Category: English 11 Regents (2018-2019)

Interstitial instruction, feedback, and discussion for students in English 11 Regents for the 2018-2019 school year.

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Final Failsafe: Regents Exam (6/19/19)

  By All Junior Classes (2018-2019), AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019), English 11 Regents (2018-2019)

The following information is copied over from the “13 Days to Go” posts from May 29. Those posts were updates to the “40 Days to Go” posts from April 12. The subheadings below link back to the May 29 posts.

For Students in P3 English 11

Remember that you were already assigned a practice ELA Regents Exam this year. In addition to the multiple-choice work completed in class, you workshopped the following essays:

Depending on how hard you worked in March and April, you may find it necessary to dedicate significant time to exam prep now. Start here:

The first link covers the three parts of the exam. It includes suggested time to spend on each, plus a detailed list of the kind of reading and writing expected of you. This is all review.

As triage, you have been assigned the August 2018 exam through Castle Learning. The site automatically provides feedback: correct answers, answer explanations, sample writing, and so on.

You will find five assignments. Part 1 of the exam is split by text. You should see:

  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 1, Passage A
  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 1, Passage B
  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 1, Passage C
  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 2
  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 3

June 17 Update: You should spend some time before the exam date reviewing the Castle Learning practice alongside your teachers’ feedback. Make sure you also read the letter from administration about these exams.

For Students in P5/P9 AP English

Your AP exam prep, done properly, will have also prepped you for the ELA Regents. The two tests are similar, as you’ll see.

Start here:

The first link covers the three parts of the exam. It includes suggested time to spend on each, plus a detailed list of the kind of reading and writing expected of you.

To practice, you have been assigned the August 2018 exam through Castle Learning. The site automatically provides feedback: correct answers, answer explanations, sample writing, and so on.

You will find five assignments. Part 1 of the exam is split by text. You should see:

  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 1, Passage A
  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 1, Passage B
  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 1, Passage C
  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 2
  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 3

June 17 Update: You should spend some time before the exam date completing the Castle Learning practice and reviewing the format of the test. Make sure you also read the letter from administration about Regents, and ask any last-minute questions you have below.

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Another Brick in the Wall

  By All Classes (2018-2019), AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019), English 10 Regents (2018-2019), English 11 Regents (2018-2019), Triage

Let’s jump into another failsafe, using the rolling whiteboard in our space as a springboard:

The drawing in the corner is a work-in-progress by one of the artists in the space. I appreciate the balance it gives to the much less artistic stuff happening in the upper-left corner.

All students (except for graduating seniors, of course) should make note of the required summer reading, which is posted to the high school’s website. Copies are available through our Google Classroom, as well. You should also note that the deadline for submitting any artifacts related to your Pareto Projects is Wednesday, June 12.

Course specifics:

English 10

You are in the midst of the final exam, and a complete overview of what to expect was already posted and photocopied. As a reminder, the English Department’s rubric covers everything related to the process, from start to finish; you will be assessed on your handwritten essay, your typed revision, and your Turnitin submission. It all counts. We will sit down with everything you produced through June 14 and evaluate it.

If you finish early, you should revise again. If you still finish early, you will be allowed to use the remainder of the week to finish your reader-response essay and/or your final self-assessment of the Pareto Project. See this post for details.

English 11

Finish the practice Regents Exam assignment posted to Castle Learning. You only need to do Part 1 unless told individually to practice Part 2 or Part 3. You need the repetition of the multiple-choice passages before next week. See this post for details.

If you are stuck on your college essay, talk to us in class about delaying the required reader’s response until the weekend. We can be flexible with the deadlines.

The Regents Exam will be on June 19. Any information you need will be posted to your course stream on Google Classroom.

AP English

Make absolutely sure you’ve looked at the Regents Exam overview posted here. It is also a very, very good idea to practice the multiple-choice section before next week. Use Castle Learning.

In class, you should take three days to practice writing a reader-response essay. We’ll talk about getting the most out of that experience, which should be a low-impact, high-yield one. If you are stuck on your college essay, however, talk to me about exemptions or adjustments.

