April 11, 2013

THURSDAY! One more day until the weekend! Whoo! 

Here's what happened (Even though it's not much because it was 4 core!)

-No SSR sadly

-Q&A

-Workshop Time

Notes: 

During Q&A about the I-Search paper, we covered whether or not if we should talk about ourselves more and citations.

Reminders: 

-TURN IN YOUR REVISED COPY OF YOUR INTRODUCTION BY SATURDAY AT 8AM! 

April 10th, 2013

Happy Wednesday! 

Here's what we did in Ortega's:
-SSR
-Entered A#96 and A#97 in your notebook
-I-Search sample examination/ Q&A
-Workshop
-Share out

Notes for today:
-Ortega and the TA, Erika are gonna be looking over everyone's I-Search paper and they hope to see everyone's paper at least once a week.
-Make sure you print out your paper every time so you can  work on it in class.
-Keep up with the deadlines
-You can start your "Searching" section of your paper this week if you'd like but we'll be doing it this week.
       -Searching are the highs and lows of senior project
       -What's been helpful in driving your project/ what's the most difficult
       -You can acknowledge your mentor and your EQ in this section

The day of April 9th.

Welcome back from spring break! Yay!

Here's what happened:
-New writing groups
-Enter #93 Midterm Progress Reports, #94 iSearch Overview, and #95 iSearch Intro into your notebook.
-Explanation of iSearch paper!
-Wrote the rough draft

Notes for iSearch Paper
-Written in 1st person perspective
-Goal: Personally interact with the research
-Keep your rough drafts in your notebook.
-Intro: Should be like your sponge activity for two hour presentation. Keep in mind how are you gonna get the reader interested in what you're talking about.
-Ortega expects that for every half hour we spend in class, we match that at home to create a stellar paper.
-Make sure you keep up with the deadlines!

Reminders:
-Bring in your rough draft in!
-Tuesday, TONIGHT: 1st Draft
-Wednesday: 2 peer reviews
-Saturday at 8am: Revised Draft DUE.
-Turn in LC research books if you'd like to

Scribe 3/19

Today's class began with SSR the way it normally does. Afterward we continued to work on learning the difference between informal and formal writing. We went around the class hearing everyone's chosen paragraphs and then the informal/ formal versions of them. We did not finish. We had our usual lit circle discussion. Don't forget to do disc prep 7

• SSR
•  Academic tone
• Disc 6
• Disc prep 7

-Kendall

Better late than never...

Sorry for the late blog post but we don't have English until Tuesday anyway.

• SSR
• Book Talk
• Chose books

We ended our second Lit Cirlce books and now we're moving onto Non-Fiction. Mrs. Ortega chose 6 (7?) great books that we had the options to choose. After having the summaries explained to us, she drew sticks and formed new Lit Circle groups. Also, we have to review someone's Literary Analysis paper and print out the review someone gave to you. Our first discussion will be on Wednesday!

2/27/2013

Game plan for the day:

• SSR
• A#74 Literary Analysis Peer Review Instructions
• Peer Review

For assignment 74, we took notes on how we should give constructive criticism on a fellow classmate's paper. We were instructed to write our name, fill out a T-chart, read the essay and margin note with comments that could help better the student's essay. After this little lesson, we were handed papers not belonging to our table mates and used the guidelines Ortega showed us. For about 15 minutes, we silently reviewed essays and when we were done, we traded with a table mate. The day ended with a mid-February progress report. Also, we didn't have a notebook check today, but expect one in the next rotation.

2/26/2013

Hello, East House! I, Alyssa, will be your scribe for all of this week's English classes. Here we go.

• SSR
• A#73 - Literary Analysis Pointers
• Revisions

We began class with the usual SSR and quickly transitioned to assignment 73, "Literary Analysis Pointers." We discussed some of the most important pointers that you should consider when you're writing a paper to analyze a book. Near the end of the block, Ortega passed out our essays we wrote about our book which were already graded and we were asked to revise it. With that being said, a revised paper is due tonight on TurnItIn and don't forget to bring a hard copy tomorrow!

Also, we are having a notebook check tomorrow. You have been warned.

Scribe 2/12/13

• SSR
• Discuss more in depth passages in our books, ( Mini lesson on how to eleaborate in lit circles)
• Comparison to college

We finished off with our lit cicrles, Our conversation starter was what colour crayon would we be? Interesting. We picked a passage from our book we liked most, wrote it out and highlighted the impact the author intended and how you felt about it. Ortega went around and checked off a few groups.

Scribe 2-5-13

• SSR
• LC Groups
• Share out

We had a substitute today. (Mr. Vargas)
For membership grids we discussed about the weirdest foods we have had to eat before.
After transitioning into our book discussions, Vargas asked us to share out the most interesting points in our discussions.

Scribe Post - Friday 1/18

Sorry this post is so late, everyone, but hopefully you've been out enjoying the long weekend as much as I have.

If you're confused about this week's schedule, check this post on the class blog. East house doesn't have Ortega's class until Wednesday, 2nd block, so you still have one day to finish your LC reading if you haven't already!

In order of the agenda from Friday:

• SSR

(20 minutes)

• Asking Good Questions

(Right before this we made new assignment #61, LC Discussion Prep 4. For this prep we'll need two quotes, two questions, and at least 1 free choice.)

For this activity, we made new assignment #62, Asking Good Questions. After making a two-column chart in our comp books, Mrs. Ortega called on people to share one of the best questions they'd written down under LC discussion prep 3. (If you need to see the actual questions we wrote down, let me know and I'll let you borrow my comp book.) After talking about these questions and re-wording some of them, we came up with qualities we think a good questions should have with our LC groups. Here are some qualities that were shared with the class:

- thought provoking (not yes/no)
- allows you to take a stance
- answer is not obvious/multiple answers could be considered correct
- has a universal theme

Keep these qualities and the qualities your groups came up with in mind when coming up with questions for future LC discussions!

• Membership Grid

 For Fridays membership grid, Mrs. Ortega gave each of us a yacht. How generous! Anyways, our Membership grid discussions were about naming our yachts. Hopefully you came up with good ones.

• LC Discussion

 Discussion time! We had a pretty nice amount of time to discuss on Friday.

• Class Share Out

Unfortunately, we didn't get to share what we discussed on Friday. Hopefully we will this coming Wednesday.

Okay guys, remember to have your LC discussion preps ready for this Wednesday! Happy MLK Jr. Day.

Scribe Post - Wednesday 1/16

Hey guys, happy Wednesday. The week is almost over!

Alright, here was our agenda for the day:

• SSR

20 minutes, as usual.

• EPT Info

                  Rubric

 Okay, so for this, we entered some new information into comp books under Assignment #54. This stuff is REALLY IMPORTANT, so please make sure you wrote it down in your comp books!

This is how the English part of the EAP is going to look:

-One essay (45 minutes), scored from 0-6, 3 or lower is not a college level essay (4 and above means you're college ready!)
-Multiple choice reading comp. (30 minutes), scored from 120 to 180, anything lower than 151 strongly suggests that you will have trouble with college-level reading.
-Multiple choice composing skills (30 minutes), scored from 120 to 180, anything less than 146 with a low essay score will get you 1 semester (or quarter equivalent) of remedial English.

Here are some helpful sites for the EAP tests, try to look them over to see if they can help you:
csuenglishsuccess.org
csumathsuccess.org

Remember, you can only take these tests once. Do the best you possibly can.

After we wrote everything down, we were given two things to put in our comp books. Under new assignment #59, we put the EPT essay rubric, which outlines how all essays are graded. Under new assignment #60, we put a packet of six example essays.

• Group Scoring Practice

For this activity, we used the EPT rubric to score the six example essays with our LC groups. We gave each essay a score from 0-6 based on the rubric.

• Class Discussion

After our groups finished giving out scores, Ortega told us the actual scores for each essay. Hopefully it gave you guys some insight into how your essays will be scored.

That's it for today. Don't forget to write your questions for LC discussion 3 on Friday!

Scribe Post - Tuesday 1/15

Hey, everyone! This is Alissa, and I will be your scribe for the week!

In order of our agenda, this is how class went today:

• SSR 

20 minutes of silent reading, like usual.

• Scheduled Reading

For this, we continued writing down what we would read for each LC Discussion date. Our last discussion will be on the 20th of February. Hopefully everyone minded the due dates we have coming up when they wrote their reading assignments. These dates were entered under Assignment #52.

• Group Contract

Ortega asked for a few more suggestions about what people could put in their group contracts today. Afterwards, we had to come up with at least 5 contract rules of our own, have each member of our LC groups sign off in our comp books, and have Ortega read over our rules and sign her name. These rules were written under Assignment #56.

• Discussions

 At the end of class today, we had LC discussion two. We had about 15 minutes, and since we were a bit rushed for time we didn't get to fill out our membership grids today. Hopefully we can do that next time. We also made a new comp book entry for our next discussion, which will be on Friday, and that entry was Assignment #58, LC Discussion Prep 3. For this discussion, we've been asked to write 5-7 really good questions for discussion.

That's all for today. See you guys tomorrow.

January 10, 2013

Alright. So we got a new person who is following and watching us in class. Like Mr. Frakes from last year. So be ready for that.

Here's what we did today:

- We talked about literature circles. What went well last time and went bad last time - so we can build on that and make the experience good this time.

- We had our first literature circle discussions. We had to meet our quota on reading, so make sure you do that.



I'm signing off scribe for the last time. Hope you enjoyed it!

January 9, 2013

Hey guys... it's me again. Dean... Alright so we did a big thing today. Those who missed it, you can sit down and rest assured that you're well taken care of with me at the computer typing these words. By the way, Mrs. Ortega wants you all to know that she does check Notebooks. They are not optional. So I hope you all know that. Bah, who am I kidding? No one's probably reading this anyway :(

Here's the thing we did in class:

- We wrote an essay about this woman named Sue Jozui. She isn't happy because advertisements use famous people to sell products (and I thought advertisements were trustworthy. Unbelievable!). We had to explain the argument that Jozui makes by writing the ways in which you agree or disagree in her analysis and conclusion.


So there you have it. Hope I was clear enough. It's simpler than it looks.

January 8, 2013

Hey guys. It's Dean... (excuse my username - I don't know how it got there.)

Here's the day:

- We chose Literature Circle Books. The choices are "The Catcher In The Rye", "The Other Wes Moore", and "The Glass Castle"

- We got our groups for literature circles.



Sorry for the lateness, took me a while to get on this blog. ENJOY.