Category: English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

Interstitial instruction, feedback, and discussion for students in English 11 Regents for the 2016-2017 school year.

3 Comments

Special Weapons and Tactics

  By All Junior Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

*Stock image by way of the website of Blaz Kos, who has a phenomenal name. Would it have been a contender for Name of the Year? I don’t know. I just want an excuse to link to Deadspin’s NOTY. That will be time well spent.

Progress Reports

Junior S.W.O.T. Analysis

Our course intends to be a makerspace, which means that we intend to be flexible and responsive in what you are assigned, what you are taught, and what you create. Over the last two weeks, the divergent paths in Regents English 11 and its AP counterpart have repeatedly returned to the same concern:

Back to Basics

That’s a post written for the AP classes, but it contains some of the texts assigned to Regents students last week. We need to revisit how juniors are sorted and tracked at a later date; for now, it’s enough to note that you all need to grapple with procrastination, focus, stress, and time management.

On a not-unrelated note, Friday is the day marked by the high school for progress reports. Since our course is grade-abated, there will be no numbers to obsess over in Infinite Campus; instead, you will receive feedback of a different kind. You’ll need the profiles and tiered explications of grade abatement, and then you’ll need to read these:

Those two links instruct you in how to create a personal SWOT analysis. The acronym stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, which are sorted according to whether they are internally or externally derived. Note that they tend to be less about specific actions and decisions, and more about the traits and habits that lead to those decisions.

An Aside: Big Brother Is (Sort of) Watching

We are focusing on assiduousness and akrasia now in all junior classes for a number of reasons:

  1. Your choices are central to grade abatement.
  2. These choices are correlated with academic success — as well as stress and anxiety.
  3. The essays and videos you’ve been given recently help you practice close reading.

Another reason? A few of you are off-task. Habitually. Not in the sense that you are briefly distracted, either. In the sense that you wile away the period discussing the way a drunk friend vandalized your property over the weekend, or in the sense that you spend more than a half-hour doing your AP US History homework instead of, you know, what I’ve asked you to do.

Last week, one of you packed up with five minutes remaining, took the small hair trimmer from your purse, and began trying to sculpt a friend’s eyebrows. That’s the sort of thing that I will stop you from doing, and not just because it is obviously inappropriate. Like throwing an inflatable shark across the room (also from last week; Spirit Week makes you all vaguely insane), it’s disruptive to others. If you don’t cross that line, however, I am likely to let you go. It’s your grave to dig.

Still, I see you. Your peers see you. We see your disrespect and disregard for the freedom of the class — a freedom that is best expressed in this way:

  1. If you need to talk or even to write about a friend’s drunken vandalism, this is the class that can probably make that fit your learning process. That’s rich subject matter for an essay, especially during a study of akrasia and empathy.
  2. If you desperately need to finish US History homework, I’ll probably let you use the class period, because we can turn that into a closer look at your organization, assiduousness, stress, integrity, etc. It’s worth delving into why you’re in that position. It might be reflective of the system, of your personal life, of a misunderstanding of grade abatement — all things that lend themselves to a feedback loop.

That’s freedom. If, however, you decide without discussion and sanction that you aren’t going to do our work, you might just fail this course. Look at the language of a GAP 2, which”may indicate a deliberate and systemic disengagement from the learning process.” The first time you choose to disrespect the classroom to that extent, you’ve deliberately disengaged. You’re halfway to a 2.

I don’t have time to redirect you every time you make a bad choice, especially in classes with 30+ students. If sharks or nose hair start flying, yes, I’ll intervene; in most cases, however, you need to be very, very afraid of what will happen if I have to take time to deal with you.

TL;DR: Don’t disrespect the class period. If you do, you’ll fail, and not just in the traditional sense. Train yourself to think differently about the environment.

End Aside

Junior S.W.O.T. Analysis (Continued)

Your next step is to determine how to adapt this tool to meet your needs. You could use the worksheet MindTools designed, or you could head over to Google to search for other templates, models, and approaches to SWOT analysis. There are dozens. I will offer you this one, which will be shared individually with each of you through Google Classroom:

Find a format that makes sense to you, and then adapt it to meet your individual needs. Complete that SWOT analysis with as much insight and detail as possible. Keep in mind what you’ve learned over the first month of school, too; the subjects of our lessons and your learning (empathy, assiduousness, stress, procrastination, etc) should directly inform this sort of thing.

The deadline is Tuesday for this work, but you’ll want to have it done well before then. This is your progress report, and it will be far more edifying than a range of numbers and a canned comment — if you do it well.

