The Phrase; Submitting Peer Reviews

The first thing students did today, upon their return to our frosty school building, was to take their first grammatical notes on our new unit: The Phrase.

Here is a link to the EOL Notes Sheet as a .docx

And here is a link to a .pdf of the same

The notes begin on page 144 of our purple Grammar Text.

After this, students and I capitalized on a leftover laptop lab. I enjoined students to finish, and submit, their TNReady Prompt 1 peer reviews.

Link to sign into Office 365

The guidelines for conducting a Peer Review are on a post below this one. But, to quickly overview:

• Your partner shares their draft with you (blue "Share+" button on Word Online)
• You provide feedback and tentative scoring in either, or both, of the following ways:
• Using the "Insert" tab, click "Comments". You can use the "+" to add comments that will appear in the margin.
• Click on "Edit Document". You can now type directly into your classmates' paper. If providing direct commentary in this manner, please use a new color of font. Or an entirely different font than the one the original author used.
• When you're done making suggestions and recommendations (the peer-editing job), YOU the peer-reviewer, Share+ YOUR CLASSMATE'S paper with YOUR COMMENTARY to ME.
• My address is: Jesse.Tidyman@mnps.org
• And if you don't know it by this point of the year, you're frankly beyond my help.

HW:

• Membean Quiz tomorrow
• Followed by an Approach to the TNReady Narrative Writing Prompt

TNR Practice: Peer Review

This is a link to the Peer Review checklist!

In-Class Writing Practice: Prompt 1: Info/EXP

Link to the Sample Passage

(click to read, right-click to download)

Link to Microsoft Office 365

(yourname@mnpsk12.org)

• Read the article.
• Respond, in writing, to Prompt 1, in a MS Word online document.

TNReady Writing: Rubric Analysis

Behold!

The Rubrics!

• Informative/Explanatory Writing 
• Argument Writing
• Narrative Writing

Also: this link is to the Rubric Analysis Charts from Class.

A Rebuttal: "Against YA"

I found this while looking further into the "Against YA" piece from class recently. Here, The Atlantic's Julie Beck writes her opposing opinion: that YA Lit does have value for adult readers.

"The Adult Lessons of YA Fiction"

Julie Beck

The Atlantic - 6/9/2014

Let me be super-clear: This article is NOT an assignment.

But it connects to class and has, I believe, some merit.

I merely offer it to you.

"Who does that woman think she is?"

A couple of activities took center stage in class today, but all in all, a pretty chill Monday.

First of all, I came around to check students' HW. As I warned my classes on Friday, completing the annotations and filling out the outline were due for a grade.

Following a tour of students' desks, I invited classes to respond to (i.e., "vent about") Ruth Graham's main idea. Many, many criticisms were shared. Some were better than others:

• I-Can't-Believe-How-Good-This-Criticism-Is: 4th period: "She says Twilight is trash, but apparently loved Tuck Everlasting. Don't both books feature a romance complicated by immortality? Jeez, what's up with this? Doesn't seem fair. She could have been more clear about what makes Tuck Everlasting so great."
• Excellent Criticism: MaKayla's (2nd p) unflinching and focused remarks concerning the 2012 survey Graham cited. Specifically, alternate ways to interpret the survey results ("books purchased does not necessarily mean books read", "that age demographic has jobs, so of course they're buying books!", "what if these people are buying these books for their kids, or young family members?")
• Not-Excellent Criticism: Aidan (4th p) deciding to look up the author on his phone, creeping thoroughly through her online presence, and roasting her mercilessly. Amusing, to be sure, but ultimately unacceptable in an actual written TNReady Essay response.

Then, I gave students their scores back on last year's TCAP Writing Assessment, individually. This took a minute or two to accomplish. Students should bring this back to class tomorrow, for an analysis of the TNReady rubrics, in which we will ask (and answer) the great question: What do my scores mean?

HW:

• Bring TCAP writing scores back to class tomorrow.
• Do your Membean.
• Get Mythology (scroll down for handy links)

"Put down that children's book, you old fart."

Today, the freshmen took a swing at reading, and responding, to an editorial from the Slate's website. At my insistence, they did so with specific regard to responding a TNready Informational/Explanatory writing prompt.

"Against YA" Document from Class.

The prompt is on the back.

We began reading and annotating the passage in class. Because we did not finish, students' HW is to finish the article for Monday.

HW:

• Finish reading and annotating the article.
• Complete the Outline on the back of the document.

General Reminders:

• Membean Session 8 is running NOW. It ends on Sunday, 1/17. Do your sessions!
• Obtain a copy of Edith Hamilton's Mythology.
• Link to Amazon.com
• Link to Parnassus Bookstore (Green Hills)
• Link to Bookman/Bookwoman (Hillsboro Village)
• Link to Books-A-Million (West Nashville)

Sharing Cloud Documents

This is a link to the Membean Login site.

We did a 15-minute practice session in class today.

Remember: Membean Session 8 ends on 1/17. 

This is a link

to the Office 365 Login page.

Today, we practiced:

• Logging in
• Creating a new Word Online document
• Saving this document
• Sharing this document (with me)

Because this is how we're going to share a lot of the written practiced we're going to do, as we prepare for the TNReady Part 1 test.

Semester 2: Overview

Not gonna lie, today's classes were pretty chill. After welcoming students back, and taking roll, I shared a general layout and several announcements about Freshman Year: Second Semester.

This is the .pptx I used to share information with my students.

Here it is as a .pdf file.

This is a link to Amazon.com,

from which one could order a copy of Mythology.

Get it by 1/22/16.

HW:

• Membean Practice in class tomorrow
• Membean Session 8 ends: 1/17
• Membean Quiz: 1/20

Question of the Day:

From 1st period:

"Mr. Tidyman, is there such a thing as American Mythology?"

Definition of "mythology".

Definition of "folklore".

Collection of Native American creation myths.



And also, this book, which I simply place here. I cannot recommend you read it, as I would consider it a cut above YA lit. Also, it is not in the recognized high school curricular literature canon. But here it is anyways. In fact, it's probably too grown up for you. Nevermind; don't read it. Forget I mentioned it. You couldn't handle it anyway.

Good question, Tre.