Our English Class

Eighth-Grade Day and Awards Day

Mr. Scott — Thu, 22 May 2025 19:41:06 +0000

Notes From Class

Mr. Scott — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 20:15:55 +0000

English 8 finished up some annotation work. Some students didn’t complete everything, though, so here are the notes from the starter:

Project Work, Figurative Language, and Active/Passive

Mr. Scott — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 20:41:20 +0000

English I students worked on their projects, specifically completing their two paragraphs for “Decoration Day.” These should be completed by Friday so students can turn in their work and begin workshopping their work.

English 8 students worked on figurative language as we move into a brief poetry period and active/passive.

Homework

English 8 Studies: none.
English I Honors: complete your paragraphs by Friday.

Tableaux Vivant and

Mr. Scott — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 21:33:56 +0000

English I students began act 3 in Romeo and Juliet. They created tableaux vivants to help create a summary of the scene. Students created quite accurate summaries from the tableaux themselves.

Click to view slideshow.

English 8 students finished up “Drummer Boy of Shiloh.”

Homework

English 8 Studies: none.
English I Honors: read 3.1

Focusing on 2.4, 2.5, and 2.6

hgilre5548 — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 21:24:15 +0000

Today in class, our English 1 students watched act 2 scenes 4, 5, and 6. They wrote down questions during the scene and at the end they wrote a one sentence summary. We also looked at the study guide questions for 2.3.

2.3 and Annotations

Mr. Scott — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 21:00:20 +0000

English I students worked on their first soliloquy in the play

and met Fr. Lawrence in the process:

The grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night,
Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light,
And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels
From forth day’s path and Titan’s fiery wheels:
Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,
The day to cheer and night’s dank dew to dry,
I must up-fill this osier cage of ours
With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers.
The earth that’s nature’s mother is her tomb;
What is her burying grave that is her womb,
And from her womb children of divers kind
We sucking on her natural bosom find,
Many for many virtues excellent,
None but for some and yet all different.
O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities:
For nought so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give,
Nor aught so good but strain’d from that fair use
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
And vice sometimes by action dignified.
Within the infant rind of this small flower
Poison hath residence and medicine power:
For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;
Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.
Two such opposed kings encamp them still
In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will;
And where the worser is predominant,
Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.

Working in groups, students paraphrased various portions of the text, then gathered into larger groups to share their findings — paraphrases and summaries.

English 8 students worked on “The Drummer Boy of Shiloh.” We’re focusing on the importance of the setting and how it’s developed as well as figurative language.

Homework

English 8: study vocabulary words for quiz later this week.
English I Honors:
- complete 2.3;
- add your paraphrases to the appropriate portion of the soliloquy on Google Classroom (this won’t be ready until a bit later in the afternoon).

2.3 Soliloquy Paraphrasing

emulli8424 — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 20:58:39 +0000

In class today, English 1 students were introduced to Friar Laurence’s Soliloquy in Act 2 Scene 3. A soliloquy is a monologue that an actor/actress says on stage by themselves. They were split into groups and analyzed certain parts of the soliloquy. After this, they created a paraphrase for a certain part of the soliloquy. To finish up class, they were split into more groups and shared their paraphrases with each other and explained the meaning behind them.

Homework

English I Honors:
- Finish reading Act 2 Scene 3
- Act 2 Scene 3 Study Guide
- Type paraphrase from Soliloquy on Google Classroom

2.2 Focus, Annotations, and Active/Passive Voice

Mr. Scott — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 21:51:28 +0000

English I students finished up 2.2 today, looking at several performances of fragments of the scene to see what elements made the performance more or less realistic. From my perspective, it was also my aim for students to hear the scene properly acted (we are, after all, amateurs, and it’s not a theater class at that) so they can see how relatively easier it is to understand passages when they’re performed well.

English 8 students continued with “The Drummer Boy of Shiloh.” We’re focusing on the role setting plays in the story and the author’s use of figurative language.

Homework

Balcony and Imagery

Mr. Scott — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 21:29:44 +0000

English I students looked at the two monologues in 2.2, examining it for parallelism, inversions, and the like.

English 8 began “The Drummer Boy of Shiloh.” We’ll be paying attention to the setting and use of figurative language and literary devices.

Homework

English 8 Studies: none.
English I Honors: read 2.2 (we skipped a page).

1.5 Completion and Jigsaw

Mr. Scott — Fri, 24 Jan 2025 21:36:32 +0000

English I worked on 1.5, discovering a few things that will be on repeat throughout the rest of the play.

English 8 students finished up the jigsaw reading of the Frederick Douglass excerpt we read.

