English+12+Semester+1

Wednesday, December 1st
Today, added to our comma notes and read three personal narrative essays. These are a good example of what the first section of the reflective essay should look like. Please see the links and attachments below for the essays.





[|The Night of Oranges]

Tuesday, November 30th
Today, we read another reflective essay, George Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant". Students completed a packet of analysis questions. Please see the attachments below for the essay and assignment.





Monday, November 29th
Today, we read "Third World Driving Hints and Tips" by P.J. O'Rourke, which is a process analysis essay. We created an Always, Sometimes, Never chart to discuss the properties we see in these types of essays. Please see the link below for the essay.

[|"Third World Driving..."]

Tuesday, November 23rd
Today, we read "On Dumpster Diving" by Lars Eighner. Please see the attachment for the full text of the essay.



Monday, November 22nd
Today, we finished reading "Stranger in the Village".

Friday, November 19th
Today, we continued working on the "Stranger in the Village" worksheet and continued reading the essay.

Wednesday, November 17th
Today, we took notes on comma usage and started a worksheet for "Stranger in the Village". Please see the attachment for the comma Powerpoint and the worksheet.



Tuesday, November 16th
Today, we talked about reader response criticism and continued reading "Stranger in the Village". Please see Ms. Matiscik about the reader response presentation.

Monday, November 15th
Today, we started with a quick write about culture (what it means, how we identify ourselves, and how it shapes our perceptions). We then had a minilesson about cultural criticism and began reading James Baldwin's essay "Stranger in the Village". See Ms. Matiscik for the cultural analysis presentation and see the attachment for the full text of the essay.



Friday, November 12th
Today, we started a new unit. We completed a worksheet about a few different lenses of critical theory, then had a brief biography of James Baldwin. We will be reading his essay entitled "Stranger in the Village". We did a quick write about a time we have felt like an outsider. See the attachment for the worksheet and see Ms. Matiscik about the Baldwin biography.



Wednesday, November 10th
Today, we were in B213 to finish our cover letters and to make revisions to our college essays. Both are due on Friday, November 12th.

Tuesday, November 9th
Today, we were in the Little Theater to finish up our resumes and begin our cover letters. The resumes are due today and the cover letters are due on Friday.

Monday, November 8th
Today, we were in B323 to talk about writing an effective cover letter. See the link below for step-by-step directions on how to write your cover letter. Also included below is an example of a cover letter, provided by Mrs. Hetzel.

[|How to Write a Cover Letter]



Friday, November 5th
Today we were in the Smart Lab to type our resumes, which will be due on Tuesday, November 9th.

Wednesday, November 3rd
Today we completed the career research presentations and finished looking at the Powerpoint (see the posting for 10/27). We also began compiling information for our resumes. See the handouts below.



Tuesday, November 2nd
Today we went to see the first act of __Macbeth__, performed by the theater department.

Monday, November 1st
Today we continued to present the career research projects.

Friday, October 29th
Today we started presenting our career research.

Wednesday, October 27th
Today was the last day in the lab. A printed handout of the Powerpoint slides was due at the end of class (if you do not know how to print a slide handout, please see Ms. Matiscik or Mrs. Hetzel). We will begin presenting on Friday. We also began looking at writing effective resumes. Please see the Powerpoint below for the guidelines.



Tuesday, October 26th
We were in the lab again to continue our career research.

Monday, October 25th
We were in the lab again to continue our career research.

Friday, October 21st
We were in the lab again to continue our career research.

Wednesday, October 20th
Today we were in the lab to continue our research. A typed Works Cited page was due at the end of class. The page must be in MLA format. See your career research packet for resources to help with MLA.

Tuesday, October 19th
Today we were in the lab to continue with the career research project.

Monday, October 18th
Ms. Matiscik's class wrote a timed essay about the power of attitude, which included the proper use of semicolons. See Ms. Matiscik for this assignment.

Thursday, October 14th
Ms. Matiscik's class wrote a timed essay about the meaning of trust, which included the "No Excuses" words. See Ms. Matiscik for this assignment.

