Mr. Brewer's iBlog

Spring is finally here!!

Over the last few weeks, we have finished Harrison Bergeron, WIDA Testing, and have been studying George Orwell’s Animal Farm. We have had many discussions about the relationship between literature and history, and have focused on the symbolism of the Russian Revolution used throughout the book. We are nearing the end of the text, and have a writing project to complete before Spring Break. More on this later…

Although we are used to each other by now, student behavior has actually become much worse than the beginning of the year. We need to be mindful of all school policies and classroom norms. They are designed to create an optimal learning experience for all students, and any breakdown in those behaviors causes disruptions. Students have been facing harsh consequences for being tardy, disrupting class, and using cell phones when they aren’t allowed to. Please adhere to the school rules to stay focused on learning.

After Animal Farm we look forward to Romeo and Juliet, a traveling play is visiting our school, and we will read many shorter non-fiction texts. Let’s finish the year off strong!

We’ve had a lot of weather-related interruptions to start of this semester, but that hasn’t stopped us from becoming better readers and writers. 

We’ve learned about how people’s words can be misused and misinterpreted for another person’s agenda. We studied Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s message and how other people have used his words to scold opponents in ways that Dr. King would not approve in the Article of the Week “Which Dr. King are we Celebrating Today?” We know that Dr. King fought for equality, but is true equality really possible? We wondered this as we started reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron. We learned about satire, and how Dr. King struck a more serious tone while Vonnegut used sarcasm and ridicule to practice his 1st Amendment right. We learned about equity and how it is different than equality. We imagined a future where everyone is equal in every way, and discussed the advancement of technology and how unpredictable it will be in the future. Right now we are starting our summative assessment for Harrison Bergeron, and students will have an opportunity to choose their assessment and work on it over the next few days. We have an important WIDA test in a few weeks, which will discuss next week. This is an extremely important test. It is important that students try their best to improve on their previous scores.

We will have this discussion soon, but for now, we are focusing on showcasing our learning of Vonnegut’s message in Harrison Bergeron. Directions for the project are found on Google Classroom. 

Class,

Welcome back from break! We have one more full week until Finals. Finals are happening Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, January 16th-18th. They will be 1/2 days and you will have 2 tests on each of those 3 days.

We have moved on from Of Mice and Men and are finishing Unit 2 with an article and a short story that tie in with some current events: The Wall Debate.
As of Wednesday 1/9, we have talked about the LA Times Article “Trump and Democrats Meet Again on Shutdown but Remain Far Apart on His Border Wall Demand” and we have read Mitch Albom’s “Lady Liberty Has Her Say About the Wall.” We have reacted to these pieces in a Double Entry Journal and have written a response with our thoughts regarding the wall.

Before Finals, we will take a short practice test and I will provide a study guide for you to work on over the weekend. Let’s finish the Semester strong!

Being Graded This Week:
Article of the Week
SSR Weekly Log
Double Entry Journal

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1bdpfv3p5utxXXl-8jAglG9ekuiXMj1MB7g6CzbZp7H0/edit?usp=sharing

This is the link to the slideshow about Of Mice and Men. Scroll to the bottom for the most recent slides.

Class,

We are steadily approaching the end of 2018, but we still have many more weeks together before the end of the school year 🙂

Recently we have discussed the American Dream. We’ve learned about income inequality, wealth inequality, and how the middle class is shrinking. Scary stuff! But it’s important that we are aware of these trends, especially as we transition into our chosen Academies next year. We don’t need to know exactly what we’ll be when we grow up in 9th grade, but we definitely need to start exploring our options, skills, and interests.

Career Day is this week! We’ll have an amazing opportunity to learn about different types of careers from professionals from all types of backgrounds. I hope you realize that these men and women worked very hard to get to where they are in life and are very generous for stopping by Fordson to explain what they do and how they worked their way into that position. Bring your background information from your YouScience research and our Articles of the Week about the American Dream to Career Day to ask the hard hitting questions you’ve been dying to ask real-life professionals.