Again, be sure you’re familiar with the Regents Exam. Read the overview, look at the prompts from the provided test, and get yourself in the right mindset.

The Regents Exam will be on June 19. Any information you need will be posted to your course stream on Google Classroom.

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The End-of-Year, Liminal Stuff

  By All Classes (2018-2019), AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019), English 10 Regents (2018-2019), English 11 Regents (2018-2019), Space Explainers, Triage

Like the last post, this one is about choices and consequences, but it’s more focused on that all-important 36th chamber, or what we do between the bells.

For most of the year, we focus our in-class time on a different kind of feedback: lots of circulating of ideas, grouping and regrouping students, etc., all built around ongoing, collaborative tasks. It’s a makerspace, with all the shifts that suggests.

The end of year dictates a lot more summative feedback, including more summative notes on your final projects, essays, etc. There are also exams to study for and final grades to compile.

Now consider how many deadlines, toward the end of a school year, fall on or around the last day of classes. This shifts the focus away from what you will take with you — the skills, traits, and habits that will help or hurt you next year — and toward what you did, fortunately or unfortunately, as assessed by rubrics and final grades and so on.

This changes the day-to-day shape of the period, at least for the last 13 days or so1. Most classes experience similar shifts — more review, more presentations, in-class finals that span several days. It’s not unusual.

So you might see the teachers in this space spend an entire class period with one student, because she needs that much face-to-face help on her college essay.

You might see one of us spend a period hunched over a computer screen, because we’re adding feedback to the first draft of a book a student submitted that day for his Pareto Project.

You might see us meeting with a small group in a corner of the room for 30 minutes, because we need to walk them through a practice exam posted to Castle Learning.

None of these is that different from the normal makerspace setup, but it does preclude the kind of responsive redirection you’re used to. In other words, we’re not correcting your in-class focus unless it bubbles over into disruption or disrespect. Your choices are your own. That’s why you have such an exhaustive set of resources to guide you:

CYOA: The Cave of Time, Failsafes, and Redundancies

This is also the return of the return of the fatal flying guillotine. The onus is on you, the student, to make the right choice. If you can’t self-regulate, and if the vast number of failsafes fail you, and if the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation of the profiles fails you — well, then you’ve failed yourself.

This is the end of the year; you are now what you have repeatedly done, especially in these last few months. If you recognize deficits or gaps, it will be your responsibility to correct them before next year, wherever next year finds you — in college, in a job, in your senior year, etc. It might be best to focus on starting new habits that will carry over into next year.

Make absolutely no mistake here: You can and should reach out for clarification about anything you get in terms of summative feedback, from final exam scores to final GAP scores to final Pareto Projects. You can — and will — receive the same level of feedback as always. But in the last few days, you get out of this space exactly what you put into it. That’s not unique to a makerspace, but it may feel more in focus in a makerspace. The liminal stuff is given more clarity.

So it’s down to you. Recognize what that looks like.

  1. That’s an arbitrary number, although it is exactly the focus of these organizing posts in 2019: English 10, English 11, and AP English. ↩

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CYOA: The Cave of Time, Failsafes, and Redundancies

  By All Classes (2018-2019), AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019), English 10 Regents (2018-2019), English 11 Regents (2018-2019), Space Explainers

Choose-your-own-adventure (CYOA) or Interactive storytelling has grown in popularity in the last few years, most recently due to the “Bandersnatch” episode of Netflix’s “Black Mirror” show. In an English makerspace, this is an excuse to revisit the first Choose Your Own Adventure books, which were published in the late 70s and early 80s, starting with The Cave of Time, by Edward Packer.

By “revisit,” of course, we mean “use as a metaphor to start a post on student choices.” Metaphors help us organize our thoughts, after all, even when there’s a bit of an edge to the work.

In this post, we’re talking about the choices available to students in the makerspace, how those choices are presented, and the extent to which structure and flexibility are intertwined and reiterated in different ways. As always:

What Is a (Humanities) Makerspace?

Turn to Page 180

This post will use evidence from a single day — May 31, 2019 — to highlight how much planning and preparation goes into this system of teaching. The “failsafes and redundancies” mentioned on one of the room’s whiteboard are the specific focus.

