Mrs. Murray's Words

I have entered ALL of the makeup work.  I stayed until 4 p.m. yesterday to work with students and get this done.  Makeup work is closed for ALL students except anyone who was absent from last Thursday through yesterday.  If you were absent on ALL of those dates, please see me and I will work with you; otherwise, my regular grading is FINISHED!

I am now going through everything on my desk and double-checking grades. 

Honors Students: As usual, you will know when I have finished by the dropping of 1 quiz grade.  I have graded your exam essays and just have to wait for your short essays and multiple choice sections.

Regular Students:  Yours will be finished tomorrow.  I have entered all of your work, but I have several students who wanted to finish the exam essay.  I am giving them until 11:30 tomorrow.  Then I plan to enter exam grades and close out for the year.

I forgot to post yesterday.  Sorry.

Don’t forget to complete your EXAM STUDY GUIDE that I handed out yesterday.  We will go over it on Monday. I will not accept it late.  It will be your last homework grade.

Yesterday in most classes, we worked on our Lord of the Flies group presentations.  Block 7 had finished so they were able to view part of the movie version.

Remember that you really need to read the novel.  I am requiring that you write your exam essay (15 points) on Lord of the Flies.  I will allow you to use A Separate Peace for the short essays (10 points).

We will write our exam essays on Tuesday (B7– Monday and Tuesday).

Today, we took our A Separate Peace TEST and wrote the first half of our exam essay.  Students will have time on Tuesday to complete the essay.

Unfortunately, many of the students think that the school year is over.  Even after I explained that the essay counts 25 points of the FINAL EXAM, many students wrote only a few sentences today.  This was embarrassing!

I handed out the exam study guides.  Students can answer all of the questions except for the grammar questions by using their literature textbook  and/or the list of literary terms that I handed out earlier in the year.

The study guides are due on Tuesday.  I will take a few minutes and go over some of the research questions before the exam.

The study guide should be completed fully.  It will be the last homework grade for the year.  I will not accept it late.

Today, we worked on parallel structure, the last grammar that we have to study this year:) 

Here are some links if you need more help with the concept:

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/623/01/

http://www.evergreen.edu/writingcenter/handouts/grammar/parallel.pdf

http://aliscot.com/bigdog/parallel.htm

If you google “parallel structure,” you can also find interactive quizzes on this topic.

We completed a classwork grade after we practiced making sentence elements parallel.  B7 will do this tomorrow.

In Blocks 2 and 4, we worked on discussion questions for Lord of the Flies.   You need to be prepared for a quiz on Thursday.

In Blocks 6 and 7, we completed a quick quiz and then watched a small portion of the movie version.

On Thursday, we will review more grammar for the final exam and we will complete an activity for Lord of the Flies.

Remember: We will write about Lord of the Flies for the final exam essay (Monday) so you really need to make sure that you have completed your reading.

I gave out progress reports to blocks 2, 4, and 6 today.  I will give them to Block 7 tomorrow.  I asked that you review those,  determine what you were missing, and alert me if I have made an error.

I am caught up with your class.  You received a progress report today and it reflects your grades through Friday.  You had a crossword puzzle classwork today and I have entered that grade with the homework.

I have just entered the grades for the Choice Essays (A Separate Peace, Essay #1).  I entered grades for ALL of  the papers that I had collected (through Friday).  There were several papers that were not in MLA format so I noted that a 50 had been entered and that I would change the grade once the paper was correctly formatted.  If you made this mistake, I will notify you when you arrive in class.

I have the novel quizzes to grade for A Separate Peace and I have a couple of classwork grades for B6 to finish.

I have finished the vocabulary tests for B2 (the late group) and will enter those before departing today.

All makeup work should have been completed by Friday, June 4.  If you were absent on Friday, you need to see me.  I will try to work with you but points will be deducted for not adhering to my directions.

If you are absent between today and next Monday, you need to see me the next school day to see about any makeup or missing work.

I will be staying back through Wednesday.  After that, I will be unavailable– I have end of the year grading to take care of.

Today, we accomplished the following:

1. I handed out progress reports and reminded students that I had asked for all makeup to have been finished by last Friday.  I will accept makeup work, however, through Wednesday for reduced credit.  I will be here daily until 3:30 p.m.  Students need to make an appointment.

2. We read orally through page 172 in  A Separate Peace .

3. We completed a crossword puzzle (classwork grade) to review for our quiz on the novel. 

We ran out time before we could take the quiz, so students can expect that on Wednesday.

I will hand out an exam review sheet on Wednesday and it will be due with the textbook on Friday.  Friday will be locker clean-out day.

We will have our test on A Separate Peace on Friday.

We will write our exam essays in class on Wednesday and Friday.

Block 2

In block 2, we caught up by taking the vocabulary test and the quiz for A Separate Peace.

Then we held an extended discussion about the style devices that Knowles uses in the novel and you completed a classwork grade on this.  This information will help you with the style paragraph in the fiction analysis.

We also watched a portion of the movie.

Your homework is to write your fiction analysis.  The outline is available in temporary storage and in an earlier post. Remember that you will lose 10 points for every school day that your paper is overdue.

Remember that you should be finished with your reading of Lord of the Flies.  You will have a classwork and quiz grade on Tuesday!

Block 4

In block 4, we held an extended discussion for style (as described above) and completed the related classwork grade.  We also discussed the theme and completed a classwork grade for that.

We watched the end of the movie.

Your homework is to write your fiction analysis.  The outline is available in temporary storage and in an earlier post. Remember that you will lose 10 points for every school day that your paper is overdue.

Remember that you should be finished with your reading of Lord of the Flies.  You will have a classwork and quiz grade on Tuesday.

Block 6

Thank you for being prepared today!

We completed our comprehension grade for the first section of Lord of the Flies and then held an extended discussion for the major concepts and symbols that appear in that section.  The group products were a classwork grade.  We also began to establish the parallels between the novel and A Separate Peace.

I collected your fiction analysis essays and then Darrell provided us with a bit of humor:)

Your homework is to write a journal entry in response to this question:

If you had been stranded on the island with these boys, what would have been your plan to survive and what role would you play in the organization of the group? (1 page)

I am giving this entry in lieu of the last entry for A Separate Peace.  I forgot to collect those.  If you have that entry and want to submit it, I will count it as Journal #2.  We will have one more homework journal for the year!

Block 7

Today, unfortunately, many of you were grossly unprepared for our class discussion for Lord of the Flies.  We were unable to complete the discussion because there were not enough HONORS students to participate.  How sad!

I continued class with the classwork comprehension grade.  Many of you received 0’s because you had not done your reading.

For Monday, you need to make sure that you have read through Chapter 6. We will have another (not a replacement) classwork grade then and you will have a QUIZ on Tuesday.

I collected the fiction analysis essays.  Remember that you are losing 10 points a day!

Folks, we need to get busy!

The end of the year is near and you are slacking off.  Your grades are going to tell the tale and all that hard work earlier for B’s and C’s is going to be for nothing.  I foresee your end of the year grades dropping to D’s and F’s. 

Remember that you have to pass English to be promoted!

Today, I gave you time to make up your homework sentences and still did not get them from several of you!

Then, we completed the vocabulary quiz and read to page 151 in A Separate Peace.

We finished class with a quiz grade on capitalization.

Your homework is to summarize A Separate Peace in 1 page.

This will help you to prepare for your novel quiz.

Please check your grades and take care of your makeup work!

Reminder:  If you have any missing work, you must take care of it by Friday afternoon.  We are at the end of the semester and I will have enough to grade next week!