Grades

     I just finished grading all of the make up work and the blogs for this week, and your grades are posted.  As of now, those are your final 4th quarter grades, which will be averaged with 3rd quarter and your project to see if you passed the class.  If you have any make up work that you would like to get 50% on, please get this in by the end of the weekend, before posting your project, and send me an e-mail so that I can read your post and revise your grades.  Remember that the projects are due by 11 am on Monday and are worth 20% of your grade for the semester. I'm sure they'll be awesome, and I'm looking forward to reading all about them! Enjoy the senior activities this week. :)
                                                                                                                                           CJF

Final Posts!

        Just a quick update of what you all have left to complete for the quarter!
1. Tomorrow's vocabulary/reading blog
2. Tuesday - final writing blog that combines a Tuesday/Thursday blog
3. Wednesday - final vocab/reading blog
4. Final project! - Planning, ten hours of action, 1000 word (twice as long) post due by 11 am on May 23rd.  This is 20% of your semester grade, remember, so please, please get it in on time.
        Late work should all be in by the end of this weekend.  Please e-mail me with any questions on posts, grades, or projects.  Let's all get to graduation! :)
                                                                                                              CJF

Sneak Peak of Thursday's Meeting Topic :)

                                                                  Final Project

                           Due by 11 am the day of the English final exam, date TBA

            Because this is not a traditional English class, we are not going to take a traditional final.  Instead of coming in for a long test for which you have (hopefully!) studied ahead of time, you are going to plan for, complete, and blog about a project of your choice.  This project should be based around an interest that arose during your reading for the semester, ideally fourth quarter since that will be freshest in your mind.  Everything that you do in relation to this project (research, planning, execution, and reflection) must be posted in your final blog of the semester, by 11 am on the day of the English final.  Please take this blog post extra seriously, as it is the representation of a project that counts for 10% of your yearly grade.  This means that you should write an outline and an initial draft, then self-edit and additionally have someone else look it over before you post a final version for me (and any other viewers) to read. 

             

Guidelines:

There are three stages to the project:  research/planning, action, and reflection.

Between these three elements, your project will take approximately 20 hours.

Requirements:

1.      The project must justifiably relate to one of your quarter topics. 

2.      Evidence of research, planning.

3.      At least ten hours where you take action and do something.  Action must be recorded in written testimonials from other people, photographs, or videos.

4.      Reflection/Blog Post (1,000 words):  This reflection should first lay out what you set out to do and why.  Feel free to post excerpts from your planning and link in articles that relate to your topic or goals.  Next, explain not just your project but the results, the way that it affected you (or didn’t), and its connection to your reading.  You may also discuss any challenges that you faced in completing your project.

Because this assignment takes the place of your final, it is worth 20% of your grade for the semester.  That means that if you get a zero on it, your grade will go down 20 points.  You have a month to complete it, so please make sure that you complete it to the best of your ability.

            I hope that it will be a great experience for all of us.  I’m really looking forward to seeing what you come up with and especially for witnessing how choosing your own topics to study has affected you both personally and intellectually.  As usual, please contact me with any questions. 

                                                                 Good luck! J

Final Project Meeting

Good morning,

Please meet me in Ms. Stekl's room (second on left in English hallway) 3rd period on Thursday morning so we can go over the project you'll be completing for your final. Mr. Ruland will be there with the Chromebooks so we can get started together. If you have another class scheduled 3rd period, please e-mail me to make arrangements. 

Thanks, and see you soon! : )

                                           CJF

Last vacation of high school!

Just a quick reminder to follow the same schedule as February vacation this week. Please read 80-100 pages and post your vocab words by 2:15 pm on Friday. No other blogs due. Back to work on Tuesday/Thursday entries after vacation, and we will be meeting about the final project soon. Have a fun week! : )

CJF

4th Quarter Plans

    Welcome to your last quarter of high school.  Let's make it a great one!  As you know, 4th quarter plans are due on Friday and are the only post due this week.  Next week, beginning on Tuesday the 12th, we will go back to the three post schedule.  Please remember that the posts are specific to the day, so Tuesday's revolves around a quotation, Thursday's an element to analyze, and Friday is to update me on your reading and vocabulary.  For full credit, please make sure that you are citing page numbers and also that you add something to your entries, such as images or links that enhance the written word.  Also, late work for 4th quarter (as we discussed at our meeting in January) will only be accepted up to a week after its due date, so please plan accordingly.
      I know that Ms. Costello has been working a lot with some of you this week to find new books and topics.  Make sure that you thank her for all of her hard work!  I am available daily over e-mail and will be in the building on Thursday.  Please e-mail me if you'd like to meet.  Additionally, I plan to meet with you all as a group in a couple weeks so we can discuss the final, which is a project that you will complete and blog about.  More on that soon!
       Please choose motivating topics and get ready for some awesome reading to finish out high school. :)   Be in touch.
                                                                                                             CJF

