Ah, Memorial Day weekend – three glorious days to give tribute to our nation’s veterans, relax with family, and finish grading my very last set of freshman essays of the year. I’m deep in the dark chocolate almond phase with fewer than a dozen papers to go. Must…keep…going…
Here’s this week’s agenda:
Monday – Memorial Day Holiday
No classes
Tuesday
Open with a five-minute M.U.G. Shot (Mechanics, Usage, Grammar) mini-lecture/bell-ringer. (Our last one of the year!)
Review the answers to the Greek and Latin Roots worksheet that students completed as weekend homework.
Return their Romeo & Juliet essays and begin essay corrections in class.
As a solo assignment, complete this Graduation Speech critical viewing activity in the computer lab. (Due to time constraints, they’ll need to pick one that’s under 20 minutes.)
For HW, students should finish their essay corrections and graduation speech sheets, if not done in class. They also need to keep reading their S.S.R. books because Book Talks are due by the end of lunch this Friday.
Wednesday
Open with a ten-minute Words on Wednesday vocabulary mini-lecture/bell-ringer. (Again, our last one of the year!)
Present this Micro Fiction lesson and assign students to write their own two-sentence short stories in four genres – drama, romance, sci-fi, and horror.
Yearbooks will be distributed in the last 10 minutes of each class. (To help minimize the crush of humanity, our yearbook staff actually delivers the books to every English class all day long. It’s an impressive undertaking.)
For HW, our final group of 20Time presenters needs to be ready to go tomorrow. All visual aid links must be emailed to me today by 5 p.m. (I’ll preload all of their slides onto my laptop tonight to minimize the tech wrinkles in class.)
Thursday
Final round of the 20Time “what I did/what I learned” speeches.
For HW, students will complete one of these Analogies worksheets. Also, all S.S.R. Book Talks must be delivered to me by the end of lunch tomorrow.
Friday
Review answers to last night’s Analogies worksheet.
Any remaining 20Time speakers will present today. I’ve had a few absent students who still need to present and we may not have enough time to hear everyone on Thursday, so this day should allow me to take care of any stragglers.
S.S.R. reading, for those who still need a little time to finish. Most everyone, though, will use this time to begin studying for finals and/or sign yearbooks.
For HW, students would be wise to study for next week’s final exam.
Teach on, everyone!