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Literacy - Mr. Rowan

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Weekly Update - March 4

This week in Language Arts, students will be continue their persuasive essay they will be writing on whether they liked the way the book or the movie portrayed the story The Outsiders. 
The outline and introduction paragraph should be finished. Students will continue by writing their three body paragraphs that outline the three claims they made in their outline.
In addition, students will continue creating a visual representation of the book. Five groups will be given 2-3 chapters from the book. These groups will work to list the main scenes from their chapters and start doing a rough draft storyboard sketch of these main scenes. 

Weekly Update - February 25

As we watched the movie The Outsiders last week, students took notes about the plot and characters and we had good discussions on how the movie compared to the book. We discussed what the movie left out, what it added and how much it stayed true to the book. This week in Language Arts, students will be introduced to their persuasive essay they will be writing on whether they liked the way the book or the movie portrayed the story The Outsiders. Students will write their hook, create their thesis and develop three main claims in this five paragraph essay. They will then begin writing their rough drafts. The outline and introduction paragraph should be finished this week.
In addition, students will begin creating a visual representation of the book. Five groups will be given 2-3 chapters from the book. These groups will work to list the main scenes from their chapters and start doing a rough draft storyboard sketch of these main scenes. 

Weekly Update - February 19

This week, students will finish typing their sticky note annotations from their book into their Plot Notes document to prepare for watching the movie The Outsiders on Wednesday and Thursday. We will also be picking a few small scenes for students to act out as a supplement to this book/movie unit. As students watch the movie, they will be taking down the major plot events from the movie alongside their notes from the book. This will help students compare and contrast the book and movie as they prepare to write a persuasive essay on whether they liked the book or movie better. 
 
The movie is rated PG and here are two reviews on Amazon

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Outsiders, The (DVD)

Academy Award-winning director Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather films) directs an all-star cast in the big-screen adaptation S.E. Hinton's classic coming-of-age novel The Outsiders. Early 1960s. Tulsa, Oklahoma. The city is divided between teenagers who have grown up with wealth and privilege and the rough-edged "greasers" from the wrong side of the tracks. The greasers yearn for the life they see on the other side of town, but the rich kids want to keep them in their places. Then, one greaser dares cross the line to talk, and to dream of more, with a girl from across the tracks . . . an action that can only lead to conflict on a hot, steamy night.

Amazon.com

Director Francis Coppola's adaptation of the popular S.E. Hinton novel about the price of rebellious youth is notable chiefly for the stunning cast of young actors who went on to rich and varied careers. In supporting roles, the film features the likes of Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze, Diane Lane, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, and Tom Waits, among others. The story centers on two rival gangs in the early 1960s Midwest, and the violent turf wars that escalate and tragically claim young lives. C. Thomas Howell plays the central character who yearns to prove himself and be accepted by his older brothers' gang, while at the same time finding his first love and dreaming of a life beyond his dead end existence. Geared toward the teenage crowd, the film nonetheless features some fine direction from Coppola in a story that evokes memories of the classic coming-of-age films of the 1950s. --Robert Lane

Weekly Update - February 11

In Language Arts, students will finish completing the plot diagram for the Outsiders. Students will take their blue plot sticky note annotations and fill in what they think are the major parts of the story. We will also use the pink theme sticky notes to analyze the poem Nothing Gold Can Stay and how it relates to the story and its characters. Finally, there will be a reading comprehension assessment that covers the whole story. 

Weekly Update - February 4

This week in Language Arts, we will continue our reading of The Outsiders. We will focus on chapters 6-8 and take time to read, discuss and analyze in class. In addition, we will analyze the Robert Frost poem Nothing Gold Can Stay. This is an important poem that comes up in the book. As we read aloud, students will write 1 to 2 vocabulary words they don't know on a sticky note. I collect these and type them in our Collaborative Space in our class OneNote. I then let students research and add the definition. These words will then be the basis of our word work.
 

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Robert Frost, 1874 - 1963

Nature’s first green is gold, 
Her hardest hue to hold. 
Her early leaf’s a flower; 
But only so an hour. 
Then leaf subsides to leaf. 
So Eden sank to grief, 
So dawn goes down to day. 
Nothing gold can stay.

Weekly Update - January 28

In class this week, we will continue to read The Outsiders and annotate (take notes) using different colored sticky notes. Students should have chapters 3-5 written by the beginning of class Monday, February 5th. In addition to the reading, students will be working on Idioms and a Venn Diagram comparing and contrasting the Greasers and the Socs. 

