English 12

Friday We spent a bit too much of today's class reviewing (via a raucous game) some of the more unfamiliar/difficult exam terms. Afterwards, we took a quick look at some sample synthesis exam questions. I asked you to highlight the verb in the question so you know what you are being asked to do and then I asked you to highlight the key words in the rest of the question. These are both good strategies for the Provincial Exam. We will discuss these types of questions more next week. Thursday Parent Teacher Interviews Wednesday Steak Flexes its Muscle paragraphs were due today. It was also the last date to hand-in the term essay on your banned book without a time penalty (time meaning spending some of your free time at school tomorrow). I offered you two readings today: Who I am Not (fiction) and Faking It (non-fiction). Your next task will be to assess which piece (discuss The Bastard and either Who I Am Not or Faking It) demonstrates the greater drawbacks being an imposter im

Friday Hooray! It took all week for me to get there, but we finally began reading "The Bastard" today. You will just have to wait until next week to see if your predictions about the Bastard and Wilson's daughter are correct. We also spent some time reviewing exam terms and devices with the Grade 10 flashcards which unfortunately seem to be missing the word simile??? Term papers on the banned/challenged books were due today. As long as I get your papers emailed to me over the weekend, that will be fine. Hopefully everyone filled in their evidence sheets for the term assessments. Have a great weekend. Thursday Essays!!! I had big plans to begin the short story "The Bastard" today - seems like I have been trying to start that story for weeks now! Most of the class was spent discussing the term essay; working on the term essay. It's due tomorrow, so I hope the time today was helpful. Wednesday Today we did some "meta-work". I asked you to go thro

Friday I was away today. Hope the quiz went well. I asked the TOC to get you to continue with identifying the tools of bias/manipulation on your copies of the A.A.Gill article. We will do a re-write of the paragraph on Monday. For the remainder of the class you had time to work on reading your novel; working on your novel autograph; planning your essay; writing your essay. Thursday Forgive all the weird colours! Cutting and pasting from Word is causing all kinds of problems... Once the Hemingway essays were collected, everyone spent time reading their novel, doing the autograph, writing an essay outline, or starting the term paper. In the second half of the class, we returned to A. A. Gill's article about steak. I let you know that Gill is regarded as " a dyslexic writer, a teetotal alcoholic, a high-end restaurant critic who thinks that eating a steak which costs more than the waiter’s daily wage is “uncomfortable and wrong." Reminder,  possible techniques of bias o

Friday It was Friday today so we did another rousing activity to review/practice some of those 185 Provincial Exam terms and devices. The girls were the clear victors on this occasion! Afterwards we returned to the Hemingway essay; the good copy accompanied by the rough draft and criteria sheet, is due next Thursday, November 13th. Thursday I returned almost everyone's Hemingway essay today. After identifying all those cryptic red scribbles on your drafts, I gave you some more essay tips: use present tense no quotes to prove an event happened not all evidence needs to be a quote use characters last names don't say he does a good job! write so a person who has not read the text can follow your arguments Wednesday After a bit of time on the NetBooks practicing exam terms, we turned our attention back to the Hemingway essay. Again, some positive feedback on the essays I am reviewing would include: improved introductions, better thesis statements, embedded quotes! The