Essay Week

January 23 & 24, 2016

Days 209 & 210 as an Oklahoma Teacher

This weekend, I worked on writing four reference letters, grading papers, reading Hacking Assessments and planning for next week. Here's the plan for this week. Students in my English IV classes will plan and write a definition essay. They will have to choose a word of phrase to define, create a formal outline, type a first draft, revise and edit, and make a final draft all in one week. The AP class will analyze a passage and write an essay about it. Now, the passage I chose is about Tess from Tom Hardy's novel Tell of the d'Urbervilles. The passage is not from the interesting parts of the book, so I am curious on how my AP students will respond to it. They will have to go through the writing process, discuss their ideas, and go back and revise this week. On Friday, both classes will have to work on the senior project.

Added on January 27th
Okay, the AP class really liked the passage. I like being sarcastic sometimes. They hated it because they never read the book. After we discussed what the book was about, then they could relate to the prompt better than when we first read it. They were amazed that her life was not as boring as what they thought. Next time, I think I'll have them get up and act out the prompt. Why not? They acted out poetry when they were sophomores.