Figuring It Out

1 thing I noticed about my creative writing students is that they seem to do so much better under so much more focused when you're sitting in front of the laptop vs writing on paper. They can't seem to find a place they seem to get easily distracted and I don't get as much work done.

I'm going to attempt to continue to let them have the laptop to see if I can get those back into the classroom.

It's not going to be an easy feat because of all the SOL testing going on.

On the English side, I think a student are as ready as they are going to be for the English writing SOL happens in a couple of days.

We watched an interesting video today to talk about introductions I hope it helps them.

On the Trail

Today we had the electricity in the cafeteria in the creative writing studio really great about talking to kids about joining creative writing. Because I had to go around and write down the names of the kids that are interested Annapolis the kids so I can contact and give letters to.  I haven't done this before I'm really excited about the idea. I think I have about 100 names.
English is started the Fireside Poets and they got into the group to annotate a poetry. They were actually working hard today talking to each other and talking about words and what they meant. I was a mazed. I think a presentation is going to be interesting as well because we're using YouTube to do some of the work.

Writing Help

Apps for Students | Dysgraphia & Writing Difficulties - NCLD

Students Work Hard

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Week Twenty-Halfway There!

Well here it is midterm week. School is half over; we have half way more to go. Midterm week has to be 1 of my favorite weeks of the year. I love it we don't have so much work to do,  but the students are working extra hard. Getting out at 11:30 everyday is also a nice benefit.
I also enjoy the fact that we're going to be moving into romanticism next term. This has to be 1 of my favorite units of all American literature. The row is really exciting because we're finally getting into literature that mean something. I mean the other literature did mean something but this is the actual real imaginary made up fiction literature like a Devil and Tom Walker.
I did like teaching the Revolutionary Period. This year that was a lot of fun and I think that I mix it up enough that I was interested it, and I was able to get the kids interested in it.
I want to get the kids involved in the Fireside Poets again this year by learning about them together. I want them to present the poems to the class so that we can all benefit from the learning experience. This will be a lead into Socratic Circles that we do later on this year.

Creative Writing will be starting a children's literature pretty soon. We have been invited to read the children's books to an elementary school

Week 19 The Long and Sad Road

This link it seems to be all about it administration. Bureaucracy  just won't seem to stop there's more and more stuff coming down the pipe and getting thrown in our direction. Everyone seems to want to micro management control every aspect of our teaching not really understanding that we ourselves are professionals and know what we're doing. Administration needs to do administrative things and they also need to protect us from from the things we don't need to worry about. That's just not happening. It seems that they want to control every aspect of our lives and they also want to criticize everything that we seem to be doing even though we know we're doing it right. We're demoralized. We're tired. We're  stressed, and this is not a good working environment don't like the fact that I come in to school every morning not really liking being there anymore.

Week 15-Moving On- Life Beyond the Research Paper

It seems as though the research paper has taken on a life of its own. It doesn't ever end I thought it was going to end when we finish the papers but they're so much more work do we have to do then we ever had to do before on it's because now we have to grade them in house. Here it is almost February,  and we're still looking at the papers the didn't past first time. It's not really where I wanted to be but I'm hoping that we can get this finished off in the next month.

It's been really nice working on something other than the research paper. Getting back into the literature has really been a lot of fun. I never realized that I actually do like teaching American Revolution it's been so much better this year than years past.  I think probably Because it seems like the kids are more interested for some reason and also I found a new way to teach it's like trying to make the documents come alive.