Redkudu

Thanks for the ideas for Gatsby. I think I will seriously consider using excerpts to lead into that. I finished up my 2nd 6 weeks lessons and materials last night, so I'm about ready to begin working on Gatsby in the 3rd. The kids end the 2nd 6 weeks writing an essay comparing the growing ideals for an independent nation as laid forth in the Declaration to specifics from "Self Reliance" so I'm hoping they will have a strong foundation to begin looking at these notions of new wealth and individualism. I ended up using the Declaration to introduce and practice recognition of the 8 parts of speech so they will be familiar with it. This is new for me, so I'm hoping it works.

Homework...gah. What haven't I done? The only homework I used to have was reading and revising work for final drafts, but I'm not satisfied with that any more. I'm going to try some new things this year. First, I've weighted homework more. It's not going to mean the difference between passing and failing if they skip a few, but it's going to make a big difference if they don't do any of it. Second, I'm creating grade graphs. Basically, I made a graph, and filled in all the assignments I will take a grade on, including skills tests and exams. The kids will fill in the grade they made, and then create a bar graph by coloring in columns. They can then calculate their overall grade, as well as have a visual representation of their grade. I am hoping this will solve the "out of sight, out of mind" problem a lot of our students seem to have in regards to their grades.

For the first 2 six weeks, I've created homework assignments which can be copied, but even if they are, the student will be reviewing in some way, at least. (Or that's my theory). All of the homework assignments are directly related to what we've done in class that day - in other words, reinforcement. We check the homework at the very beginning of the period - so if they're going to copy, they need to get it done before class! :P Some of the homework I've chosen came out of a workbook I found in our English office which did not match our textbooks, but I thought was interesting. They are articles, letters, short stories which correspond with certain subjects/works. For instance, there is an article on the life of Anne Bradstreet which will be their homework after they've read and analyzed "On The Burning of Our House" in class. These worksheets require close reading and using context clues to analyze vocab. I have some for Nat. American folklore, Emerson, science fiction...just about anything we might read, so a few of these, I think, will be good supplemental materials. I am structuring lessons as best I can so that some of the vocab they are introduced to is reinforced in the next day's lesson, and some of it is what they're responsible for memorizing and experimenting with in their writing.

I keep fairly tight control on writing for the first 2 6 weeks. This is due to my previous experience and background knowledge of our students - they generally come to me without really knowing how to plan writing, so we do a lot of brainstorming, organizing, and composing in class. Once we hit Gatsby, I kind of like Dana's idea (from the comments) - I might look at using it somehow. At that point they will be reading the novel for homework as well, so it would be a good opportunity to have written responses to the novel - perhaps some kind of journal that would build up toward whatever their major writing component will be for that unit.

I read a post at Huffenglish.com about UbD, and now I'm even more intrigued. It sounds a little like what I do - plan for the desired results first. Would you say, from what you know, that it's similar? I'll have to wait a while to purchase new books - new house and all - but I definitely want to see that one and the English book as soon as possible.

How do you fight the homework battle? Or do you have to? Also, do you have classes every day? I have classes every other day for 90 minutes.