Homework

English 8 Studies: none.
English I Honors: begin preparing for the act 1 test. I would give you a link to the study guide here, as I planned, but I am unable to log into my Greenville County Schools-managed Google Drive account to access it. Hopefully I can get logged in some time this weekend:

1.5 and Summaries

Mr. Scott — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 21:28:31 +0000

English I students looked at 1.5, specifically at all the hidden stage instructions in the opening lines:

We’ll finish it up tomorrow looking at the exchange between Tybalt and Capulet.

English 8 students finished up their annotations and summaries of their excerpts of the Frederick Douglass text we’ve been working on.

Douglass and Shakespeare

Mr. Scott — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 21:56:04 +0000

English I worked on the opening of Romeo and Juliet.

English 8 worked on Frederick Douglass.

First Day 2025

Mr. Scott — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 21:47:37 +0000

English I students were excited to begin Romeo and Juliet.

We went over the the the prologue and determined that the opening lines literally revolve around the the “pair of star-cross’d lovers. Once students determined that the prologue is essentially a summary of the entire play, we discussed why even read the play if we know how it ends: it’s not the ending that’s important, but as one student said, the journey.

English 8 students had a Socratic seminar about freedom in preparation for our new unit, which deals with freedom and the risks people have taken to gain it.

Homework

English 8 Studies: none.
English I Honors: review your last Article of the Week (returned today) so we can go over it tomorrow.

Finishing Up and Sharing

Mr. Scott — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 21:53:52 +0000

English 8 students finished their analytic essays today (in theory). Anyone who didn’t finish will have until the end of the week to complete it.

English I students, because so many won’t be here tomorrow due to the field trip, and their winter surprise:

It’s probably not quite clear what they’re doing. Ask your kiddos — they’ll tell you. And they’ll probably say, “It was pretty cool being so nice to everyone…”

Homework

English 8: Finish your essay if you need to…
English I Honors: Seriously?

Game Play and Final Drafts

Mr. Scott — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 21:12:57 +0000

English I students finally got the reward of their project labor: students played each others’ Odyssey games.

English 8 finished up (in theory) their final writing project.

Homework

English 8: don’t forget to bring your snacks for the party Thursday after the surprise.
English I Honors: don’t forget to bring your snacks for the party tomorrow after the surprise.

Game Prep and Final Drafting

Mr. Scott — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 20:27:34 +0000

English I students worked on their Odyssey games — the last day. Today, students played their own games for the first time to work out kinks in the instructions and game play itself.

English 8 students continued working on their analytic essays on “The Christmas Gift.”

Homework

English 8 Studies: none.
English I Honors:
- anyone who did not complete the Odyssey comp questions needs to do so (closes tonight);
- prepare for the phrases re-take test if you’re taking it tomorrow.

Project Work

Mr. Scott — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 20:29:22 +0000

All students worked on projects today. English I worked on their Odyssey project, of which they will complete beta versions by the end of class Wednesday. English 8 students worked on their “Christmas Gift” project. They’ve completed their reading and annotations today.

Homework

English 8 Studies: none.
English I Honors: work on the phrases Kahoot to prepare for tomorrow’s test.

Project and a Model Paragraph

Mr. Scott — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 21:26:01 +0000

English 8 students looked at an example paragraph about “Inside Out,” modeled on the paragraphs they wrote earlier this week.

Through collaborative consultation they determined, among other things, that the second chunk was in fact superfluous and weakened the paragraph. Two students noted:

Because the topic sentence talks about social life and academics not about his behavior and how much he gets in trouble.`
There is no evidence in the text that Francisco is getting in trouble/his wrists slapped for the same actions as Roberto. There’s also no evidence they had the same teacher.

English I students continued working on their projects.

Homework

English 8 Studies: none.
English I Honors: complete optional phrase practice from the Courses site.

Project and Project Prep

Mr. Scott — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 21:48:06 +0000

English I students worked on their Odyssey projects. English 8 students finished their practice writing for the final major project.

Homework

English 8 Studies: none.
English I Honors: work on phrases practices as needed.

Cycling over Mountains

Mr. Scott — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 22:08:22 +0000

When I lived in Poland, I got into cycling. I bought a mountain bike, bought a road bike, and then my wife and I decided neither was for us: touring is where it’s at! So I converted my mountain bike into a make-shift touring bike and we set off. Every possible weekend, we packed up a few changes of clothes and a camera, and we headed off.

One of our favorite trips was from her home village of Jablonka to a town in Slovakia called Liptovsky Mikulas.

It was a short ride (just a touch over 40 miles), but it had one significant climb of just over 2,000 feet.

If you’re wondering what that looks like, we took a picture:

Those mountains in the distance — we’d just ridden over them.