villains. While we did this, we did two interesting things in class. First, we learned about what makes a good paragraph, to help us along with our villain paragraphs. Second, we read the shortest story ever; "For sale. Baby Shoes. Never worn", and got into a great class discussion about weather or not this is a story. We even extended this story into our own. Then on Friday, we read The Lottery, a chilling story about a town whose tradition was to kill someone every year.

Picture for week of August 30 - September 3

For our discussion of "Most Dangerous Game", we tried an activity called penny for your thoughts.  Each student got three pennies to use throughout the discussion.  We were encouraged to use at least two pennies, but could use no more than three.  It was difficult because we really had to think about when the best times were to contribute.

Week of August 30 - September 3

Our week began with introductions to the characters in our classroom.  We each created a collage about our setting, motivation, favorites and words that others would use to describe us.  It was great to get to know unique and suprising things about each other.  After reading "Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell, we gave a penny for our thoughts during class discussion.  We each had three pennies and had to think about when we wanted to use them to share our ideas or to respond to another student.  The conversation was going so well that Ms. Nickow had to stop us because class was going to end!  On Friday we visited the Fremd Media Center to hear about some great books and choose one for our independent reading projects (if we didn't already have one).