Weekly Update - January 21

This week in Language Arts, students will finish their background knowledge on The Outsiders. I will introduce the basic plot diagram to students including the exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution. In addition, we will look at characters and setting. These will be important, because as we read The Outsiders, students will annotate their book with different colored sticky notes. On the sticky notes, students will annotate when a new character is introduced or something new happens to that character, when a new setting is introduced, and when a major plot development happens. I will hand out books this week and we will set our reading schedule. At the end of the book, we will watch the move The Outsiders and then students will write a persuasive essay about whether they liked the book or the movie better.

Weekly Update - January 16

This week students will be doing pre-reading activities and learning background information on the book The Outsiders. We will be focusing on identity, groups, cliques, how we form friends and look at bias and prejudices in society based on socio-economic status. Students will also be looking at what life was like in the early 1960s as this is when the book takes place. Finally, we will be looking at different vocabulary specific to these times and this book as well as learning about Theme and the themes represented in The Outsiders.

Weekly Update - December 15

This week, students will take the rough drafts of their Passion Project Magazine articles and turn them into digital articles in a Word document template. We ill focus on how to create a Works Cited page in MLA format as a way to cite the sources used in their research. These articles will be compiled in one document as an Informational Text Collection of the student articles.

Weekly Update - December 10

This week students will be working on their Genius Hour Passion Project magazine article research project. Students have chosen reliable sources, read these sources and took notes.
 
This week students will take their research, paraphrase their notes and create their magazine article. Students will have a template to work from to help lay out their written content, photos, diagrams, etc.
 
Each student has a Passion Project OneNote that they can logon to from any computer. They can open this at home when researching to check the reliability of the sources as they research, take notes, copy research links, etc.
 
If you would like to see the scope of the project and what your son/daughter is doing during class, you can use the following link to logon. 
The username and password would be the same username and password the students use to logon to their laptops at school.

Weekly Update - Need Research Sources for Passion Project!

This week students will be working on their Genius Hour Passion Project magazine article research project. Students have chosen their topic based on one of their passions and turned it into a research questions. This week students will be looking for reliable sources, reading these sources and taking notes.
 
Each student has a Passion Project OneNote that they can logon to from any computer. They can open this at home when researching to check the reliability of the sources as they research, take notes, copy research links, etc.
 
As students begin their research, they will have access to our non-fiction library and various online encyclopedia and biography resources. However, this may not be enough. PLEASE have your students research at home or at your local library using online and print sources. If you have a computer and internet at your house, students can research and print articles or email me the links and I can print them at school. 
 
By coming to school Monday with at least on source ready to go, this allow students to get ahead. 
 
If you would like to see the scope of the project and what your son/daughter is doing during class, you can use the following link to logon. 
The username and password would be the same username and password the students use to logon to their laptops at school.

Weekly Update - November 26

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a good break. As students come back to school, they will be working on comparing and contrasting two non-fiction essays the class has been working on. We will also be looking at the Genius Hour Passion Project that will culminate quarter three. Students will need to choose their topic this week and begin looking for research sources. As we do this, students will learn about research, plagiarism, paraphrasing, citing sources and other important things to know when researching. 

Weekly Update - November 12

This week, students will compare and contrast two Non-Fiction essays on the structure of Ancient Egyptian and Greece societies. We will look at what text features they have and how these help us before and during reading. While we read we will utilize the skills learned while doing the Article of the Week assignments. We will annotate in the margins, check for vocabulary ask questions as we read.

Weekly Update - November 4

Students should have finished and turned in their Wonder Epilogue Final Drafts on Friday, or by the latest this past weekend. I will be looking through student OneNotes this week and start assessing the work compared to the rubric. We looked at the rubric on Friday and translated it into essential student-friendly components. I will also be grading on sentence structure, writing dialogue and the punctuation of both. In addition, I led the class through the steps needed to insert their Word documents into their OneNote. This will allow students to logon any computer and see/edit their work.
 
This week, we will continue down the path of Nonfiction genres and text features. We will use this knowledge to research and write a passion-based magazine articles. Students will find a topic that they are passionate about, AND one that they don't already know everything about ;) We will use this project to learn research techniques, how to evaluate sources for bias and accuracy, what is intellectual property and how to properly paraphrase and cite the sources used. 

Weekly Update - October 29

This week in Language Arts, students will continue with their grammar lessons on sentence structure focusing on clauses and simple, compound and complex sentences. Students will use this and other feedback to put the final edits and revisions into their Wonder Epilogues. 
 
Last week students were briefly introduced to Non-Fiction writing. We will continue this type of writing and explore different text features used in Informational text. Finally, students will read different examples of non-fiction as this is type of writing is used widely in academic classrooms. Websties, textbooks, encyclopedias and biographies are just a few examples. We will be using examples that cross over into other subjects the 7 and 8 graders are studying.