Wednesday, September 9 - Friday, September 11

Friday
Today we went over the multiple choice questions about the poem "An Ordinary Day". Next we reviewed the criteria for the stand alone text response about irony. I noticed many positives in the responses I scored: strong sentence structure, good organization/flow of ideas, irony was well understood, stayed on topic, used quotes (sometimes embedded!). What we need to work towards for the exam is elaborating more and ensuring that insights are supported with embedded quotes, and practicing reading and responding under a time constraint. Overall, the answers I received were strong and show great potential.
For most of the remainder of the class we played a team game and reviewed the short story terms and devices that could appear on the exam.
Today was "Name the Inspirational Salmon Day" - the winning name will be announced on Monday.
I learned everyone's names! Test my memory on Monday please.
Closing question for the class: What does it mean to be a Canadian?
Thursday
Most of today's class was taken up by the assembly. So after organizing things for some new students, we played Pictionary for 10 minutes. When the game ended, it was 26seconds for The Adams Family (awesome name btw) and 13 seconds for 19 Kids and Counting (clever name also!).
Wednesday
Today we went over the course outline and had a look at the structure/content of the provincial exam. In the last 30 minutes of class, I gave out one section of a previous exam: the stand alone text portion. Individually, everyone read the text, answered the multiple choice questions and completed the written discussion of the text. We will take a look at the multiple choice answers tomorrow and I should have the paragraph(s) scored for you.
I am looking forward to a great semester of English with all of you!

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