This is going to be your center for outside enrichment. I am going to do what I can to provide you with new and challenging opportunities. As a starter, I am going to ask that you answer a few questions for me.
1. What literature and/or authors have you covered as a part of the Learning Distance program?
2. What types of writing skills have you been working on or practicing in the program?
3. What suggestions do you have for me to help assist you better in Honors English I?
Please provide me with any information you feel is necessary. This will help me assist you better in and out of the classroom. I look forward to working with all of you!
1. In the Distance Learning program that we were taking last year, we did quite a lot of reading. For the most part this included authors like Edgar Allan Poe, O. Henry, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories). We also read for weeks about the Harlem Renaissance and how it was in fact a revolution in writing and the arts. Specific books we read were A Crack In the Line, Leonardo's Shadow and Oak Island. As individuals, we were also expected to read at least 5 books on our own each marking period.
ReplyDelete2. As for writing skills, it is tough to remember what the large projects were that we accomplished. I can remember spending a good deal of time on poetry; polishing our skills. I can also remember the 6 chapter novella that we had written towards the end of the year about a large event that changed history. For example, Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball. I also remember writing alternate endings and single chapters based on books we were reading.
3. Hopefully I am speaking for the group; but at least to me, the course was very monotonous and at times, boring. We would basically do observation and reflection sheets every day. Coming back to a regular english class with a real teacher standing in front of us is quite a lot different. Obviously, the computer element is taken out; we are all now used to using a PC every day and never being able to truly connect with our advisor in the course. I think that having a live person to talk to face-to-face is a plus because of the fact that you can actually communicate without lagging or interruptions. Computers aren't always perfect. The odd fact about the class was that we never actually even saw our teacher, Dr. Rose from Slippery Rock University, and we only got to communicate over audio and text 3 days a week. To help make English more exciting, I think we should be able to have more freedom about what to write about; instead of being given guidelines every time with specific directions. Questions about what we read every day can certainly get a bit frustrating and of course monotonous. All of us became pro's at skimming the reading we were to do, by the end of the year. So, I went on forever but basically, more diversity would help me, if not everyone, out a lot.
This is Alex by the way.
Miss Kitzmiller,
ReplyDelete1. In the Distance Learning Program that I participated in last year we covered quite a lot of different reading topics. We researched and read the works from many authors an poets such as Edgar Allen Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, O. Henry, and we also learned a lot about Shakespear and the Shakespear controversey. Some of the topics we learned about include The Harlem Renaissance, The Mystery Of Oak Island, and also about differnt works of art and their diversity from eachother. We read quite alot during this class and were expected to read at least five books on our own in each marking period. This didn't include the two to three literature reading books that we were assigned aswell. Also we were to pick one of the books we read and to complete one of the many possible projects that we were given.
2. When it comes to writing skills we learned a vast amount of these in this class. We were given a writing prompt and a five paragraph essay to write three days a week so i think that all of us have mastered writing them. We had a few quite large projects that we were assigned also such as a six chapter novella on a event in history. We were supposed to choose one type of historical fiction and display that in our story. Another project we did was a report on an artist or musician from the Harlem Renaissance. Some other smaller projects we werea ssigned were to rewrite endings for stories in different styles or to write a story in an authors certian style. With the large amounts of literature we read we also established good skill in reflecting on chapters in books and we were to discuss these in literate circle groups.
3. It seemed as i began the Distance Learning Course that it would be quite difficult to adapt to the new environment. We had to get used to working and submitting all of our work on the computer. It didnt take that long to get used to it but it seems that after all of the work that we put in on the computers that it would be hard to readapt back to the environment that we have had before. The class was quite fun in the beginning but after a while our work load increased rapidly and heavily and it was hard to keep up with all of it. Soon the class bacme boring and we all started to become flustered. It was occasionaly hard to communicate with our proffesor due to the fact that none of us had ever seen her face to face. We were only able to communicate to her through email or on one of the three days of the week that we met with her in a private chat room. In order to make the English class more exciting would be that we are given some more freedom in that we aren't forced to write or reead something we aren't interested in. I understand that some aspects of English are required to be taught in the curriculum, but in the other more flexible aspects, such as literature circles, that we are given options of what to read or what topic to write about. As for me and a few others the more diverse the class the better it will be.
-Jacob Villier
1. What literature and/or authors have you covered as a part of the Learning Distance program?
ReplyDeleteIn the distance earning program, we covered a wide range of writing skills. We did parts of speech, reading skills, and grammar. We also studied many different authors. Some of them were Doyle, Poe, O. Henry,and read many group books by little known authors.
2. What types of writing skills have you been working on or practicing in the program?
We did A LOT of writing last year. Three times a week we would have to write a 5 paragraph essay in limited time. These essays were worth a fifty points each so we applied basically all the writing skills. We also had many research units to do such as a historical fiction novel. Also we had to do a report on the Harlem Renaissance.
3. What suggestions do you have for me to help assist you better in Honors English I?
I think that you are running your English class just fine. I really appreciate your review about things especially grammar. I also like doing the vocabulary activities and I like how we are able to compare the movie with the stories we read. This is something we rarely did last year.
Thank you all for your posts! Your information is a big help! :)
ReplyDelete