Late Work

     Hi Everyone,
     We're getting down to the end of the quarter here, so I wanted to write a quick post about late work.  Most of you are doing great with keeping up with your blogs and getting work in in a timely fashion when it is late, but there are a few people who have gotten considerably behind, and I want to remind you of a couple things.  First, remember that this class is a graduation requirement.  You can pass for the semester if you fail third quarter but your fourth quarter average brings you to a 60% or above, but who wants that kind of worry during the last quarter of high school?  Let's get those third quarter grades up now!  Secondly, you can't pass in late work after the quarter ends.  No exceptions to this.  The quarter is the quarter, and you will need a new topic once fourth quarter starts, so you can't be lingering with work for this one then.  So this week is a really big one.  You need to stay on top of your current work and also do any make up work that needs to be done.  You should be spending your one period a day working on this class and also doing a bit more at home each night.  Again, most people appear to be doing this, and it seems as if everyone is really enjoying their reading, which is great.  The grades are updated on School Loop right now (and every week) if you need to double check anything.  It's still early enough on Sunday to pound out some more work, so if you are in a position where you need to do so, please get some done and then e-mail me prompting me to check your blog.  I'm looking forward to a full class of passing grades.
                                                                                                  Thank you!
                                                                                                                  CJF

Vacation!

     Happy vacation, everyone!
     I know that you must be thrilled to be on break, and I hope that you enjoy it. :)  I've gotten a few e-mails about your work, and I had already planned to post a note about it. So, the deal is that yes, you do have reading and vocab due this week (so please post on Friday, or Thursday night if you don't want to do it exactly Friday), but no, you do not have to blog.  The reason that School Loop lists blog posts for this week is that the assignments are posted to repeat every Tuesday and Thursday.  So you can just ignore those, but do post your 80-100 pages of reading and your vocab words.  A clarifying comment about the Friday posts.  Please make sure that you keep track of the pages where you find your vocabulary words, and remember that part of that post is to tell me what pages you read in the past week.  Lastly, remember that your Tuesday and Thursday blogs are due by 2:15 pm on those days, and while I will not always be reading them on those afternoons, in the event that I do and yours are not posted, they will be marked late.  I know that happened with a few people this week.
     As of now, your grades are updated.  If you have late work, it must be made up during vacation. In the event that you post this week, please send me an e-mail to alert me to check your blog.  And remember, you chose these topics so that they would be inspiring to read and write about.  I really hope that they are and that you are enjoying yourself, but we also need to be realistic about this being a graduation requirement and that being another motivating factor in getting your work done.
      I hope we're all on the same page about the course, but please e-mail me with any questions.
                                                                                     Enjoy vacation, and happy reading! :)
                                                                                                                                 CJF

Snow Days

       Hi All,
       I hope that you have enjoyed your four-day weekend! What a way to begin February.  However, I hope, for your sake, that you don't have a February like last year (with so much snow and a building that cannot handle it).  Although I know that seniors don't have to make up snow days in the traditional way, that got to be a bit stressful last year, trying to cram everything in!  I hope that you've gotten plenty of extra reading done while you really shouldn't have been out driving anywhere.  I'm looking forward to hearing about your progress.  I really should have published this entry before it was an issue, but let's just say that I sort of thought an online class implied it.  That is to say that your work is due on the days that it's due regardless of if you are in school or not.  That goes for snow days that the entire district observes or individual days out of the building.  The benefit of an online class is that you do not have to be anywhere specific to do it.  Therefore, not being at school does not excuse late (or simply absent) work.  I have already graded all of the work that was posted last week, and there were a few of the Friday blogs missing, which is too bad because of the three you write each week, that's certainly the least time-consuming one.  So, let's use this as a warning.  I'll take ten points off Friday's blog if you post it by 2:15 pm tomorrow, but in the future you won't be able to post that late for any more than half credit.  Remember, also, that you have a quotation post due tomorrow afternoon as well.
        Because I'm not seeing you in person, I plan to update the grades as I read your blogs each week. That means that you can see your grade, accurately, twice a week.  Please pay attention on School Loop since this class is a graduation requirement.  E-mail me any time with any questions, and I can also arrange to meet with you in person on occasion if that would help.  Additionally, you have two great resources in person in Ms. Costello and Mr. Ruland who can answer questions and give advice. Let's be proactive here so no one is in a tricky situation going into the last month of school!
        I am really enjoying your blogs so far.  They are all very different from one another, and I plan to highlight some example posts soon.  In the meantime, feel free to click on each other's names and see what your classmates are up to, how they are formatting entries, etc.  While this is an individual class, you aren't totally on your own in completing it, and I really want you to feel comfortable, learn a lot, and have a good time.  We'll talk again soon. :)
                                                                                                CJF

