Parent Teacher Conferences / Regionalism / Personal Response

I would like to thank all the parents that showed up at parent teacher conferences last night.  I see students and other teachers all day and it's extremely helpful to get another perspective on what is going on in the classroom.  I took a lot away from the conferences: both a sense of what is going well and an understanding of how to help students who might be struggling in my classes.  Please feel free to contact me at anytime - input is always appreciated!

English 11 - We spent time at the beginning of class going over the test together.  The reading comprehension tests I have been giving students have been challenging and I wanted to model the types of reading strategies students should be using when they take the test.  These reading strategies are essential for performing well on college entrance exams (SAT and ACT) and performing well in college, in general.  We spent the rest of class laying the groundwork for our trip downriver with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  First, we spent some time discussing regionalist authors and their goal of representing locales by recreating the landmarks, vernacular, and personalities of an area.  We then watched a short video of Hal Holbrook portraying Mark Twain and reading some material that Mark Twain wrote.



AP - The students spent class working on incorporating personal responses into their essays.  One of the AP prompts that they will have to write on will draw on this skill.  I also wanted students to reflect on their personal knowledge of the topic they will be writing about in their first take-home essays.  For the activity, they took an essay they had read and wrote 200-300 words on how the argument the essay was making aligned with their personal experience.  I am looking forward to seeing the results in-class today.