That whiteboard hangs in a corner by our cellphone storage. Students see it every day. (See the physical tour for context.) It’s a semi-permanent collection of class philosophies and protocols, and it includes a goal-setting checklist required at the start of each period.

Makerspaces thrive on specific, actionable student goals. You can’t build skills randomly. You can’t create meaning without a plan. Curiosity and discovery need more structure, not less, to flourish.

From the teacher’s perspective, that means engineering failsafes and redundancies for all the background reading, resource requirements, assignment instructions, etc., that students need to make choices and set goals. Students need to stumble across another iteration of this information every time they turn around.

The Rundown: May 31, 2019

Here is my set of notes for Friday, May 31, which were read aloud to each class and edited throughout the day:

These are updates, reminders, individual notes to myself, and so on. Since I have to consider students who are absent, I also pin a version of this sheet to Google Classroom. (One AP English class that Friday had ten students out — a third of the class — for Guidance group sessions, sickness, college visits, etc., for instance.)

This space uses a triptych approach to assessment, with three “panels” per quarter. Formal assignments are organized chronologically on Google Classroom to facilitate student work. So the next failsafe/redundancy is what students see under the current “panel” of assignments:

That’s a list of what AP English students must do at the end of the school year. When a student clicks to see more information, this is what they see:

Each panel opens up to show formal directions and materials for every unit, lesson, and assignment. That screenshot is of materials for the college essay, for instance. Any formal assignments will also include those materials, plus deadlines, further instructions, and a running tally of missing/submitted/returned work:

Another failsafe/redundancy is the course calendar, which is available through Google Classroom, the course website, and this direct link:

The calendar is constantly updated, with links to relevant instructional posts and handouts included next to brief outlines of each lesson. Recent updates have also brought the most recent panel of lessons to the top of the spreadsheet:

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F05%2FLessons-Q4C-AP-2.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=500px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

 

The calendar is another way for students (in this case, AP students) to organize themselves and choose their daily goals. It isn’t available offline, because of how often it is updated, and that raises an important point: All the online failsafes are designed to augment and support the in-class ones, and vice-versa.

In addition to the expected use of direct and small-group instruction, face-to-face redirection, and so on, there are whiteboards around the room that are updated with information as often as necessary. Click below to scroll through four of those whiteboards:

 

Students are surrounded by reminders about assignments and deadlines. Updates are even noted in different colors to help differentiate the new information.

It’s equally important that these whiteboards are surrounded by the innovations of the space — grade abatement profiles, interstitial learning protocols, posters on cognitive biases, etc. — because the specific assignments don’t happen in a vacuum.

To reiterate the point from earlier: All the physical redundancies augment the digital ones. The most widely used digital failsafes are on Google Classroom, where students submit formal assignments. The most powerful digital resource, however, is this course website.

Depending on the device you are using right now, you may not see the home page of this site in exactly the same way. Here is that home page on a Chromebook or desktop PC:

The menus and links are responsive, so they just look different on mobile browsers. Regardless, the site starts with a full set of links to daily essentials, calendar updates, and instructional posts. The home page centralizes whatever assignment or event is currently happening, too. In this case, it’s the Pareto Project presentations for the end of the year.

As another reminder/failsafe, the home page also has this:

CALENDAR & LESSON UPDATES [5/31 EDIT]

AP English Language & Composition: 40 Days to Go Update | 13 Days to Go Update

English 11: 40 Days to Go Update | 13 Days to Go Update

English 10: 40 Days to Go Update | 13 Days to Go Update

This is different from the regularly updated calendar of daily lessons. These are instructional posts specifically designed to help organize students. Twice in the last quarter, I have laid out in painstaking detail everything required, expected, etc. for the rest of the year: at the 40-days-to-go mark, and again at the 13-days-to-go mark. These posts came after spring break and our four-day Memorial Day weekend, respectively.

What these posts do is more than just create important redundancy in expectations. They also offer students a place to ask questions and engage in discussion with their teachers. That interstitial functionality isn’t often utilized well, but it has a lot of potential.