Staying Organized

     Good morning! :)
     I just read everyone's plans, and I am really excited about the variety of topics that people plan to study.  This is going to be great for all of you and also really fun in that I am going to learn a lot as well.  I will post all of your topics to my blog next week, but to give you a taste, Derek is going to teach me about car restoration, and Garrett's going to explore Hollywood mysteries. What variety! :)
     For now I wanted to send you a quick note about staying organized between blog posts.  While all of your graded work is going to be done through Blogger, I want you to think of the blog as more of a final draft of what you are learning.  For notes and rough draft materials, I suggest getting a composition notebook.  Most of you are used to using notebooks in class and not doing everything online, and I think continuing that method will help you here as well.  Therefore, my vision is that you have a composition notebook that is specifically for this class and that you write quick notes to yourself in daily.  I would take it out while you read and jot down the date, pages that you read that day, page numbers of quotes you might want to write about, perhaps ideas that you can explore for your analytical blog posts (like symbolism, answers to your essential questions, etc.), and of course your vocab words.  Then, when you have a blog post to write, you flip through that notebook to find material.  For the Friday blog, you'll need to look at it to record your page numbers accurately.  You'll also need to make sure that you found at least ten vocab words, defined them, and that you recorded what page you found them on in your book.  Then for your other two blogs a week, if you keep ideas in the notebook, you won't be spending tons of your writing time just looking for material to write about.  It will already be there!
      Of course no one will be checking this notebook, but it seems to me that it will help you be more successful, so I hope it's a suggestion that you take.  Please contact me if you have any questions. You could also comment on the class blog to share ideas that you have about how to be successful. Though this is an independent class, you can still learn from each other by reading each other's blogs and sharing ideas on our class blog.
      Enjoy the rest of the weekend, do some revising on your plans (particularly essential questions) if I suggested that in my comments, and get reading! :)  You have your first 80-100 pages due on Friday, the 5th, and the first blog based around a quotation is due by 2:15 pm on Tuesday, and your first analytical post due on Thursday by 2:15 pm.  Then we should be on a roll with this. Good luck, and I hope you'll have fun with it. :)

Let's Start Planning

      Though this is an independent class, there are certain requirements I've set up to make it optimally successful.  One of the main guidelines is that while you choose a topic, you aren't just going to wing it for the rest of the quarter.  I want you to know where you are starting, where you are going, what you want to learn, and what resources you're going to use.  Therefore, the first thing that we have to do to have a great experience in this class is to make a plan for the quarter.  The plan has four requirements:
1.  Introductory paragraph with your topic and your reasons for wanting to study this topic.
2.  Essential questions for the quarter (remember that essential questions are open ended).
3.  List of books that you will read for the quarter (must equal at least 80-100 pages a week).  It's better to have too many books rather than too few.  I'd say minimum of four.
4. Schedule of reading.  For this you can download a calendar or simply type a list of weeks and which books/pages you plan to be on each week.
        To make this more clear, I hoped to insert two example plans from students from last year's class. However, the student blogs "expired" with the Pentucket e-mail addresses. I have many of their posts saved on my own blog but no sample plans. Therefore, you will simply have to follow the instructions above. Ms. Costello has them also and is in the library ready to help. I am so excited to see what you choose and post by Friday. Feel free to get this done far earlier and begin your reading as you have your first quotation post due next Tuesday, February 2nd.  Please contact me (you can comment on the class blog) if you have any questions! :)

Let's Get Started :)

