Notes/English 189

Angela Morales

October 17-21

This week was somewhat frustrating because I realize how little progress I’ve made. I gave a practice midterm exam this week, and the results were just awful. In retrospect, I see problems with the topic and amount of time students were allowed to prepare. I am now using the book more frequently, but as I’ve mentioned before, the slides (ideally) should be better linked to the book.

Monday October 17

Today we covered some homework on sentence fragments that I’d assigned from the book. I prepared slides to work with the homework chapter, so each of the homework sentences appeared on the screen. I would solicit answers from students and then give my correct answer, so students could see yet another option. This technique worked well and seemed to help students follow along better in the book.

Wednesday October 19:

Terrible topic, I know realize. Ok—the topic was to think of the one quality that makes a happy family and then to explain that with 3 reasons. Well, it sounded simple enough, but once students got started I could see that the answer to the question was based on abstract ideas such as love, happiness, and stability. For some reason, students had a hard time making the abstract concrete. Many students got nervous and frustrated and, consequently, the writing was very weak.

Friday October 21:

I wanted today to seem a little more “low-key,” especially after the harrowing day we’d had previously. Today students took Vocab. Quizzes and we discussed a paragraph from the book on winning the lottery. I wanted students to pay attention to the author’s use of language and word choice, and I wanted them to notice how she used specific examples to support her thesis. Students enjoyed talking about the reading, and many of them wanted to discuss how THEY would spend their money if they were to win the lottery.