The Theory

It’s improbable that a student could spend a day in the space and miss all of those resources:

  • the spoken reminders and updates
  • the direct feedback in person
  • the whiteboards around the room
  • the printed copies of checklists
  • the Google Classroom updates
  • the Google Classroom unit materials and assignments
  • the updated calendars with links to other resources
  • this course website’s vast and detailed resources

And that is just one day. These failsafes and redundancies are always there. It’s an interstitial system. It’s more than fair, therefore, to assume that every student should know what to do and how to do it. The information is out there. It’s as clear and accessible as it possibly could be.

So how is it that, despite the vast resources and constant reiteration of expectations, some students left that 36th chamber having made bad choices? Some work was late; some, missing entirely. Time was wasted in and out of class. Questions were asked that have been answered a hundred times already, and then the 101st answer was also ignored.

Well, we have to acknowledge human nature, especially human nature in adolescents. Even with every failsafe and redundancy in place, a few students will be lost. They’ll make bad decisions. That’s okay, in that it’s just another opportunity to solve a problem. The space, as always, cares about how students learn.

We have to approach those struggling students with empathy. Any negative choice made in this space reveals a deeper problem, and that activates the makerspace’s true purpose: to solve authentic personal and academic problems together. When the failsafes fail, yes, it’s the student’s choices that led us there — but there’s an “us” in that sentence because it’s also the responsibility of the system to adjust.

For instance, right now: What else could a space like this do to make the expectations, directions, resources, etc., more pervasive or more accessible? If you’re reading this as a student, you can leave your ideas below.

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13 Days to Go: English 11

  By English 11 Regents (2018-2019)

Reminder: You’ve had an overview of the end of the year since April 12, when we had 40 days to go.

Every assignment due over the next three weeks has been posted since May 17. As always, you’ve had in-class and online calendars, checklists, and so on.

We’re now down to 13 days. This post is another overview of what you’re responsible for. It acts as a final failsafe.

GAP Scores: Q4B

These scores will be online soon after this post. They are the last actionable scores of the year, i.e., the last scores that give you feedback you can use to improve your performance. Q4C scores will not be posted until after the last day of classes on June 17.

Use these scores wisely. You have another chance to build evidence of collegiality, amenability, critical thinking, etc., before the year ends.

Note that you should not complete the final GAP report until June 17. Follow directions1.

Turnitin.com Submissions

Submission to Turnitin.com is required for all remaining assignments. Read the instructional post here:

You must submit your writing for it to count toward your profile. You also won’t receive feedback until then. The Google Classroom requirements are unchanged.

Note that if your Turnitin similarity index is high enough, you’ll get help with citing your sources more effectively. It’s a learning tool, not a tool for punishment. The assumption will not be that you plagiarized; it will be that you wrote in good faith and need help incorporating what you’ve read2.

College Essays

Remember that you must submit this writing to Turnitin.com before it can be counted.

Drafts of your college essay are due on June 7. After that, you’ll have a week of interstitial and in-class feedback and peer revision. The goal is to send you into the summer with a finished essay.

Here is the writing process:

And here are the models:

Reader’s Response

Remember that you must submit this writing to Turnitin.com before it can be counted.

This essay is due on June 14. Your choice of novel is here (along with the original post on choosing that novel):

Here is a link to the instructional post for reader-response essays:

Writing Process: Reader’s Response

Regents Exam Prep

Remember that you were already assigned a practice ELA Regents Exam this year. In addition to the multiple-choice work completed in class, you workshopped the following essays:

Depending on how hard you worked in March and April, you may find it necessary to dedicate significant time to exam prep now. Start here:

The first link covers the three parts of the exam. It includes suggested time to spend on each, plus a detailed list of the kind of reading and writing expected of you. This is all review.

As triage, you have been assigned the August 2018 exam through Castle Learning. The site automatically provides feedback: correct answers, answer explanations, sample writing, and so on.

