A Tale of Two Cities - Day 7

Today you will be listening to chapter 6 and working with your group.

A Tale of Two Cities - Day 6

Today you will be listening to chapter 5 and working with your group.

A Tale of Two Cities - Day 5

Today you will be listening to chapter 4 and working with your group.

A Tale of Two Cities - Day 4

Today you will be listening to chapter 3 and working with your group.

A Tale of Two Cities - Day 3

Happy Friday!

Today you will work with your groups to review chapter 1 and share your M-G creations.

We'll listen to chapter 2 together. You'll work with your group to share annotations and observations.

The homework for the weekend is the next M-G.

Remember - I'll be gone next week. Good luck with the reading! I look forward to getting back to things with you when I return!

A Tale of Two Cities - Day 2

Happy Wednesday!

Today we will start our work with A Tale of Two Cities (I'll often abbreviate it as TOTC).

• Unit calendar
• Annotating
• Multi-Genre project

We'll listen to and discuss chapter 1. While listening, you will be annotating.

With your group, you'll examine the language in the following sections:

• Section 1, Beginning = p. 5 to top of p. 6
• Section 2, France = Top of p. 6 to top of p. 7
• Section 3, England = Top of p. 7 to top of p. 8
• Section 4, End = p. 8

A Tale of Two Cities - Day 1!

Happy Tuesday! I hope you had a great weekend!

Today we'll finish listening to poems from our Poetry Out Loud competition and announce the class winner! You all did a great job and I hope you enjoyed the opportunity to memorize a poem, work with it, and present it to the class.

Then, there will be an activity to introduce us to ways of thinking about A Tale of Two Cities.

We'll take a quick look at the book and the calendar - and tomorrow we will get started!

Competition Day!

order of presentations

Poetry Out Loud - Day 5

We'll start today with a chance to recite your poem to an assigned partner in preparation for our quiz. The quiz is simple - take out a sheet of paper and write out your poem. Then, exchange pages with your partner and give them a copy of your poem. You will then score each other for accuracy, based on the Poetry Out Loud Accuracy Sheet we will use during our competition (and for all POL competitions). The maximum score you can earn is an 8.

Then, we'll watch a few more videos and discuss what those presenters are doing with their poems and how you might incorporate those skills into your recitation. Following that you'll work in groups of three to continue working on your recitation. Here is a link to the scoresheet we will use in class for our competition.

Lastly, it is time to buy our next book - A Tale of Two Cities! You will need it in class next Tuesday, the 21st. Copies are $12 and are available now at the bookstore - I HIGHLY recommend you purchase the same edition as everyone else in the class will have so you do not get lost looking for page numbers.

Poetry Out Loud - Day 4

Now that you have your poem and have started to work with it, it's time to get to know it well.

Here's the plan for today:

1. Activity: "I never said she stole my money"
2. Choose a partner - stand together somewhere in the room (stand, not sit!). Read/recite your poem to that person 2-3 times. Don't forget to switch and listen to the other person's poem!
3. Make a copy of this document to use today. Hopefully the directions there are self-explanatory. Take your time - this should take you 30 minutes or more.
4. When you are finished, upload your work to Schoology
5. While you are doing this I will have a short meeting with you to discuss your grade on the final exam and for the semester, as well as your English class recommendation for next year
6. Lastly, find a different partner to work with and read/recite your poem to that person 2-3 times. Switch!

Your homework is to practice reciting your poem multiple times throughout the weekend. Recite it to your friends, your family, your dog, your snapchat story, tiktok - whatever works!

On Monday morning we will start with a quiz - you will write out your poem! Good luck with it!

Poetry Out Loud - Day 3

You can either check the work you submitted or refer to this chart to see which poem I've selected for you to work with during this unit.

To help inspire our work today, here are a few more examples of people reciting poems:



Here are our tasks for today:

1. Copy your poem into your notebook - yes, by hand - make sure you are able to read it. Write it a little bigger and a little clearer than you usually write.
2. Read your poem aloud
3. Examine your poem
1. Put a box around words you need to define
2. Mark natural breaks - word, line, sentence
1. See Nate Marshall's "god made the hundreds, man made it wild" for an example of the role of breaks
3. Highlight words/phrases - the center of gravity for each break
1. "I never said she stole my money" activity. 
4. Notebook reflection:
1. What did the work we did today with this poem – thinking about it, writing it out by hand, speaking and hearing it, looking at the language – help you see and understand about this poem?
2. How do you understand it better or differently
3. What do you see or feel in this poem that you had not before you came to class today?

Poetry Out Loud - Day 2

Greetings! We are going to take the next round of the STAR reading test today. Please do your best on this reading comprehension test. Again, this is so I can understand how you read and learn, then offer you specific help. Do your best.

• Click here to go to the link for the test.
• For your username, use your email address
• Your password is ID number
• You will be presented with two choices - select STAR Reading
• Sometimes, the system will request a “Monitor Password.” If this happens to you, the password is “admin”
• If you are presented with a list of teachers, please select “Rigler”
• Take the test! Do the best you can!

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Poetry Out Loud!

I hope you enjoyed the videos yesterday and have a little sense of what this project looks like. Here are a few examples (we'll watch a few each day) of some other students (from around the country) to check out and (hopefully) inspire you.

After we watch and discuss them, here is the plan for the day:

1. Go to the website to start the process of choosing a poem 
2. In a new Google doc, copy and paste three poems (including but not just the title and author) 
3. For each one, write 3-4 sentences about why you chose it 
4. Submit your work to Schoology by the start of class tomorrow.

Happy 2020! Intro to Poetry Out Loud

Happy New Year! Happy 2020!!
Welcome back!! I hope you had a wonderful winter break!

Congratulations on finishing your finals and completing your first semester of high school!
We will have opportunities to talk about your final essay and your semester grade later this week.

For the next two weeks, we'll be doing something a little different - something many other English classes will also be doing during this time. It's called Poetry Out Loud. Here is a link to the calendar for the next two weeks.

We'll watch a few videos to introduce the project. Then, you will start the process of selecting your poem using this link.