Jan+4+-6

Happy New Year Everyone!!

I hope you had a pleasant holiday.

I have finished grading the Picture Book manuscripts. These stories are terrific! Please ask your student to show you their work!!

As always, any student that would like to raise their grade by revising to meet the rubric is encouraged to do so. I’m available during zero period and after school to work with students and discuss their papers one-on-one. Students who have not turned in this assignment may do so up until January 13 for 90% credit. I cannot take late papers or revisions after this date as the semester ends.

I am often asked by students why I am using turnitin.com for assignments. To begin with, it is easier for me to use the rubric for grading as I just click on the number that fits the paper. Second, in the comment section, I can rapidly type good things about the paper and the ways the paper can be altered to meet the rubric. This way both the student and I can read what I have written and discuss it. Thirdly, I can make comments on the paper itself that are easy to read. I can also quickly tack on grammar comments from a word bank for common errors such as using a comma when it should be a period or spelling mistakes. And finally, I can return to the student’s paper at anytime. Both the student and myself can access this paper in the future and print it out or talk about it. So when a student brings in a revision, I have the original easily accessible for comparison and for discussion. Students who use turnitin.com benefit from all of these features. Without turnitin.com, I cannot talk to students about their paper and revisions unless they bring it in with them. In the past, I have had students decide to revise their paper for a better grade, but they misplaced or threw away the one I wrote the comments on. Hence, I find turnitin.com to be a valuable tool for helping students learn to write.

This week,

Wednesday: We will be conducting an experiment to see if reading a poem three times helps one understand the meaning better. We begin Romeo and Juliet. The Prologue, Characters, and Plot.

Thursday: We will be in the computer lab looking at grades and looking up Shakespeare's Insults.

Friday: We perform Romeo and Juliet Act 1 Scene !.

Brenda Lamb

I will continue to give one-on-one time outside of class to students who would like to revise their research papers. This is the best way I know for learning how to write that meets a particular student’s needs and goals, especially with an opinion paper such as these research papers. I usually spend ten to fifteen minutes discussing with a student each paragraph to find the topic sentence and teaching how to tweak the thesis statement so it grows more specific to the paper, as well as helping the student discover what his/her opinion is on how to solve the problem they have uncovered. 15 minutes gives each student plenty to work with. The paper is graded on a rubric so that all students can achieve full credit when their draft has all the elements on the rubric.

The Romeo and Juliet unit addresses the following NTCE/IRA Language Arts Standards: