Yes, it has definitely been a while since I've posted anything on the old blog. With the holidays and the end of the quarter approaching so quickly, I've had trouble fitting in an update. I've caught up on my grading and planning, so I can finally check "update blog" off my to-do list.
We are finishing up the Understanding Character unit. The assessment on all we've done has three parts. The first is the character analysis project. This project allowed students to use their creativity to analyze a character from a book of their choosing. There were six projects to choose from, and an infinite number of ways to present their analysis. Click here to see the project requirements and project samples that were shown to the students. The second form of assessment on the Understanding Character unit will be a value and motive assessment on the main character from the short story, "Flowers for Algernon." Students will have to rank a list of 22 common values/motives and then write justification for their top two choices which must include evidence from the text as support. The final assessment is the actual test from "Flowers for Algernon."
That is what we will have finished this week, so what's coming up in class as we start the third quarter? Well, to begin, we will be watching the made-for-TV movie version of "Flowers for Algernon." Students will be taking note of differences between the movie version and the text version to use in the compare/contrast essay they will be writing. One of the Common Core Standards for eighth graders is to compare a movie/play adaptation of a text, so this fits perfectly.
When the essay is complete we will be moving into the Understanding Setting unit. In this unit students will be looking at the three types of setting (physical setting, temporal setting, and psychosocial setting) and how they each interact with character and plot. This unit and the unit on point of view go much quicker than the unit on character as the character unit serves as the foundation for all other elements of literature.
Just a quick reminder of dates - the end of the second quarter is on Thursday of this week. I asked students to have their page logs ready to be turned in on Monday of this week. I will still accept them after Monday but the earlier the better - for my own sanity. :-)
Look for future posts regarding the online literature circles beginning in late February!
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