Friday, September 19, 2008

It was nice to see some parents at Open House last night! It was late for me and I contemplated coming in in my PJ's. Fortunately, I changed my mind as that really would not have been very professional. On another note, today in class, students started brainstorming for a personal essay they will begin on Monday. They will be writing about an event that changed their life. As a class we shared events and discussed how they shape who we are. Please be sure to check their brainstorming sheets and make sure they have included details to help create their essay.

September 16, 2008

We have started The Usual Rules by Joyce Maynard. It directly relates to the documentary viewed in class as the main character's mother dies in the World Trade Center attacks. Students should have read through page 47 by this Thursday and be ready for a reading quiz. They also have quotes to respond to in their marble composition notebooks. We also discussed a quote from the movie "It is hard to be a survivor." This is powerful as we saw how it was difficult for the members of Ladder 1 in NYC to accept their fate as survivors. We will will also see how Wendy, in The Usual Rules deals with "being a survivor."

September 10, 2008

We began watching "9/11," a documentary that started out to be about a rookie NYC firefighter and captured the only existing image of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center. It is a very powerful film. For those interested in links to more info about 9/11 visit the site below:


http://ocsweb.oneontacsd.org/hs/murphy/sept.html

Monday, September 9th, 2008

Today, we discussed our goals for the year. Ninth grade is a transition year and hopefully we started some habits last year that will enable us to be successful this year. Students will learn effective habits in Freshman Seminar that we will discuss throughout the year, too. Starting on Tuesday, we will be viewing a documentary about 9/11 that is powerful and should provoke some interesting discussion.

End of the first week!

Friday, we read a Newsweek article called "Anything but Crocs." It was author Steve Tuttle's sarcastic take on the overwhelming popularity of "rubber clown shoes." It was a great article to get us brainstorming for our first writing sample appropriately titled "Anything but..." I received some interesting topics--"Anything but... school, homework, the New England Patriots, and bullies, to name a few! As we begin with our second week of school, we will discuss goals for the year and view a documentary about September 11th.

Welcome to Ninth Grade!

We have started off to great year. On Wednesday we went over our course outline and got to know each other. Many students had me as an English Teacher in seventh grade so we felt comfortable right away. PLease check back as I will try to update this blog often.