Topics in Literature

Ms. Fichera

Spring 2016

Online

Overview:

Welcome to what I hope will be a great new opportunity to explore literature in a way that you’ve never quite before.  I am so excited to get started!  As you know, this class is not going to function in the same way that your previous three and a half years of high school English have.  Instead, there will be two major differences.  First of all, in terms of content, each of you will be designing your own curriculum for the semester.  Secondly, the format will be online and not a physical classroom space.  The idea is this:  each quarter you will choose a particular area of literary interest to study.  You will come up with a plan:  essential questions, books, and a schedule.  Once this plan has been submitted and approved, you will pursue this area of interest until the end of the quarter, reading daily and posting to a blog bi-weekly, then you will do the same for the second quarter of the semester.  Rather than meet daily in my classroom, we will communicate via School Loop and the class blog.   

Requirements:

1.      Read and write about your area of study five days a week.  This should total approximately 80-100 pages of reading and three pages of writing per week.

2.      Keep a composition book for each quarter.  In it, log the pages of your reading, take notes (this should be done in your  own way, perhaps with thinking routines or quotations but should not only be facts, though I imagine that there will be some), and record and define at least ten new vocabulary words each week.

3.      Keep a blog for class and post to it three times a week.  You will have three different types of posts due. 

a.       Friday blog – This is the simplest entry, the most factual.  Please tell me the name of the book and author you have been reading this week since the previous Friday; our reading schedule will run from Friday to Friday (example Heading Home with Your Newborn – Laura Jana and Jennifer Shu), what pages you read (example: 1-113), and list and define ten new vocabulary words from your reading and what pages you found them on (example: colic – persistent crying in an otherwise healthy baby – p. 113).  

b.      Tuesday blog – Relatively informal entry.  500 word minimum. This entry needs to be based around a quotation that you read over the course of the week that inspired you to think and reflect, ideally on something personal.  There should be three parts to your entry.  The first should provide some context of where you are in your book, the second have the quotation and an analysis of the quotation, and the third should be a personal connection or reflection to your life, your school, society in general, etc.  To get some ideas about this, I will give you the link to the Topics class from next year, and you can click on a student’s name and read an entry written on a Tuesday.  Be sure to read around to get the best ideas.  http://topicsinliterature2014-2015.blogspot.com/

c.       Thursday blog – More formal, though you can still use “I.”  500 word minimum.  This entry should be more intellectual, analyzing a particular element of your reading for the week. You might choose a symbol, motif, theme, something about the style of writing, etc., but this one will be more typical of what you would write about in an English class.  Again, use the link to my class blog from last year and then click on a student’s name and look for an analytical blog to use an a model.   

http://topicsinliterature2014-2015.blogspot.com/

Your blogs are due by the end of the school day on Tuesday, Thursday, and Fridays, so 2:15 pm.  However, I would not necessarily recommend that you work on these entries during school on the day that they are due as they make up 100% of your grade for the semester. 

I’m hoping that your blog is something that you will be really proud of, so make it interesting!  Add pictures, links, music, etc. (and make sure to cite them! Ask me or see Ms. Costello if you need help with this).  It should not just be type with no “extras.”  In that case, you would be doing the work in a notebook.  So instead, make it informative, but most importantly make it your own. J

4.      Be passionate and independent. 

Final Thoughts:

If this seems like a lot, remember two things:  the topic is one that you have chosen yourself, so reading and writing about it should not feel like work, and you should also be using your “class” time (fifty minutes per day) in addition doing “homework” (about thirty minutes per day).  That’s a lot of minutes learning about something that you care about, and I’m sure the time will fly by.  You might have noticed that my examples above were about having a new baby, which I do, so that’s a topic that I am currently motivated to read about.  I want you to choose two topics that you will be similarly excited about and which will make you feel like English is not work so much as something that is enriching your life.

            I had been dreaming about teaching a class like this for ages, and we tried it last year, and it went great.  Sure, there were some bumps in the road, like in any new experience, but I know that my students read and learned a lot more (and about topics that really interested them) than they ever had before.  I hope that you will, too, and that you are genuinely excited to get started.  Please e-mail me or send me questions through the class blog at any time.  I will do my best to respond right away, but you can also use Mr. Ruland and Ms. Costello as resources as they will also be heavily involved in this new online course and are also in the building for the semester.  I’m ready to get started and look forward to reading about your projects every day. J

"One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested."

— E. M. Forster