You’ll need to submit your SWOT analysis through Google Classroom (where the directions and links are cross-posted), so if you’re doing the work by hand, start thinking about how to get a copy of it online.

Here's one from the Mendoza College of Business at Notre Dame.

This is a SWOT template from the Mendoza College of Business at Notre Dame.

Ask questions about the assignment, including the particulars of a SWOT analysis, below.

12 Comments

Time to Understand

  By All Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 10 Regents (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

*Header image from the video for “The Horror,” a song by RJD2. 

Interstitial Discussion, Take Two

A week ago, I gave you this post:

Time Enough at Last

Over the week, the comment counter never moved from zero, which led me to rethink my approach. You need a space to ask questions about grade abatement, and it makes sense to make that space open to everyone — i.e., to give tenth graders the ability to hear the questions asked by AP students (and vice versa).

You should still use the comment section of the original post to ask questions about its contents. This post, however, is devoted solely to the GAP tiers you were given in class:

 

GAP Tiers

GAP Tiers

This document is the same for all levels and all students. Its application changes — obviously, AP students face higher standards than tenth graders — but the logic never does. Your job is to understand that logic.

How to Use This Post

We will talk in class this week about grade abatement, even as we move on to new units and assignments. In tenth grade, we’ll turn to descriptive writing; in eleventh grade, you’ll focus to varying extents on reading, empathy, and politics. You’ll have time to talk to me in class about GAP scoring and evidence during those studies. I’ll draw your attention to these tiers repeatedly. But you really need to start asking questions in an interstitial forum, where the questions are frozen next to my responses.

So your assignment is this: Ask questions about the tiers of grade abatement below. You should be able to sign in with Google+, which means you can link your questions to your school account. Regardless, make sure I know who you are. You will want this evidence for the end of the quarter.

This will force us to make this website work for us, which may take some tinkering on my end. Report any bugs as soon as you find them.

No comments

Gathering Evidence: Regents 11

  By English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

Header image is one panel of Francis Bacon’s triptych, Three Studies For A Portrait Of Lucien Freud.

Preliminary Evidence

We’ll spend the first part of this week — Monday, mostly — talking about evidence. Grade abatement is an evidentiary process, which means it is also objective and aggregate in nature. In other words, you begin with nothing, and over time you collect the evidence of a particular profile.

You can use the previous post to read more about GAP scoring. Ask questions about the overall process there. In this post, you should focus on what you did last week (i.e., this instructional post and the embedded article by Chad Fowler). Use the comments below to ask me questions about the evidence you’ve gathered before you submit it through Google Classroom.

As you work on this, don’t worry about tonight’s deadline. Remember that these are fluid requirements of the system; they matter, but the process matters more.

37 Comments

Time Enough at Last

  By All Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 10 Regents (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

*Header image from “Time Enough at Last,” an episode of The Twilight Zone. 

Daily Checklist

Here is the list of skills and traits assessed through grade abatement:

Triptych To-Do List

Triptych To-Do List

This is in the form of a daily checklist1. That image is the QR code embedded at the end of the checklist; if you activate it (here’s how), it takes you to an explanatory document:

Triptych Annotated

Triptych Annotated

That is an explanation of each of the elements of the checklist. Read it carefully. It is just one of the many guides available to you that explain these profiles:

GAP Tiers

GAP Tiers

That one, for instance, is crucial: It explains the four tiers of grade abatement, with notes on how to move from one to the other. You already have a single-sheet version of the profiles themselves; this is the set of directions you must follow to meet the requirements for each one.

How to Read This Post

You are being given all this, no matter which class you are taking, because

  1. reading complicated writing helps improve both skills;
  2. reading my explanations for these systems helps you enter a conversation about them;
  3. these are the guidelines for your quarterly score, no matter your age and ability level.

Take your time, read through these documents, and ask questions below. Think of this as a lecture, after which you are given time to ask questions; to say nothing means you understand all this perfectly, with no need for clarification. There are 140 of you this year. At least one of you needs clarification.

As questions are asked below, I’ll answer. Read those answers, too. AP students should take the lead here. Tenth graders might do more lurking. Everyone has an equal stake, however, and I expect some back-and-forth to emerge quickly this week.

  1. If you missed the hard copy last week, see me in class. Remember that we are aiming for a responsively paperless classroom; these documents are certainly important enough to be printed. ↩

No comments

An Exercise in Empathy, Part 1

  By All Junior Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

Your Most Important Skill

Today’s text is about the definition of empathy and why it matters as a skill. It’s also about how that skill can be practiced and inculcated1. This is primarily a source that gives you information — facts and logic and ideas that inform your own thinking.

