Day 46: Research Projects Presented

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

Today I saw two Night presentations. They both did very well. There was supposed to be a 3rd but one student was absent. I am going to have her present next class. After the presentations were done I assigned for them to read chapter 1 and 2 and do passage reflections for both in order to get them back on track since I was unable to assign these things last class Then I went over their final project with them. They seemed ok with it. There weren’t a lot of questions so I am hoping that means they understand everything. If they don’t then I am sure they will let me know as we go along. After I went over everything there wasn’t anything else to do so we played hangman with words from the Holocaust. It wasn’t the most appropriate use of our time but it got them thinking about some Holocaust terms that they knew well. It was also a fun way to keep them engaged in the topic. They had fun with it. I also allowed them to work on other things while we played and many of them did. It was better than just turning the class time into a study hall. The senior class went much better. Heidi and Kym were absent when I gave out the presentation assignment so I gave them the option to go on Friday. Shawna was absent today so she will also be presenting on Friday. The rest of the class did their presentations. Some of them were very good. Others were ok. Most of the students did a good job. They all knew their topic fairly well. Some were more comfortable talking about it than others. Lauren spent a lot of time just reading off her slides but Cam seemed to really know his stuff. Overall, I was happy with the work they put in. I was especially happy when Cam picked up on why I was having them do the project. That’s right, Elizabeth Barrett Browning talks about these topics you are presenting on extensively in her poetry. Congrats! After the presentations were over we went over what happened in their first reading assignment and we discussed some of the passages they looked at. It sounds like they all picked out some of the passages that I was thinking I wanted to talk about too. So again, I was very impressed with them. I am excited to see how tomorrow’s class goes. There will be more time tomorrow and fewer presentations so I am hoping to get more discussion about the book and about the poems they are working on.