Day 44: Final Projects and Aurora Leigh

Agenda-
Homeroom
Class: Pre-AP Sophomore English
Free Period
Class: AP Senior English
Lunch
Free Period

Today the sophomores presented their final projects. I was fairly impressed with two of the projects. However, one group wasn’t prepared to present and another group you could tell rushed putting it together. It was obvious that group didn’t have good team work and hadn’t practiced. After the presentations were done, I started passing out the things for our next unit. We are doing Night. They weren’t entirely impressed with the idea that 3 of their classmates had presentations due the next class period. However, I know that the class will do just fine with this project no matter what order they go in. Unfortunately, we spent too much time on the Macbeth presentations and then on figuring out the Night presentations they are going to have to do. That left no time to really talk about their homework assignment, their final project or pass out the book. I will have to go over these things next class. I also started a new unit with the seniors. They are doing presentations as well except they will all be going at the same time and theirs will be over the Victorian time period. Their unit is on poetry. I am having them read Aurora Leigh. First, I did a short activity where they defined poetry and in groups decided if texts I put in front of them were poetry based on their definition. Then we looked at two different types of poetry definitions, value definitions and feature definitions. I revealed to them which texts were poems and which weren’t. We went over their presentations, then we talked about the questions I want them to answer after every reading assignment and I gave out the books. We had some class time left so I allowed them to work on their Victorian time period presentations. Overall, this lesson went well. I could see the wheels in their heads turning as they tried to define poetry. I could see them trying to figure out an answer to the question and realizing how very subjective it all is. At first they were a little whiny about all of the work they were expected to have done for the next class but then they realized that it wasn’t really all that much and that in the long run, doing the work now would make their projects easier. I think they are getting used to the idea of studying poetry.