12 Angry Men at the Kavinoky

I'm looking to take my AP Literature students to a play this year. Anyway, I stumbled across 12 Angry Men at the Kavinoky, and I know some of you teacht it.

English Journal - November 2007

I've renewed my subscription to English Journal. If you're interested in an article, drop me a line and I'll run off a copy for you. Here is a list of this month's articles:

• In Search of Hero, in Search of Self - Using the I Search paper to investigate heroism.
• Viva la Revolucion: Transforming Teaching and Assessing Student Writing through Collaborative Inquiry
• Developing Critical Consciousness: Resistance Literature in a Chicano Literature Class
• What Classroom Technology Has Taught Me about Curriculum, Teaching, and Infinite Possibilities
• Transforming English With Graphic Novels: Moving Towards Our "Optimus Prime"
• Perspective Taking as Transformative Practice in Teaching Multicultural Literature to White Students
• Vygotsky and the Social Dynamics of Classrooms
• Re-engineering the English Classroom, or Toward a More Supple Teaching Model
• Dripping with Literacy, a Jazz-Fueled Road Trip, a place to Breathe
• The Grapes of Wrath Restored: Creating Web Sites to Assess Student Learning
• Coming to Teaching - Tom Romano

Again, if you're interested in an article, let me know and I'll run you off a copy.

Blog Bad

I know I've been blog bad lately. I've had a lot to do to prepare for NCTE. I promise I'll be better from here on in. And remember, this is a place for you to post also.

Unnecessary Quotation Marks

Uploaded with Skitch!

Cheryl and I were discussing punctuation at the gang inservice yesterday, and I remembered this site profiling instances of unnecessary quotation marks. Pretty funny stuff.

Meeting Minutes 10/17

Members Attending: Zagst, Benson, Wrobel, Moore, Caccamise, Malley

Hey folks. This morning we meet in the library at 7:45 for a brief department meeting. We discussed the following items:

• The Blog - received email from new members to get them "blog-good" (Lauren has already been blog-good! Great job Lauren!
• Overhead Projector - I promised Jeanie and Veronica my overhead. I will deliver that bad boy to room 206 tomorrow.
• Handling the paper load - We tossed around ideas regarding not being overwhelmed by correcting papers. Some pretty good suggestions were bandied about, but we all agreed this this is one of the sucky challenging aspects of being an English teacher.
• Mia shared the librarian's news that she will soon be ordering any books. If anyone has any titles in mind, let her know.
• CSchlEP is coming up, and we discussed it. We'll need to be discussing approaches we can take to improve student achievement.

Next meeting: Library * 7:45 * Thursday, November 8th

TKAM @ Studio Arena

Hello everyone,

TKAM is playing at Studio Arena early next year (jan. - feb.). I would love to teach the novel and take my 9th graders to the performance in Feb. Has anyone ever done anything like that? I know that some of the elementary schools (BPS) have received class sets of complimentary tickets and was wondering if McKinley is in on that too. I'll probably be calling the theater soon so if anyone might be interested in going, please just let me know your student numbers. Also, is there a class set of the novels floating around anywhere that might be available between Dec. and Feb.? I have close to 40 students in each of my 9th grade classes. Thanks guys!

Wednesday Meeting Minutes

Attendance: Caccamise, W.Benson, Zagst, Bouquard, Wrobel, Moore

Overview of AP Vertical Teams--new staff members need booklet if possible
*Information given to new staff about what vertical team is, has done, and hopes to do
*further discussion on portfolios and assessment

Eng I and II exams
*started planning for midterms as it has already been decided that the finals would be tasks 1 and 4 for freshman and 2 and 3 for sophmores. Junior and senior teachers will also need midterm to be determined by grade-level teachers. Lesley likes the mid-term textbook assessment with take home supplement and some agreed. For juniors, Regents exam sounds appropriate---speaking of which we should probably get to organizing practice exams in the cafe again for tasks 2/3 at least before one of the 1/2 days so we can correct.

Writing Tasks
*some discussion and assign for next time for grade levels to decide what elements of writing they will be focusing on

Problems/Concerns/Info
*Wrobel needs at least 7 language e/f workbooks
*Moore needs teachrs edition 9th gr textbook (i found and will give her today)
*both Wrobel and Moore have expressed concern over lack of definite grade-level guidelines and bench marks.
*Mr. Hughes restated the fact that he has some novels in his room if we need them

Tentative meeting date: oct.17th unless otherwise noted

Memo: English Department meeting Wednesday, 10/04

Wednesday morning we will be having our 2nd meeting of the year in the Library. The meeting will start promptly at 7:40 and punctuality will be most appreciated. I am putting together an agenda for the meeting. If you have any news, questions, or other items to share either slip a note in my mailbox or email me at jcmalley@buffaloschools.org.

See you Wednesday morning.

Ishmael Beah at UB

Anyone interested in running a field trip to go see Ishmael Beah speak at UB? He wrote a memoir (A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier) about his experience as a child soldier in Sierre Leone.

UB is offering high schools up to 40 free tickets a piece. I know I would like to go, and plan on talking to Mrs. Barton tomorrow or the next day. The only draw back is that it is on a Saturday (10/24) at 8pm. I don't know the rules on that one.

Meetings?

