Day 59: In Class Work

Agenda-
Homeroom
Class: Creative Writing
Class: Pre-AP Sophomore English
Class: AP Senior English
Lunch
Study Hall

Creative writing went pretty well. They had to read two of the quest stories over break, write comments on the stories, read an outside book, and write a comparison of the dialogue in their book to the group quest story they wrote. They didn’t have a lot of advice for Meg, Mariah, and I on our story. Most people said they liked it and that it was funny. There was one question about one line in the story. My thought though is that if they are going to be that picky then the story must be pretty good. The other story was written by Loryn and Myrranda. I thought the class did a very nice job explaining exactly what it was that they thought needed to be worked on. The class said that they liked the characters, the plot, and where the story was heading but they needed more. They wanted the girls to elaborate and then they gave specific examples. I think they are right. Everything to make a story is already there it just needs to be fleshed out a lot more. If Loryn and Myrranda did that they would have a solid story. After we talked about editing I gave them time to read the next stories and to work with their group on editing. I thought it would give the two girls time to maybe implement their classmates’ advice.

The sophomores were exhausted today. They did not want to do anything. They kept asking if they could work on their scrapbooks. I told them that if there was time at the end of the class they could work on them. I wanted to talk about Night and give out their last Victim Card. They whipped through Night. They even stole my discussion idea. Almost every group wanted to talk about the same thing I wanted to talk about. I couldn’t very well make them do it again. So I gave out the cards and they spent time working on their scrapbooks. Many students went to the hallway. The ones that did stay in the room were very quiet and very diligent. They just sat there and worked on their projects only speaking when they had a question for me. I was impressed by their behavior.

The seniors were also tired. However, they did a much better job sustaining a discussion about Aurora Leigh. We talked for most of the class about the book and about the Victorian time period, specifically the Victorian view point of sex. I had to explain this to them because of the mention of Marian getting thrown out by an upper class woman who had hired her as seamstress. I wanted them to understand why she did this as well as see the irony in the situation. After they were done with the discussion I gave them time to work on their final projects too. Both the poetry portfolio and the scrapbooks will be due this coming Friday so many of the students are freaking out a little.