Yearbook 2nd 6 weeks Progress Report

Hi all,

Today marks the end of the 2^nd 6 weeks grading periods.  Some students are doing stellar in the class.  Some students are behind.  As I told them today, if I don’t have their page done, checked, edited, and submitted today, I cannot give them a grade as they haven’t earned any points.  Because some students have yet to submit their Deadline 2 page, their grades are about to massively drop.  

However, I know they are working hard on their pages to get them in to our standards by Monday. 

Please have your student pull up their yearbook page for you and talk you through their progress on Deadline 2 (10-19—yes, they are late).  Some are submitted and graded, but if their button is not green, your child’s page has not been completed.

If they are not finished, please make sure they work hard this weekend to complete their deadlines to pull their grades up.

Thank you and happy Halloween!

9th Lit 12 Week Progress Reports

Hi all,

Progress Reports will come home next week.  What I’ve seen is that students who are doing all of their work, are participating in class, and turning their work in are passing.  The students who are not passing are not passing because of a major zero.  Every assignment from this point on is vital to their grades. Please make sure they’re doing their homework every night.  Yes, they have homework every night. Even if they don’t have an assignment due (which usually they do), they should be spending time studying for their upcoming test.

Students will have a quiz over the Odyssey Part 2 on Monday.  They also have their Constructed Responses due on turnitin.com on Monday before 11:59.  Please let me know if you have any questions about that one—we did do an example together which is on the blog.

We’ll have the Odyssey Unit Test on Tuesday.  Students have their study guides and have been working on filling them out the whole time we’ve been reading.

Also, with the EOC looming upon the horizon I’ve been assigning USATestPrep.com practice every week for homework (Due Wednesdays).  Some students are doing this well.  Some aren’t touching it.  Please encourage your student to not only complete these practices, but try their hardest as they mimic the EOC, which will be 20% of their grade.  The more they practice the test taking skills, the better they’ll be on that test.

Happy Halloween!

Kim Bundschu

The Odyssey 9th Lit

At this point students should have read up through "The Challenge" of The Odyssey and completed most of their study guide questions.  Our test is scheduled for Tuesday next week, and we'll have 2 major assignments in the interim.  Please make sure they are studying and prepared.

We also have 2 USA Test Prep assignments due on Wednesday night, with another 2 for next week.

Happy Tuesday!

Yearbook -- Last Chance

Tomorrow I'm going to do a final run through of our pages.  Any edits that I have to make at this point will come off your grade.  Make sure that you've gone by our rubric, class discussions, notes on your page, and have no errors.  Check the colors, the layout, the name tags, the punctuation, and the spelling.

Grades go in tomorrow.  Happy Thursday.

9th Lit Permission Slip Due 10/27

Hello all,

We sent home a permission slip today about the movie we'd like to watch in class next week as a part of a multimedia, standards-based assignment.  You can find a digital copy of it here, just in case your 9th grader misplaced it.

Happy Thursday!

[edit: Apparently, because we've previously shown this movie with no problems, we were told that permission slips are not neccessary.  If you have an issue with the movie, please let me know directly at kimberly [dot] bundschu [at] cobbk12 [dot] org and I will give your student an alternative assignment.  Students who did turn in their slip today will receive extra credit because they did exactly as I asked.]

Moving forward 9th Lit

This unit we're reading The Odyssey.  We'll have a quiz over part 1 tomorrow, the quiz over part 2 next week as well as a travel brochure, a writing assignment, and our test will be early the week after.

We'll also have our Touchstone 2 on Friday.  This is a standarized test from the county that doesn't directly impact your grade, HOWEVER you can use it to recover an old test grade

Yearbook -- Layout Rubric and addition

Hi all,

I love how your book is really coming together and taking life.  I love the decisions we are making together to make an awesome and unique addition to our yearbook family.

The rubric that we made in class together today is both up on the blog and attached here.  Yes, because we just made a creative decision, those of you with academic pages will need to update the question mods and headines (change them to the headline pop style please) on the academic pages.  I need to submit those pages on Monday, so if those fixes we spoke about in class today are fixed by Friday, I'll be a happy adviser.  

Happy Thursday.  We're so close to submitting our first pages!  Exciting and scary!

9th Lit -- Sonnet Troubles

Good morning,

First of all I want to exclaim how much so many of you are POETS!  Your poems were amazing!

Before you freak out or think on not talking about you because your grade, please hear me out.  I am--all of your poems are awesome.

We apparently had some trouble following the directions and rubric--therefore a lot of you didn't earn credit for your sonnet.  So, I'm giving you this opportunity:

1. Log in to turnitin.com and look at your sonnet assignment--click on Grade Mark to see your rubric and how you scored on each criteria.
2. Go back to your google doc and edit your original assignment.  Make sure you are looking at the rubric and the example.
3. Make sure you label the 4 criteria at the bottom of your poem.  This is what you earn credit for!  Can you accurately use and identify rhyme scheme, 2 instances of figurative language, and 1 sound device?  Yes, you need to write an original poem, but the rubric is how well you can use what we've learned to create a poem.  Most of you put your devices in there, just didn't label them.  Prove you knew what you were doing and didn't do it by accident!
4. Resubmit your sonnet on turnitin.com under the assignment called Revision 1.  If you try to submit it under the original assignment, you won't be able to.
5. The new deadline is this Friday by 11:59pm.

If you have any questions, please email me!

PSAT Opportunity -- 9th Lit

From County Office:

Good Morning,

The College Board launched “Daily Practice for the New SAT” – a free app that allow students to “scan and score” a paper PSAT/NMSQT or SAT practice test with their mobile device and receive instant score feedback and connect to practice resources. There is a 1 minute video on their site that showcases this new PSAT/ SAT practice app. It looks really cool!  

https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/sat/practice/daily-practice-app

9th Lit Online Textbook

Ladies and Gentlemen,

From now on, if we use a text found in the textbook, you'll need to use the online textbook instead of a link to the individual texts on my blog.  Click here for the link to the online textbook.  Your login is ccsdyournumber (not the words, actually your number).  Your password is ccsd2016.

Hi everyone,

A student asked for this and I decided to post it.  If you'd like to take a free personality test to better understand your thinking and the way your personality works, click here for the free Myres Briggs test.

Poetry Book Contest

Click here for an awesome and creative poetry contest.

Week 9 -- 9th Lit

We are half way there!

This week we're going to do a brief unit on Poetry.  Students will be given a poetry packet in class on Friday.  We'll probably finish this on Wednesday, have a in-depth look "The Raven" on Thursday, assign a presentation assignment on Friday, present on Monday, and test on Tuesday.

After that, Romeo and Juliet and the Odyssey. We'll finish up the year with a novel study.

Happy Thursday!