Archive for category: English II

Hey students-

Thanks for meeting with me yesterday. I think I’ve heard from all but two of you so far, and it was excellent to see so many of you again online yesterday—especially with the power of the mute button. 🙂

Based on your feedback, here is the plan.

Schedule

I will post our full schedule and assignments on our classroom page tomorrow. That will let you know what you need to get done ahead of time and let you schedule your week. If you take a look at that and need some supplies, let me know.

All of the instruction will use a blended model, meaning that you can participate in live class, in the online classroom, or both. I will make your grading expectations clear tomorrow, too.

For AP Language and Honors English 2, we will have live sessions Monday, Wednesday, and Friday during our normal class times using Zoom.

For Debate, we will hold live sessions on Tuesday and Thursday at our normal class time using Zoom.

For AP Seminar, we will schedule once we have a better idea of what your AP test will look like. I should know that today.

AP Tests

More to come, but this is the big update.

The AP Program will invest heavily over the next month in the following ways:

• For the 2019-20 exam administration only, students can take a 45-minute online exam at home. Educator-led development committees are currently selecting the exam questions that will be administered.
• Some students may want to take the exam sooner rather than later, while the content is still fresh. Other students may want more time to practice. For each AP subject, there will be two different testing dates.
• AP curricula are locally developed and we defer to local decisions on how best to help students complete coursework. To be fair to all students, some of whom have lost more instructional time than others, the exam will only include topics and skills most AP teachers and students have already covered in class by early March.
• Colleges support this solution and are committed to ensuring that AP students receive the credit they’ve worked this year to earn. For decades, colleges have accepted a shortened AP Exam for college credit when groups of students have experienced emergencies.
• Students will be able to take these streamlined exams on any device they have access to—computer, tablet, or smartphone. Taking a photo of handwritten work will also be an option.
• We recognize that the digital divide could prevent some low-income and rural students from participating. Working with partners, we’ll invest so these students have the tools and connectivity they need to review AP content online and take the exam. If your students need mobile tools or connectivity, you can reach us directly to let us know.
• The exam questions are designed in ways that prevent cheating. We use a range of digital security tools and techniques, including plagiarism detection software, to protect the integrity of the exams. Scoring at-home work for an AP Exam isn’t new to the AP Program. For years the AP Program has received and scored at-home student work as part of the exams for the AP Computer Science Principles and AP Capstone™ courses.

AP Seminar Test

• Individual Research Report + Individual Written Argument only (no team or individual presentations or end-of-course exam). The deadline has also been extended to May 26.

AP Language Test

• Information will come on April 3, says College Board, but we do know that it will be an essay question.

Quarter 3 Grades

I will have your quarter three grades entirely updated by Sunday afternoon. Don’t stress too much about grades at this point. We’ll make it work if your grade isn’t where you want it to be.

That being said, you do need to complete your work this coming week. Make sure to log in and get to it!

Quizlet and Kahoot

If you don’t have accounts for these sites, would you please make them?

Office Hours

In addition to the regularly scheduled class times, I will have office hours every day between Monday-Friday from 3-4 and 7-8. The best way to contact me then would be Google Hangouts, but you can also use Remind or e-mail.

Spring Break

Since it seems unlikely that we’ll be able to go anywhere for spring break (yay for social isolation!), I was thinking we could try something like a virtual book club that could meet during those days. If any of you are interested, let me know and we’ll figure something out this week.

ACT Prep

It’s not clear what is going to happen with the ACT, but once we know, let me know if you want to do some virtual ACT prep.

Your Health

Don’t forget to take care of yourself, your family, and your community. Wash those hands, practice social isolation, and help slow the spread of this disease. Don’t feel trapped inside, though. You can certainly take a walk or bike ride for some exercise and a mental break. If any of you find yourselves or your families in need of something like food delivery, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Thanks

Thank you for being so flexible and eager to make this work. And thanks for sharing all of your dogs and cats yesterday. I think they brightened everyone’s spirits.

Updated 3/17 (Changes in Red), Updated 3/18 (Changes in Green)

Hey class-

I thought I would give you a quick overview of how we’re going to approach our time in online school. While the situation is likely to change over the next few days and weeks, my general approach will be to do a blend of activities that include regular class time and activities that you can work on independently.

Initial Class (Thursday During Regularly Scheduled Times)

On Thursday, I’d like to try to have a short video meeting with each of my classes at our regularly scheduled time. We will use ZOOM to facilitate that first meeting, though we may move to another platform if that proves too difficult to use. So please login to your school account before our next scheduled class time, and I will invite you to a Teams meeting for a short chat during that class session.

What You’ll Need

• Please login at Clever. We may not spend an enormous amount of time there, but it will let you access all the materials with one password.
• Please make sure you can sign in to your district e-mail. That will give you access to Teams and the class material we’ll use.
• We are going to use Google Classroom to manage assignments. I’ve sent the login codes via Remind, but let me know if you need to get access.
• Sign up for Remind. I will use it to keep you notified of class updates.
• Please try to sign in to Google Classroom Page every day during the M-F school week. Make it a habit to check in as often as you can.

Caveats

• Please let me know if you don’t have online access as soon as you can. Other than the live sessions, I am going to try to minimize the amount of time you’ll need to spend online, but let me know if you don’t have access to a Chromebook or reliable Internet.
• If you are going to be away from the class because you are ill or a family member is sick, please let me know. Succeeding in an online environment depends on communication.
• We’re all going to have to be flexible and understanding while we work through this. It’s going to be great as long as we are.

AP Seminar

We will probably adopt a different model than the other classes and focus most of your work on independent work. Let’s meet Thursday (online) to see if there is a plan we can use to get the presentations done. Otherwise, we’ll rely on virtual interaction to get the two papers done. I suspect the College Board will have some updated guidance soon.

AP Language

My plan for the moment is to continue holding class as usual as often as possible during our regularly scheduled hours. We’ll meet online to do so. Those of you who cannot meet online will have things like discussion questions to complete online. For now, we’ll stick with finishing the Vietnam packet (try to have the Kerry piece done by Friday) and our typical writing schedule.

Honors English 2

Some of this will depend on what Carroll decides to do with Miss Dolan. I will have an update for you soon. Please plan to meet for a ZOOM chat during your regularly scheduled class times on Thursday.

Debate

It will be difficult to debate outside of class, but I will have some ideas for us on Monday. Let’s meet for a ZOOM CHAT on Thursday during our regularly scheduled class time to work it out. For now, we may switch over to philosophy and get back to debate when we can.

This may be a challenging few weeks, but I am sure we can make it work. If you have questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out and let me know.

Thanks,

Mr. Pogreba