Empathy, you’ll see, is at the center of the highest profiles. It’s the first and most important skill listed. The title of today’s essay is, therefore, probably not a surprise: “Why Empathy Is Your Most Important Skill.”

The version of the essay you’ll read today is also an example of ramiform reading. Ramiform mean “branch-like,” and it can be applied to most articles online. Here’s the first paragraph of our article:

I’ve never considered myself a real programmer. I know at this point it’s probably silly to say, but I started my scholastic and professional life as a musician, and I’ve never quite recovered from the impostor syndrome that comes with making such a shift. One of the faux-self-deprecations I use to describe myself is: “I’m a people person who just happens to express this tendency through programming and technology projects.”

The link defines “imposter syndrome” for you. You don’t need to Google that term or guess at its meaning; the link does that work for you. It branches you off to another website to learn a bit more about the subject. The rest of the paragraph invites you to define unknown terms, too (“faux-self-deprecations” probably needs a definition), but the link is what makes the reading ramiform.

Most folks don’t click on the links in an online article. Most don’t even finish the article. You need to be different. When you encounter a link, click on it. Follow that branch for a bit, see what information it offers, and then return to the original text. Let your reading be ramiform, and you’ll strengthen your brain’s white matter.

More specifically, you’ll hone the skill of close reading. You’ll sharpen your assiduousness2. You’ll need to work together, which will bring collegiality into focus. In fact, most of the skills and traits in these profiles — and the profiles themselves — will be exercised over the next few days.

I will point out what is being developed as we go, which will bring clarity to the process. Most of that feedback will happen in person, but I want you to start asking questions in the comment section of this site — the space below this post, where you must use a social media account of some kind to talk to me. Fortunately, you have a Google+ account through our high school.

Make sure you keep these handouts nearby:

Remember that we use these profiles, skills, and traits all year – you aren’t expected to have internalized them yet. My hope is that you’ve read over them3; it will take time for you to see their universal application.

To load the article, click the image below:

Image via Vladgrin (Shutterstock).

Image via Vladgrin (Shutterstock).

If, for any reason, that doesn’t work, use this direct link:

Updates to this assignment will be posted here or on Google Classroom. Talk to me below, if you can’t find me in the sea of students in our classroom.

  1. The key part of the definition of this word is its emphasis on repetition. You only develop this sort of skill through rigorous work. There are no shortcuts. ↩

  2. Because it takes that specific kind of work ethic to push through ramiform reading. Again, there are no shortcuts. ↩

  3. And not just because that was the assignment. It’s about repetition — about inculcating understanding over repeated use. Keep reading over these ideas, talking to me about them, and reflecting on what you learn. ↩

No comments

The Brain Unfolding

  By All Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 10 Regents (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

The Assignment1

Your success in this course depends on the work you do. That’s obvious — and true of any class — but you already have a sense that we learn differently. In here, your success depends on evidence.

In the opening-day materials you are (still) reading, you should have come across these documents:

The profiles will be the subject of many lessons as we move forward. That last document will be revised and adapted for you, and it will dictate how you structure your learning. Note that it has sections for “internal artifacts” and “external artifacts” — i.e., the stuff you make. Some of that making happens inside you. Some of it happens externally, through essays, conversations, etc.

We’re going to focus for a day or two on the easiest way to meld the internal and external stuff of growth. To put it another way: This is how to succeed in here. Load the following:

That Google Form gives you questions and prompts that are metacognitive or reflective in nature. You shouldn’t need more than one or two 40-minute chambers, as we’re defining your learning time, to evaluate last week’s learning, from the schoolwide activities on Friday to the contents of the course syllabus.

You will notice that there is a minimum character count for each answer. If you don’t meet that minimum requirement, you can’t hand in the assignment. This is not a class where your work is checked in mindlessly; you need to gain something from every assignment, and only by writing enough can you start to dig into some useful metacognition.

Be mindful, too. This is your first real interaction with the materials of the course, and you are delivering those thoughts and insights directly to me through an interstitial mechanism. That’s a complicated way of saying that this is your first written impression.

Ask questions below, if they arise, and make sure you mark the assignment done through Google Classroom when you’ve finished.

  1. What exactly is the look that Tesla is giving the camera in that picture? Why does it feel like he’s staring into my soul? ↩

No comments

Orientation: September 7, 2016

  By All Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 10 Regents (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

After all this time1, you know what to expect from this first day of school. You know what mixture of exhaustion and nervousness and excitement you’ll have. You know you’ll see a half-dozen course syllabuses and classroom expectations. You might do an icebreaker or two. Usually it all blurs together, because (barring variations in clip art), it’s just another variation on the rules, regulations, and grading policies that you’ve seen since middle school.

