Will reviewed his homework assignment and did an excellent job answering the comprehension questions. Next, we reviewed the literary term “conflict”. We discussed the different types of internal and external conflict. Then, Will found 4 examples of the external conflict, “man vs man” present in the novel. He took notes about the root causes of the four conflicts he identified. After his work on the novel, Will read a Newsela article about “fake” news. He identified the main ideas and key details in the article. For homework, Will is going to read pages 206-241 in our novel and answer comprehension questions.

Will took a Media Literacy assessment during the first part of our session today. After beginning the assessment, he became nervous and felt he was unprepared. After reassurances, he continued with the exam and earned a perfect score. Next, we reviewed the comprehension questions that he completed for homework. He has begun to regularly use quotes from the text to support his answers, and we discussed the importance of using text evidence. After we reviewed his homework, we had a very intense discussion about the content of the story, and how some of the topics made him feel uncomfortable. He is taking a mature attitude when approaching these topics, and shared that he reads it “like a lawyer” just looking for the facts. This novel has been a stretch for him emotionally, and he has shared that he would never pick a book like this to read and is only doing it because it is “required” by his college. For homework, he will continue reading pages 168-205 and answer 6 comprehension questions. Will continues to work hard and puts 100% into every assignment!

Natalie is approaching modern day British literature as we have chronologically worked through the major authors and pieces. Today she studied and took a quiz on George Orwell. She has already read Animal Farm, and will still need to read Orwell's 1984. Natalie handed in a rough draft from her book, To Kill a Mockingbird. It shows good proclivities for writing as usual, but with progress. The main corrections included getting a revision in mostly present tense (as that is best for writing about literature) and citing her in-text quotes correctly.

Today Natalie and I spent an hour together as I read, explained, and corrected a very good student's essay from my college composition class. I wanted to show her the kind of analysis writing that she will be learning and doing in college. This was a sample final analysis essay based on a piece of literature chosen from a list of 20 books at the beginning of the semester that incorporated academic research on the theme chosen from ten options. This student wrote his analysis on The Book Thief. Natalie responded well to the activity. In fact, she has decided to read The Book Thief instead of Huck Finn. I think it is a way better choice. We will continue to study and use the pages on essay writing that I copied for her two weeks ago with strategies for intro and concluding paragraphs, and so forth.

Will completed the Newsela article about social media and loneliness. He took a quiz on the article and did a good job understanding the content and the concerns of the author regarding students spending too much time on social media and not enough time interacting with people. Next, we continued our discussion about media literacy and did a review for the test which he will take on Monday. The test will cover the core concepts of digital media, propaganda (specifically band wagon, glittering generalities, name-calling, and testimonials), stereotypes, digital footprints, and social media. Will should review his notes over the weekend in preparation for the assessment. We then reviewed his homework and discussed the reading. He did an excellent job on the comprehension questions! For homework, Will is going to read pages 129-167 and answer the first 6 comprehension questions. We will discuss questions 7-10 in class on Monday.

Sam had not completed her assignment, so she needed to finish her double journal entries. She also needed to finish the creation of her vocabulary study cards. She had not completed her research for the Career Narrative, so she also did that. Then we discussed the creation of her career narrative. We also continued our study of the novel. We read and stopped to discuss her double journal entries along with stopping to annotate for understanding and meaning. Sam will draft her career narrative and continue writing her double journal entries.

Sam and I continued our study of the novel. We read several chapters of the novel stopping to discuss theme. We also talked about writing the double journal entries, and what quotes would be good to use. We discussed the Career Narrative. Sam has not completed her research for the Career Narrative, and she needs to do that so we can begin writing. She also needs to complete her vocabulary study cards and her double journal entries.

We had a very good discussion about the section Will read for homework today. Will had a good understanding of the actions in the text, but he shared that the Billy Deel section made him uncomfortable. We talked a bit about his feelings about reading things that made him uncomfortable. Will shared that he knows that in college he might have to read and discuss things that he might not normally read, and that he believed he could still learn from that even though he didn’t like it. He had a very mature attitude about this, and it was good for him to discuss this with me. Next, we reviewed the comprehension questions he worked on at home. He demonstrated a good understanding of how the characters in the memoir have changed and grown in the story thus far. After completing our novel work, he did a quick assessment on digital life based on last week’s discussions. Then he read an article about Generation Z and social media. For homework, Will is going to read pages 94-125 and respond to a series of 6 comprehension questions.

Continue with Career narrative and study of the novel.

Sam and I continued our study of the novel. We annotated for understanding and literary devices used by the author. We also discussed possible topics for Sam's double journal entries. We then completed Unit 2 in the vocabulary book. Sam created study notecards to help her learn the words. She does quite well with the application of the advanced vocabulary words. We also worked on completing the pre-writing for her career narrative. Sam needs to do some research in order to completely finish the pre-writing section.