November Recap

Is it me, or did November seem like the quickest month ever?! We only had one full week of classes the entire month due to conferences, Veterans Day, and Thanksgiving. Not a bad month at all! ;)

My English 9 classes spent the last part of October and most of November reading Divergent by Veronica Roth. While quite a few of my students had already either read the book or seen the movie, it was a fun read and we had lots of great discussions! They especially liked that we watched the movie in class after we'd taken the test (semi-spoiler alert: the movie is VERY different from the book). Inspired by another teacher's extra credit movie opportunity, I decided to offer Insurgent (the second in the trilogy) one evening for my freshmen to attend. They could earn 10 extra credit points for simply attending the movie in my room one evening, and and additional 10 points were available for completing a movie study guide. I had 33 of my 52 students show up, so I'd say it was a success! After Divergent we read a couple more short stories ("The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Scarlet Ibis"). Now we're just beginning a mini-unit on personal narratives. I am looking forward to reading my students' writing since this is really the first big writing assignment we've worked on this year. After our personal narratives, we'll finish out the semester (in January) with Finding Forrester, a movie that was made into a book!

English 11 has been a rollercoaster of topics! Ever since I read Donalyn Miller's books about independent reading, we dedicate time during every class for reading. Her first book is called The Book Whisperer and her second book (which I found most applicable to my classroom) is called Reading in the Wild. The students can pick any books they want (school appropriate books!) and just read. No assignments or book reports or projects. Just reading. While some of them fought me on it to begin with, nearly all of my students have found at least one book or author they like, so far. When a student finishes their chosen book, they simply move on to another book! I have some voracious readers who have already read 5 books in the month that we've been doing this, and I have other students who are still on their first book. The whole point is that students read at their own pace, for their own enjoyment. In addition to this independent reading we also read two Sherlock Holmes stories, The Adventure of the Speckled Band and A Case of Identity. We also watched the first Sherlock Holmes movie in class (the one with Robert Downey Jr, SWOON)! I offered the second Sherlock Holmes movie as an extra credit opportunity for my juniors, and had 18 of them attend. After Sherlock Holmes we read 'The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe. My students commented on how I always pick creepy stories (sorry folks, I love Brit Lit!), but I always say that they remember the creepy stuff more than anything else! ;) We just started reading The Crucible by Arthur Miller, and they seem to like it well enough. They especially like listening to the play version because the actors gets so into their roles! 

Overall I'm looking forward to powering through the next two and a half weeks and then enjoying Christmas vacation :) I'll try and update you here a few more times before then, but no promises! #teacherlife

1st Official World Youth Day Meeting

Wow! I am thrilled to be writing about my first official WYD meeting! This morning I met with 12 other pilgrims who are attending WYD with the Diocese of Sioux Falls, about half of our total pilgrimage group. Some of the other pilgrims live a couple of hours away and were unable to attend.

We began our meeting in prayer (I love being Catholic!) and proceeded to introduce ourselves, our background, and why we decided to attend WYD. Our group is comprised in age from a sophomore in high school to a grandma (who has 14 grandkids!) It was wonderful to hear why the other people also wanted to make this historic journey. 

Our tentative itinerary includes flying from Sioux Falls to Warsaw, Poland on July 23rd, 2016 and returning August 2nd, 2016. I am hoping to extend my trip on the back end to visit a couple other cities in Europe before returning home, but that is still very tentative. Our major sites to see are Saint Mary's Basilica, Divine Mercy Shrine, Our Lady of Czestochowa (more commonly known as the Black Madonna), and Auschwitz concentration camp.

Saint Mary's Basilica

Divine Mercy Shrine

Our Lady of Czestochowa

entrance to Auschwitz

Please continue to keep me and my fellow pilgrims in your prayers. I am especially praying to discern an intention to take with me on this pilgrimage next year. While I feel called to attend World Youth Day for many reasons, it is hard to articulate what I hope to bring home with me. I appreciate your prayers for this specific intention!

A Month?!

It's hard to believe my last post was already a whole month ago! Time sure does fly when you are busy!

Lately, I've been working to really settle into a routine with my time management. My planning is now consistently 1 unit ahead (for printing and sanity purposes). My specific day to day plans are about 2 weeks out, with changes depending on my students.

In Journalism we have now published (and distributed) 2 monthly Echo newspapers! Woohoo! November is a short month publication-wise due to Thanksgiving, so we're only doing a 4 page spread this month instead of the normal 6 pages. Both my students and I are exceedingly thankful for this! :)

In English 9 my students have been diligently working through a long unit on sentence diagramming. For the most part they are really quick learners in this, so we are close to the unit test. To supplement English 9 we've also been reading Divergent as a mostly independent read. Many of my students have either seen the movie or read the book before, so the reading is mostly at their own pace (I give at least 10 minutes everyday in class, usually more). They've done some extension activities about factions, vocabulary, character analysis, etc. That big test will be next week!