You will find five assignments. Part 1 of the exam is split by text. You should see:

  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 1, Passage A
  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 1, Passage B
  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 1, Passage C
  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 2
  • Aug. ’18 Practice: Part 3

You may be asked to do some or all of these in order to best prepare you for the exam on June 19. Follow instructions given in class and online.

Pareto Projects

Your assessment of these projects will be guided reflection and metacognition. You cannot complete this until your project deadline has passed.

Here is the instructional post for those final self-assessments:

Pareto Projects: Final Self-Assessment

The forms are on Google Classroom. You also need the project schedule for Q4C:

Pareto Projects: 5/30/19–6/14/19

Lastly, you may benefit from looking over the FAQ and original project guidelines:

  1. Which goes for all assignments, of course, but most of all here. These are your evaluations, and you can’t self-evaluate without all the evidence. ↩

  2. The school rules regarding plagiarism apply if you did plagiarize, of course. ↩

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Pareto Projects: 5/30/19–6/14/19

  By All Classes (2018-2019), AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019), English 10 Regents (2018-2019), English 11 Regents (2018-2019)

Setting the Schedule

Like last time, there is a master schedule for the culmination of these projects.

All students are on this document. Find the sheet for your period, and then find your last name. That slot indicates your project deadline, whether or not you are presenting. If you are presenting, that is when you will present. Otherwise, that is when you will submit your project.

Refer to the original project guide (embedded below) and FAQ (also below) for more details. When in doubt, ask questions here or in class.

Notes on the provisional nature of the schedule:

  • TBD means that the final product hasn’t been clarified yet. Are you writing? Presenting? Creating something else? Make that clear as soon as possible.
  • ??? means that you still do not have an idea/blueprint/etc. on record for this round of projects.
  • Any other changes you’d like to make must be suggested in person or over email as soon as possible. The deadline for changes will be given on Google Classroom.
    • Note: This includes changes to your project’s focus; changes to what you plan to do (e.g., changing to or from a presentation); and changes to your due date, which will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
  • If you want to use the iTheater, the DaVinci Lab, or any other space in the iLC, make that known as soon as possible, and I’ll look into it for you.

Remember to cross-reference these deadlines with the calendar for the end of the year.

Project Showcase

Recap: Background

The Pareto Project: Complete Guide

Pareto Project: FAQ

Final Self-Assessment

Pareto Projects: Final Self-Assessment

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CC ELA Regents Exam: Part 3 Prep

  By English 11 Regents (2018-2019), Test Prep

For this test prep, we are using the Regents Examination in English Language Arts that was given on January 22, 2019. All materials are taken from the same source:

Copies of all previously written Regents Exam are available there.

Part 3: Text-Analysis Response

Note: The deadline for the handwritten step is “as soon as possible,” because your teachers will give you feedback as soon you submit your response. Use the calendar to organize yourself: Daily Lessons (All Classes): March 11 to June 17. If you need a prescribed deadline, use Friday, May 3.

All materials:

Steps for students:

  1. Complete Part 3 of the January ’19 ELA Regents Exam as instructed in class. Use the essay booklets provided to write your response. A copy of Part 3 is included in the folder linked above.
  2. Submit your handwritten essay response as soon as possible, using the “artifact” worksheet provided in class to drive feedback. Complete this sheet as instructed.
  3. Your teachers will return this feedback sheet with comments and a score. You will also be given access to exemplary student responses to compare to your own. Copies of these essays are included in the folder linked above. A copy of the state’s rubric is also included.
  4. Use the resources you read in Step #3 to revise your Part 3 essay response. Type this revision in Google Docs, and then submit it through Google Classroom as instructed.

You will have plenty of class time to complete the process. Refer to the calendar for specifics. If you need more time, simply talk to your teachers in advance.

Ask questions below about any of these materials and/or steps.

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40 Days: English 11 Regents

  By English 11 Regents (2018-2019)

April 22 is the beginning of the fourth and last quarter of the year. 40 days remain. Let’s start with a review of the basic resources available to students and all stakeholders:

If you are a parent or guardian and haven’t already done so, bookmark the course website and sign up for Google Classroom email summaries.