Wednesday, October 13th
Today we finished up the "No Excuses" worksheet and wrote sentences for each of the words on the list.

Tuesday, October 12th
Today we started working on a "No Excuses" grammar worksheet. Students worked in pairs to look up the words. Each group was responsible for teaching the class their words, including the definition and an example sentence. See the handout below for the words.



Monday, October 11th
Today we were in the lab again to continue our research.

Friday, October 7th
Today we were in the lab to continue research for the career project.

Wednesday, October 6th/Thursday, October 7th
Today, we were in the library to start our career research unit. Ms. Nickoloff showed the class how to access one of the career databases and we took a career aptitude test. See Ms. Matiscik or Mrs. Hetzel to learn how to access the database (you will need a Jefferson County Library card to do so). See the handout below for the career research requirements.



Tuesday, October 5th
Today, we were in the Smart Lab to type a final copy of the essay. It is due tomorrow.

Monday, October 4th
Today, there was a typed draft due which we used for a peer editing exercise. The final essay will be due on Wednesday.

Friday, October 1st
Today, we were in the Little Theater to type a draft of the essay, which is due on Monday.

Wednesday, September 29th/Thursday, September 30th
We did more semicolon practice and started drafting essays. See the handout below for the semicolon practice sheets.



Tuesday, September 28th
We did more semicolon practice and continued brainstorming ideas for essays. See the handout below to complete the semicolon practice.



Monday, September 27th
Today, we continued to draft college/scholarship/TIB essays.

Friday, September 24th
Today we started to brainstorm ideas for essays. Students were given a handout that included several in-state college prompts for essays. If the student is not writing a college essay or scholarship essay, they will follow the "This I Believe" format. See the handout below for the in-state college prompts.



Wednesday, September 22nd
Today we finished up with the "You're In or You're Out" assignment. We completed the Always/Sometimes/Never chart and created a class rubric by which the essays will be graded.

Tuesday, September 21st
Today we pretended we were the college admissions officer of a school and had to decide who would get into school based on their essay. We read nine college essays, following specific criteria, and decided who was in and who was out. Please see the following handout.



Monday, September 20th
Today we listened to and read more This I Believe Essays and started creating an Always/Sometimes/Never chart of the characteristics we noticed.

Friday September 17th
Today was an introduction to the college essay as well as the This I believe essay.

Blockday September 15/16th
Today was spent finishing the SAGE practice, your personal poster, and a goals for growth check in sheet.

Tuesday September 14th-
Today was spent creating your personal poster. Please see the folowing handout.

Week of September 6th- September 13th
During this week we finished our My Name poems as well as our I Am poems as well as reviewed the SAGE reading strategy. We also took the True Colors Personality test. See Hetzel for these materials. Ms. Matiscik's class also did a poetry annotation. Please see her for handouts and assignments.

Monday August 30th-
Today we started a new activity in the computer lab. Please follow all directions on the handout. Final projects are due on Friday.

Friday August 27th-
Today we finished up the what does it mean to believe assignment and group work please make sure you have completed all tasks listed on the explanation sheet.

Thrusday August 26th-
Today we began looking at what it means to believe. Please write a one page free write on what you think it means to believe based on the four questions at the top of this paper.

Wednesday August 25th-
Today we focused on creating our goals for growth. Please fill out the following handout and half sheet of paper. Hetzel

Tuesday August 24th-
Today was spent in the computer lab finishing up the classroom wikispce wikiquest and creating blogger.com and google.com accounts. Please go to google.com and create an account, and then go to blogger.com and use your google.com login information to create a blogger.com account. Here are the worksheets to help you. Both the wikiquest and blog creation should be finished by Friday August 27th. An SSR book is due tomorrow. Hetzel



**Monday August 23rd-**
Today we were in the SMART Lab in the library learning about wikispaces and Mrs. Hetzel's online classroom wikispace that is located at [|www.hetzelclassroom2010.wikispaces.com].

We watched a video called //Wkispaces in Plain English// located at []. Then we began to complete our first assignment which was the Hetzel Classroom Wiki Quest. Here are all the documents and worksheets handed out during today's class.