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

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.