KHS Reads; Short Story Edition - ELA 9

The grade 9 class has just started their KHS Reads: Short Story Edition assignment. The students were given the task to find their own short story to read, analyze, and write a synopsis for. They had to find their own short story in order to work in groups where they would share their synopsis and try to persuade their group members into believing that their short story is worthy of being read as a class.

Their assignment will have them discussing their short story and the stories that their peers have found. They will analyze each one and have a voting process that will eliminate group members’ short stories daily until there is only one story standing within the group. We have 5 groups within the class, so when each group finds their top story, that group will make a new synopsis to share with the entire class and the voting process will begin again! It’s a new and exciting unit that has the students taking ownership of “their” story. It’s a great way to have them share several different stories and themes in a short amount of time.

What does the winning short story and student receive, you ask? Pride, of course, and the feeling of ultimate domination! 

The winning short story will provide a start to our overall short story unit.  Last year's winning story was Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart. From that, we had a class theme of "A guilty conscience can never be overridden" and we chose other short stories that coincided with that theme and surrounded our short story unit around that theme.

 All in all, each student read at least 6 short stories (3 from their own group and 3 from our winning unit theme). That's a lot of reading and a lot of discussion! 

One of the things I adore about this unit is that the students get to pick their stories, "fight" for their lives in their group, grasp an understanding of theme and discuss what it is about our winning short story that garnered enough attention to be crowned the best! 

This assignment will take the greater part of two weeks and I will keep you updated on their progress!

I can't wait to hear your discussions and see who the big winner will be! Good luck, grade 9s! 

Life is Beautiful for the 20-1s

My ELA 20-1 class just finished viewing the film Life is Beautiful, starring Roberto Benigni (1998).

In 1930s Italy, a carefree Jewish bookkeeper named Guido starts a fairy tale life by courting and marrying a lovely woman from a nearby city. Guido and his wife have a son and live happily together until the occupation of Italy by German forces. In an attempt to hold his family together and help his son survive the horrors of a Jewish Concentration Camp, Guido imagines that the Holocaust is a game and that the grand prize for winning is a tank. - IMDb Summary  

Throughout the film, the students were given questions to discuss between viewings. We watched 4 parts of the film, with the questions being specifically related to that viewing day. I wanted to show the students the evolution of the film, from the tone to the mood to the costumes and lighting. They were introduced to the use of different camera angles and how they add to a film’s tone as well. It’s been an interesting unit with hearing their thoughts on the film and how they were wavering on whether it’s a light-hearted film or an absolute tragedy. The bonus is that even though the film is in Italian and subtitled for them to read, by the second viewing they hardly noticed that they were reading dialogue the entire film. It’s been an awesome unit thus far.

They now have an essay assignment that they have been working on and they will also be introduced to a film analysis assignment on Monday that I hope they enjoy as much as my ENG 20-1 class enjoyed last year. Their film analysis assignment states that they have to choose a film from the drama genre that would fit with our semester’s theme of “the human condition”. They have to analyze their film and discuss the actor’s portrayals, cinematography, theme, symbols, music, and motifs. I'm excited to see what films they choose and their completed projects! I'll keep you updated on those projects (including the assignment handout and PowerPoint slides we went over)!

Watch the movie trailer below! AND Roberto Benigni’s acceptance speech at the 1998 Oscars (It won Best Foreign Film, Best Original Score, and Roberto Benigni, actor and director, won Best Actor; beating out Edward Norton AND Tom Hanks).

The 9s "Find" Poetry

The grade 9 ELA class have been working on their Found Poetry assignments which have them "finding" their own poem within a set of song lyrics that they find interesting. When we started our poetry unit, we spent a lot of time discussing theme, tone, and mood, and interpreting various types of poems, including "My Papa's Waltz" which got the class in a bit of a heated frenzy when we tried to decipher its meaning. The agitation and friendly arguments made me smile because the students were quarrelling about POETRY! How awesome. 

In their assignment, they had to chose lyrics that were interesting and maybe had some sort of meaning to them. The key was to make a new found poem using the words from the lyrics in order, and they couldn't add or alter words from their lyrics to make their new found poem. Another thing they had to keep in mind was that they had ensure that their new found poem had a different theme and tone than the lyrics they chose. In their assignments, they have to contrast the theme and tone from their song lyrics to their new found poem. Quite the task, indeed (but they're definitely up for the challenge)!

Before introducing their assignment, I showed them a poem of my own. I didn't mention that I had "found" it, but we simply discussed its meaning, theme, and mood. 

She loves me

But can’t stand to see me

Try to fight the feeling

Alone.

The thought is killing me

You think you’ve got it

There’s nothing at all

Nothing is forever

Denial.

You don’t want me here

Don’t make me break.

After we discussed the poem, I showed them where I got it from:

After the confusion subsided, they thought it was "cool" that you could do that. I explained that even simply taking words from an upbeat song that have a negative connotation, placing them in order, and tweaking the punctuation by italicizing words or adding emphasis with an exclamation mark can make all the difference.

I cannot wait to see and read the end results! Check out the students hard at work trying to "find" their new poems!

Terry Fox

The Terry Fox run was a great success at KHS yesterday. As a school we raised over $4300 to go towards cancer research. Students were dressed in red and ready to walk, crawl, sprint, jog, or trot the course! It was a fantastic day with smiles, high-fives, laughs, and a great kick-off assembly in the gym followed by a solidarity lap around the track led by myself, Mrs. Harty-Blank and our leadership crew! Way to go, KHS! This is just one more reason why I'm so proud to call myself a Cavalier! 

Comma Use "RULES"!

The 7s have been hard at work on their first unit of the year, grammar! There are so many comma use rules within the English language, but we only focused on 9; attention, extra information, quotations, and adjectives just to name a few. The grade 7s will be punctuation pros in no time! 

...and as you can see, some boys were being productive at the classroom's "Help Center" and wanted to take a selfie to prove it! 

The 9s Learn Imagery & the 20s Want You to Agree!

The first assignments of the year are just around the corner (Monday to be exact)! The grade 9s have been working on imagery; using effective verbs, the 5 senses, and figures of speech to enhance their writing. They've been turning their ordinary stories into a visual dream! We had a crash course in figures of speech which led us to an activity where we had to describe a room in a home and have a partner draw that room from the descriptive sentences in their story. It was awesome to see how a student's writing could come to life through a quick sketch! Our assignment will involve the students writing a momentous story from their childhood and re-creating it using descriptive language. I cannot wait to read their work!

The 20-1 class has been taking notes (and notes, and notes, and more notes...so they say) on thesis statements, effective introductory paragraphs, and persuasive writing techniques. Their assignment will have them choosing a topic for their persuasive essays. When they complete that task, they will be put into teams and we will have our own debate in class! Stay tuned!

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge!

The staff at KHS stepped up in a big way and participated in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. With our students cheering us on and the graduating class of 2015 with the buckets, us teachers got drenched for a good cause. I made a brief video beforehand to give some background information but I got a bit wordy (like a typical ELA teacher), so I had to cut it down to a reasonable rambling. Thank you to the staff at KHS, the students for being there with us, and of course, the class of 2015 for being so willing to soak us with buckets of water and ice; this just shows what us Cavaliers can do!

You can make your donation at www.als.ca 
Check out and share our YouTube video! Thanks for watching! 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxYU38-4JLE