This week we dive into a classic American novel that explores the concept of dreams, especially the American Dream of working hard to build a comfortable life. This story is Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.

We’ve already learned a little bit about the historical context of the novel and have established the setting of the story. We are still getting to know the two main characters, George and Lennie. This week we will continue reading, annotating and exploring the key passages of the novel.

Being graded this week:
-George and Lennie Chart
-Short Response Questions
-Bellwork
-Chapter 1 and 2 Quiz

Hello Students,

We have had another busy few weeks since beginning Unit 2. We watched Amer Zahr’s We’re Not White Documentary, The Danger of A Single Story, and read Gate A-4. These texts/media have helped us answer the Unit 2 Essential Question: How do class, religion, language, and cultural stereotypes influence how I look at and understand the world?

We have compared and contrasted the themes of these three texts and written about our own experiences with stereotypes. We wrote the We’re Not White Essay and completed the Take Home Test to measure our learning of these themes. Most of you have done a wonderful job of writing about your opinions and addressing the essential question. The Take Home Tests have been hit or miss. I really want you all to focus on writing in complete sentences and taking a moment to check for spelling and punctuation errors.

This past week (November 5th-9th) we took a break from Language Arts to focus on careers and aptitudes. We took the You Science test to see where our natural abilities might translate into the work world most efficiently. Many of you took this test seriously and will find accurate results and matches to future career fields. Those of you that wasted time by just clicking through the test will not have accurate results. I hope that those of you that sincerely took the test receive results that interest you! We will have a short writing assignment to discuss the results of the test on Monday.

I hope you have a restful weekend. Just a reminder: Marking Period 2 ends on November 16th (Friday) and your Final Thought for your 2nd SSR book is due.

The Most Dangerous Game

It has been a busy month!

We are into the 2nd card marking now. Parent teacher conferences are going well. Summative assignments are being submitted and posters of Book Reviews are being hung around the room. Routines are established. Learning is happening!

For the past 3 weeks, we have been reading and learning about Richard Connell’s short story, The Most Dangerous Game. As of this post, (Wednesday, October 17th) All students have now finished reading the short story. Most of the classes have finished the 1932 film version of the short story as well, which most students really enjoyed. We have been working on creating plot diagrams to keep track of the elements of this short story (Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action and Resolution) and we have also answered analytical questions about the characters. The plot diagram was completed and collected today. 

We also discussed what we would do if we were in a survival situation, and 1st hour is even working on a fan-fiction version of the story.

On Friday of this week, all students will be taking a summative reading comprehension test of The Most Dangerous Game. Students will be given a passage from the text and will be asked to explain different elements of the story based on the passage.

Next week we will begin Unit 2, which is all about identity. Great work on Unit 1!

This week we discussed the impact of video games on society. We had many lively discussions about the topic. Also Season 6 came out this week (Fortnite), so most of the guys talked about that.

First we had a silent poll regarding 4 claims about video games. Students agreed or disagreed with the claims, which can be found on this week’s slideshow. We discussed arguments, wrote CER’s and did additional research on the Internet to support our claims. We also turned in our September reading logs. A very productive week!

Graded this week:
Article of the Week: “Issue Overview: Do Video Games Cause Violence?” Quiz, Annotations
September Reading Log
CER
Summer Reading Make Up Assignment

This week our article of the week was called “Cruel As It Is, We Somehow Go On” by Leonard Pitts Jr. We read the article, annotated for difficult vocabulary, completed a SOAPSTone analysis and watched a video about children in Haiti, which was the setting of the article. We did another reflection activity and discussed the Essential Question for this cardmarking: Is it necessary to struggle in order to be successful?” On Friday we had a binder quiz, and, as always, we read silently for 12 minutes in class every day, completing our reading logs and working on our SSR projects.

What was graded this week:
Binder Quiz
Video Reflection
SOAPStone worksheet