Our course will hit many of the same notes, but the tune is going to be quite different before we’re done. Or, to switch to a culinary metaphor:

Molecular Learning

That links to a Medium essay I wrote last year to explain the course you are now taking. It is the first of three essays in this opening post. None of these essays is required — more on how assignments work in a second — but they all will help you with the most important step you can take over the next few days: getting to know your teacher.

The written word is the primary means of instruction here, and these opening-day materials are your first lessons. You must read carefully, because I have written carefully, and in the writing are the answers to questions and concerns you haven’t even had yet. The writing will also model strategies and techniques for you. It will tell you a lot about my style and personality, too, which is just as important at this early stage.

Course Syllabus

You’ll notice that this post addresses all of you, whether you are enrolled in AP Language as a junior or taking English 10. This collective address will be rare as we move forward — note the menu that lets you select your class posts above — but you need to recognize that you share this digital space. That’s no different from sharing our physical space, and you’ll see soon enough how important it is to pay attention to the needs and impact of those folks.

This is all by design. All English instruction address the same universal skills and traits, and you develop those traits in the same sequence. There is much to gain from observing what your peers do, even if you are not given the same assignments. And when there is opportunity for alignment or collaboration, you’ll gain much from talking to each other.

Whenever you load this website, you should use the menu at the top of the page to look for class-specific lessons and feedback. If a post isn’t tagged for your course, you can still read it, but it’s not required. This is the digital equivalent of homework or notes written on a chalkboard.

Load your specific course syllabus below:

Read your syllabus over the next few days. Let me know immediately if one of the links is broken, won’t open, or leads to the wrong syllabus; errors are almost guaranteed in this kind of extensive, interstitial writing, and I’ll need your help to correct them.

Google Classroom

Your assignments will always be sectioned out by class period and posted to Google Classroom. You must register for the right section to see those assignments, of course:

  • Period 2 [AP Lang. & Comp.] — joqb9v
  • Period 4 [English 11] — 21n73p
  • Period 5 [English 10] — 15wtqr
  • Period 7 [AP Lang. & Comp.] — s1epxu
  • Period 9 [English 11] — 1y60dxk

Use those codes to register for Google Classroom. If you have never used Classroom before, enlist a peer or talk to your teacher about what to do. Right now, each classroom stream is empty; on Thursday, you’ll get your first reading and writing assignments.

A Typical 24 Hours

As you complete your first assignments and work with me and your peers, you will experience firsthand what the typical day in here looks like. You will see what each part of the interstitial classroom is for and learn more about how grade abatement functions. You’ll begin to learn what the interstitial classroom and grade abatement are.

You learn by doing in here. To help clarify what a typical day looks like, however, you should read this essay:

Circadian Dynamics

This is the basic idea of how each day’s period works. The background lessons and texts are provided outside of class, which frees us up to do more with these brief 39 minutes. We might circle up some days; we might talk in groups or meet individually; we might take practice tests or take a shot at timed writing. Without grades, there is enormous freedom to do what is needed, and you will direct most of the lessons yourself.

Your job, then, is to know what you are doing each day and to waste no time in doing it. That is the most important part of this course: When we are together in our classroom, you must be ready to work.

The interstitial/online elements are there to support this (and to make the Sisyphean grind of high school a little more manageable). Grade abatement is there to free you and empower you. Still, technology is only a tool. There is no replacement for the learning that occurs through discussion and collaboration when you share a learning environment with someone.

This essay explains more about how crucial our face-to-face work is:

Head Training: The 36th Chamber

(It also lets me reference Wu-Tang and Grindhouse kung-fu movies, which is important stuff.)

If nothing else, I want you to be able to answer these two questions each and every day:

  1. What are you working on?
  2. How can I help you?

If you can’t answer either, that will be an issue, because you will always have work to do. If you believe you’ve discovered a day without work, let me know, because you are wrong.

This week, you might need time to go over the syllabus with me. You might need help setting up your Google account. Or you might know that you need to do your first writing assignment in class, because you won’t do it at home over the weekend.

You face no risk right now, so ask questions and try things out. The more you experiment and the harder you work over these first few days, the easier you will find it to begin generating evidence for your grade abatement profiles — a concept that will be second nature to you soon enough.

  1. Look to The Onion, as always, for some perspective on that time. ↩