Course Specifics: English 11

We’ll finish our study of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which we began on March 3, with the last of our in-class writing prompts:

Cuckoo’s Nest: Weekly Assignments

We’ll then write a reader’s response to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest through the following writing process:

Writing Process: Reader’s Response

For the last novel of the year, students will be given a choice between The Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby. We will base the choice on a discussion of literary merit. We’ll work our way toward another reader-response essay that grapples with the chosen novel, in addition to the usual approach to literary analysis and discussion.

For our nonfiction, we’ll read “The Ways We Lie,” an essay of classification and division. We will read the text, discuss it, and then answer some of a series of questions on rhetorical and stylistic strategies. That analysis will then lead to student-driven classification and division. Here are the resources that will be posted:

Pareto Projects, also known as 20-Time or 20% Projects, will be presented in June. For a recap of what that entails:

There is no final exam in class for English 11 students. Instead, there is the New York State Regents Examination in English Language Arts. We will continue our work on the Part 2 essay in April:

CC ELA Regents Exam: Part 2 Prep

We will practice Part 3 after that, with a mock score ready for each student by mid-May. In June, we will troubleshoot each section of the exam in order to put everyone in the best position to succeed.

Ask any questions about our scheduled work below, and pay careful attention to any changes announced through Google Classroom. As always, assignments will be formally posted there; this site will be used for instruction, general feedback, and planning purposes; and individual feedback will be given interstitially through our usual methods.

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CC ELA Regents Exam: Part 2 Prep

  By English 11 Regents (2018-2019), Test Prep

For this test prep, we are using the Regents Examination in English Language Arts that was given on January 22, 2019. All materials are taken from the same source:

Copies of all previously written Regents Exam are available there.

Part 2: Writing from Sources: Argument

Note: The deadline for the handwritten step is “as soon as possible,” because your teachers will give you feedback as soon you submit your response. Use the calendar to organize yourself: Daily Lessons (All Classes): March 11 to June 17. If you need a prescribed deadline, use Monday, April 1.

All materials:

Steps for students:

  1. Complete Part 2 of the January ’19 ELA Regents Exam as instructed in class. Use the essay booklets provided to write your response. A copy of Part 2 is included in the folder linked above.
  2. Submit your handwritten essay response as soon as possible, using the “artifact” worksheet provided in class to drive feedback. Complete this sheet as instructed.
  3. Your teachers will return this feedback sheet with comments and a score. You will also be given access to exemplary student responses to compare to your own. Copies of these essays are included in the folder linked above. A copy of the state’s rubric is also included.
  4. Use the resources you read in Step #3 to revise your Part 2 essay response. Type this revision in Google Docs, and then submit it through Google Classroom by April 10.

You will have several weeks and plenty of class time to complete the process. Refer to the calendar for specifics. If you need more time, simply talk to your teachers in advance.

Ask questions below about any of these materials and/or steps.

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English 11 GAP Q3B Update

  By English 11 Regents (2018-2019)

Note: The header image for this post (the image you see in emails or when the post is embedded elsewhere) comes from this article on innovation as a mindset shift.

Six-Week Profiles: Q3B+Q3C

A few days ago, we overhauled your current unit of study:

Cuckoo’s Nest: Weekly Assignments

We also updated the daily calendar, which now reflects these changes. You can track your reading, plan your responsive writing, and even set your daily goals in advance.

It’s navigable, but it’s not (nor should it be, at this point in the year) an overly easy road. We will practice for the Regents Exam once a week, with time for revision and reflection; read and write our way through One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; and use annotations, discussion, and the complete writing process to respond to a high-interest article on “learning to lie.”

As a result, your teachers got together and decided to eliminate the GAP score for Q3B. We will fold those three weeks into the profile-based assessment of the next three weeks, ending with another GAP report on April 5.

This means that you will be able to demonstrate growth, if you struggled recently, and earn a much higher profile score. You will be able to demonstrate more amenability and self-awareness. It’s a chance to look at six weeks worth of progress, not just three, which is exactly what some of you need. (Students already doing well should just keep on keeping on.)

A comment noting this decision and linking back to this post will be added to Infinite Campus. You can ask questions below.