We need to start getting together to talk turkey. I'm thinking about a meeting at the end of the week. Any suggested dates or comments?

Textbooks

Here's the place for all your textbook needs. Leave me a note so I can get you taken care of.

Staff Meeting #3 - August 20th

This morning we met in room 404, along with the history department. Mr. Tydus and Ms. Morrell came and spoke to us about lesson plans and gradebooks. We spent the rest of the time researching commonly used editing marks in order to develop a comprehensive school wide plan for feedback to students.

Staff Meeting #2 -- August 13th

I've been derelict in my blogging duty, and have yet to update the minutes from last week. So, here's a recap of what we did last week.

Roll Call:
* Murray, Jermaine, Britt
* Lesley, Joel, Mia, Marty

Final Exams
We decided that we are going to institute final exams for 9th and 10th grade. These exams will constitute 20-25% of the fourth quarter average (instead of a 5th "quarterly" grade).

English I - Listening (Task I) and Critical Lens (Task IV)
English II - Factual Reading (Task II) and Controlling Idea (Task III)

We'll have to modify the exam for Language!, and that's something we can talk about during the year.

More importantly, we reviewed the 9th grade NYS ELA performance indicators to determine which pieces 9th grade students will work on for their portfolios.

Here we go:

• Process Essay Analysis
• Research Paper - Factual research paper related to another subject area...possibly related to historical period.
• Controlling Idea Essay - There are PI's related to the controlling idea, but we will probably push this into the 10th grade year.
• Personal Response Paper - Students will write a personal narrative or memoir related to a novel. In other words, they will identify a situation or theme or setting related to the novel and compose their own original work.
• Compare and Contrast Film to Play - You get it.
• Critical Lens Essay
  

So, there is a working draft. We need to talk about poetic forms and also get input from the rest of the department.

AP Syllabi

We've been discussing backmapping and aligning our curriculum based on the AP Language class. Cheryl just emailed the AP Language syllabus that she and Mia developed. I am also uploading a copy of my syllabus for easy reference.

(If you notice, you can download this file, or visit the file hosted at Scribd. Just look below the file for options. You can also enlarge the file within this window, but the place to do so has teeny tiny text.)

AP Language Syllabus


AP Literature Syllabus

First Summer Professional Development Meeting

Ok, today we outlined three goals for our meetings and going into next year.

1. Portfolios - We would like to identify common writing pieces that highlight skills we want our students to develop for each grade level.

2. Review AP Language Curriculum & Build - Look over Mia & Cheryl's AP Syllabus and
Align Grade Level Curriculum and plan from there.

3. Align Curriculum by Grade Level - Starting from junior year and working backwards.

Here's What We Did:

Essentially, for two hours, we looked at Mia & Cheryl's AP Language Syllabus & discussed things we need to see addressed over English 9 & 10 to support AP Language. We decided that a few skills that need emphasis and alignment are:
standard editing makrs
process of editing, peer revision strategies
multiple choice strategies
annotation emphasis & strategies (especially since students will not have their own books) with an emphasis of strategies
Vocabulary - we discussed this at length and came up with no definitive answer as of yet
we discussed working in open book tests & using opening exercises to help out with attendance
Utilize common acronymic strategies to approach literature and nonfiction
Identified the common writing pieces in AP Language syllabus that we need to address....

Next Meeting We'd Like to Accomplish
List English III types of writing
Identify and list English II Tasks for the Portfolio

AP Vertical Team

Do we want to make plans to set up some meetings in the next few weeks or during the summer for some extra cash and iron out the final wrinkles in the portfolio system etc? I will be away from June 23-27 but would be willing to do so any other time. Mrs. Barton told Cheryl and me that there was money left over from the grant available.

Week of June 4-June 8

Final Journal Collection #39-50 on Monday, June 4
Review for Final Exam Tue/Wed (June 5/6)
FINAL EXAM JUNE 6, 7, & 8
PREPARE TASK #4 ESSAY OUTLINE FOR FINAL ON FRIDAY JUNE 8

Free Teacher's Guides

I found free Penguin Teacher's Guides if you need any--they are pretty good

http://us.penguingroup.com/static/html/services-academic/teachersguides.html

Reformatting the Summer Reading List

Alright, the time is now. If you would like to see any changes in the Summer Reading List, either in selections offered or requirements, then you must respond. Either post your suggestions to the blog (for those of you reading a print copy, mackenglishdept.blogspot.com) or write me a note on this sheet of paper and put it in my mailbox. Or email me. Or send up a concise smoke signal.

Click here for last year's reading list. Again, if you're reading a print copy of this post, then you should find the reading list on the other side of this sheet.

Let's Meet This Week

We have several important things we must discuss.

1. Summer Reading List - The time is now. Let's identify the works we want to replace, and agree on what work we are demanding along with it.
2. Writing Portfolio - Let's agree on 3-4 pieces per grade level and start working on this next year, with the expectation that we will identify a few more types of writing per grade in the future.
3. If there's anything else, I've forgotten. Forgive me. Let's get this going again.

I propose we meet on Friday, if that's cool with everyone. I can't drop off the boy until 7-ish on Wednesdays, and with the length of the 7:10 am Tim Horton's drive through line, I barely make it by 7:30. I'll talk to you guys individually this week to make sure this is cool.