What We've Been Up To Since September

As mentioned, I will be using this blog again from here on in to keep you updated on some of our classroom assignments and events, but I thought I would take the time to let you know what we've been up to so far.

In terms of writing, we started out by writing a letter of reference about ourselves. This not only gave me a good idea of individual writing levels, but it also allowed me to learn a bit more about each new student. We applied for our dream job, which some of us took seriously, others not so much -- there were marine biologists and bed mattress testers...

Under the umbrella of recounts (texts that retell a past event), we've read several texts, but here are some of the highlights, along with key assignments:

• "Smoky Night" by Eve Bunting, a child's account based on the L.A. Riots. We used this text to identify text features of a recount and started our exploration of the theme of childhood innocence.

• "The Composition" by Antonio Skarmeta, based on a child's perspective of growing up under a military dictatorship. As part of this text we took a look at human rights in general and our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in particular. We also connected the story's events and themes to current events, including dictatorships, past and present.

• "What Do I Remember of the Evacuation", a poem by Canadian author Joy Kogawa about the interment of the Japanese-Canadians in BC during WWII. We extended this to the Holocaust and the current global refugee crisis.

• Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven" was our Hallowe'en read. Aside from learning more about Poe himself, we explored the human condition as expressed in the narrator's emotional rollercoaster. We also took a closer look at the myriad of poetic devices Poe so craftily used in his famous poem. Oh yes, we also watched The Simspons' version of the poem. A highlight was "The Raven" media project which asked students to represent the poem in any media format of their choice. These project were then presented in a Gallery Walk, with each project acting as an exhibit. The results were amazing and I hope to share some of them on this blog. We had musical interpretations, comparisons to Harry Potter, "The Raven" as a series of mathematical equations, an interpretative dance performance, collages, short films, "The Raven" represented through famous paintings, etc., etc.

• Sticking with Poe, we read his classic short story "The Tell-Tale Heart". We studied some vocabulary and will now be examining the narrator's state of mind before staging a mock trial based on the story.

And that's pretty much where we are at the moment.