Week of January 10th - January 14th

This week in Ms. Nickow’s fifth period English class we did a lot of fun activities. Our week kicked off with a discussion of the book we are reading called Night. Monday, we had a very insightful discussion in which everyone pitched in their share. Tuesday, we took our explore test. It was very easy because Ms. Nickow prepared us for what we needed to know. Wednesday we continued our discussion but Ms. Nickow was not allowed to talk during it, so the class had to do it by ourselves and it went better than planned. Thursday and Friday we reviewed for our final. Ms. Nickow gave us all a sheet of paper with everything we had to know on it. She also was nice enough to let us do it with partners. All in all, it was a good week for the best English class every. 

Jack

Week of 1/3-1/7

The first week after we got back from winter break was a busy one! We started on Monday discussing
the homework we did in order to learn about the Holocaust for our new book, Night, which we started this week. We had a list of movies to watch, books to read, and places to go to broaden our views on the topic. It was very interesting hearing everyone's discoveries about the different things they did. On Tuesday we had independent reading time, like we do every Tuesday and Thursday and it was a nice chance to calm down after a stressful day back. Wednesday proved to be a very interesting lesson. We were going to reenact the election in Germany in which Hitler came to power. Ms. Nickow wanted us to understand how people thought and why they would vote for something as horrible as Hitler's party. Each student was handed a slip of paper with a person's name, occupation, and a little bit of background information.  Then, we received a list of all of the parties that we had the option to vote for. It was crazy seeing how each person voted in terms of their character. It was very helpful to understand where people were coming from when they voted for Hitler, because some of the party's views were normal ones, and it's understandable to realize that the people voting couldn’t have know it would have gone as far as it did. Thursday and Friday were lighter topics: how to take our upcoming explorer test that places us in our English classes for next year. All in all, the first week back was a very busy, but fun, time in our class.

- Claire

Week of 12/13 to 12/19

This week, we learned about the author of the book Night, Elie Wiesel. We viewed an Oprah episode in which Elie and Oprah walked through Auschwitz, a Nazi concentration camp. We played a game in which we had to phonetically say a group of words (or random syllables!) and try to figure out what phrase were actually saying. Also, we recieved an assignment that will get us a little more orineted with the holocaust so we will be ready to begin the book after break. Finally, we got a chance to view the Fremd Christmas Dance Special to kick off a spectaular break!

Week: 11/15 - 11/19

This week we finished up our peer edits on our expository essays from last week. After we finished the peer edits, we then did some reading exercises. Also we had begun our unit on the book Fahrenheit 451. That is pretty much all we did that week.

By Alec Assmann