In English 11 we finally closed out the short stories unit with a test, and have also finished a quick sentence diagramming unit as well. My juniors have been working on independent reading as well as some mystery genre stories (Sherlock Holmes and a few Poe pieces). Coming up next is The Crucible!

Thanks for following along! :)

BVHS Homecoming 2015!

Coronation dress :)

Sully and Mike from Monster's Inc

Tiki (beach) theme, the Flash, and Sully!

Decade Day: two 60's hippies and one 70's gal

Planning Only Gets You So Far

You'd think I'd have the planning process down pat by now with all the work I did this summer, but no such luck! Most of my planning focused on revamping the materials that went with the curriculum, and not the actual curriculum itself. BIG MISTAKE! American lit is already not my favorite, so not pre-reading was a bad choice on my part. Nearly all the curriculum from previous years is super dry and boring. Very classic, but very boring. After just two short stories, I knew something had to change. I polled my Facebook friends (thanks!) and came up with a new list of American lit short stories that are a little more exciting/creepy.

It turns out that I am liking my freshman classes more than I anticipated. This is of course a nice surprise! ;) While it can be difficult to get them to stop talking, I like their energy and enthusiasm for school (some of them anyway).

My real struggle has been with the Journalism program. While I do have one class a day for this, many of my students are not exactly "go-getters". Sometimes it's like pulling teeth to get them to do anything at all! But I've found that giving them more time (and I mean LOTS more time) has helped. It has also been a bit of a setback that the technology we work with is so old. I mean 10+ years old. There have to be easier/more efficient ways of making a publication, but we are limited by what we have. Hopefully that will improve next year when the school (tentatively) goes 1-to-1 where every student has a device, most often a laptop.

This week is Homecoming week, so I will be sure to post some pictures of the various dress up days. I'm planning to participate in at least 3, maybe 4 :)

Beginning of the year... whew!

Wow friends! I can hardly believe a whole 3 weeks have gone by already! We started school on Wednesday August 26th (with the students) and have been going since.

I started off my English 9 classes with a short stories unit. We had already read "The Necklace", "The Most Dangerous Game", and "A Sound of Thunder". Lots of long chats about literary devices and filling out plot development charts. Sometime I forget how young they are and how basic I need to think/teach to make sure they have the background knowledge.

In English 11 we also started with some short stories, but I was having a tough time with the dry American literature. That meant a quick detour into grammar! For most people I know that doesn't sound like more fun, but for me it is! We have been working for the last week on reviewing the eight parts of speech (pretty easy). That means we've been doing lots of activities and even some games. My juniors will have their parts of speech test Thursday. After that we'll go back into some short stories, but this time they aren't as dry! Hopefully they go well.

Lots of other teachers and some of you have asked how my classes have been going, and to be honest, English 9 and 11 aren't bad. I know that the "right" answer for a new teacher is AHHHHH SO TOUGH ;) But I feel mostly confident with my students and my material now. Journalism is where I feel the most pressure and where I'm struggling the most. I had a great time and learned a lot at the Jostens workshop from this summer, so the yearbook is not too intimidating. However, the printed newspaper is another story. I have zero journalism background, so it is exceedingly difficult for me to know how/what to teach to a brand new journalism staff. It will probably be a miracle if the newspaper makes it to print next week and doesn't have great big empty white spots... I'll take all the prayers and well-wishes you've got, friends!

I revamped my bulletin right by my door to go with this year's school theme: Be BV

Dad helps me grade papers and he is a ROCKSTAR!

one of my favorite parts of driving to school is watching the sunrise :)

we had an awesome storm last week that left behind some crazy clouds!

Overall I am beyond ecstatic to be back at BVHS this year. It is everything Egypt wasn't, and much more in line with what I imagined my teaching career would look like. I'll try and keep you posted often :)

Stitch Fix!

Today I received my second Stitch Fix in the mail! Two months ago, when I tried it for the first time, I didn't love any of my items. This time is so different!!! So glad I stuck with it :)

I decided to keep the purse, but send back the rest. I really loved the darker chambray top, but it was a little too tight across the chest for comfort. I already have multiple black pencil skirts, so that went back as well. I loved the color scheme of the maxi dress, but it has a horizontal pattern which doesn't flatter me. Overall looking forward to my next "fix" in two months! :)