Read, Read, and Read Some More

     Topics in Literature is off to a great start!  With two sections and forty five students, there is a lot to learn and a lot of reading and writing getting done.  When I looked at the first reading and vocabulary blogs, I saw that, at least partially because we hadn't had any other posts due in the previous week, students read way past the eighty to one hundred pages I'd assigned.  Out of curiosity, I asked my instructional aide, Julia, to add up just how many.  And the number she came up with? 5,446! That's an average of 121 pages per student.  I'm excited; I hope they are, too.

     What have I been reading lately?  Well, my daughter really likes that book she's holding called Jet Set Babies Wear Wings, so I've read that a few times. :)  And I also just started a book recommended to me by both my grandmother and one of my AP Literature students, The Boston Girl, by Anita Diamant.  The narrative voice in it is great, so I'm looking forward to seeing where the plot goes. Next post I hope I have an awesome quotation blog to post as an example!

First Quarter Plan

       Though this is an independent class, there are certain requirements I've set up to make it optimally successful.  One of the main guidelines is that while you choose a topic, you aren't just going to wing it for the rest of the quarter.  I want you to know where you are starting, where you are going, what you want to learn, and what resources you're going to use.  Therefore, the first thing that we have to do to have a great experience in this class is to make a plan for the quarter.  The plan has four requirements:

1.  Introductory paragraph with your topic and your reasons for wanting to study this topic.
2.  Essential questions for the quarter (remember that essential questions are open ended).
3.  List of books that you will read for the quarter (must equal at least 80-100 pages a week).  It's better to have too many books rather than too few.  I'd say minimum of four.
4. Schedule of reading.  For this you can download a calendar or simply type a list of weeks and which books/pages you plan to be on each week.

       To make this more clear, I hoped to insert two example plans from students from last year's class. However, the student blogs "expired" with the Pentucket e-mail addresses. Therefore, you will simply have to follow the instructions above. Ms. Costello has them also and is in the library ready to help. I am so excited to see what you choose and post by Tuesday. Feel free to get this done far earlier and begin your reading as you have your first posts due soon after! (See School Loop for these dates.)  Good luck! :)