Gooooooooals!

And just like that, we are in the middle of September! I apologize that it is so hard to subscribe to this blog. I had no idea that it would be so tricky as I didn’t try to subscribe myself. If you are having problems then I’d suggest just bookmarking the site. My plan is to post at the end of each week with the occasional weekday post if time allows. 

It has been another week of establishing our routines and talking about what it means to learn. I’ve been working my way through individual conferences so that I can get to know everyone and figure out who they are as learners. I want to know how they have felt about their English classes in the past. I want to know if they feel they are better readers or writers. I want to know what they think they need to work on as readers and writers. I also want to know what they want from me as a facilitator of learning.

Reading

This week we have continued to read our independent novels and reviewed the rubric that I created based on the success criteria that we co-created with both classes. We have added the option to create three settings in Minecraft that are thematically significant to the tic-tac-toe board as it became very clear that this is a mode of communication that many students would enjoy. Students have all set and shared their reading goals with me and some have even begun to work on their first novel responses!

Writing

This week we have done some writing in response to mentor texts and continue to look inward as we generate ideas that will help us with the short memoirs that we will be working on next week. We have been looking at great examples of writing, talking about various things that they could try as writers, writing for 5 minutes, sharing their writing with others and then finding something that they could revise in their writing. I love that so many are willing to share their work with the whole class so we can all grow as writers. 

 Media Literacy

This week students learned how they could use the app Pages to create final publications of their work throughout the year. We also spent time making graphic texts through the creation of vision boards. Students were asked to develop both academic and personal goals for this term which we will be revisiting as they reflect on their individual learning journeys. We co-created the success criteria for this assignment which we will be using for self-assessment next week.

That’s all for now! Thanks for stopping by and checking out what we’ve been up to in East 109 this week :-)