Important Books

Over the summer, I attended a workshop on teaching writing, the Writer's Institute! I shamelessly stole many great writing lessons and mentor texts for writers of all ages. One of them was based on using the children's book,  "The Important Book," as a mentor text for poetry. 

Both 9th and 11th graders did a tremendous job analyzing the structure of the text and brainstorming things that were "important" to them. 

Here are links to each period's "Important" poems! 

Grading Information for Fall 2020

Your kids are off to a great start. They have all been on Zoom ready to participate and learn, and have been a delight so far! Thank you for all your help and support at home.

I wanted to let you know that I will primarily be using Google Classroom to communicate with students about their grades.

Google Classroom now has a feature where it will calculate a student's total grade based on the points they've earned in Google Classroom. This is ideal for a distance learning situation because it allows the students to see EXACTLY where they are missing points, and easily click on the assignment to finish it, revise it, see feedback, etc. 

For this reason, I don't plan on using Infinite Campus very often. I will probably input students' total scores from Google Classroom four times per semester - a Q1 progress grade, a Q1 grade, a Q2 progress grade, and a final semester grade. 

If you are listed as your child's Guardian in Google Classroom, you should receive a summary of the week, including any missing assignments. Unfortunately, the weekly summary will not show you the grade, so if you would like more frequent progress reports, please have your child open their Google Classroom and show you their current grade. Here are some instructions from Google on how to view your grade as a student.

Welcome 2020

Hi parents and students!

Welcome to Fall 2020! If you (or your child) are in my class and have not signed up for Remind or Google classroom, please CLICK HERE to view the codes! 

Watch the video below for more information about my class and how it will run this fall!