Thanks, updates, & how to help your Pre-AP Litter :-)

Dear Parents,

It was wonderful to see so many of you at Open House and to read your very informative and greatly entertaining parent questionnaires. This is the first year that I have done the parent questionnaire, but it will not be the last—I feel that I gained so much more knowledge about your sons and daughters. I loved learning about their diverse and unique involvements—from Girl Scouts to Youth Symphony to song-writing to quad-riding. And the funny anecdotes were a delight. Thank you for taking the time to fill them out!

Thanks, also, to those of you who sent goodies and root beer for our Mead Hall Day.  The students seemed to enjoy eating and drinking while taking turns reading Beowulf, the major piece of literature from the Anglo-Saxon period.  Occasionally they would shout out boasts, as if they were warriors, which added to the atmosphere!

We’re five weeks done with sophomore year already—by the end of next week we’ll be 1/6 of the way through the year, which is nearly impossible to believe. So far we’ve spent a lot of time focusing on theme, symbol, word choice, close reading, following directions, and submitting quality work.  Students are required to use MLA format for all writing, and some are still struggling with this, even though all they need to do is to use the template on the website, and type right over it. I returned non-MLA format papers to them at the beginning—now I’m just deducting points if they choose not to learn and use the accepted format.  Hopefully, learning to pay better attention to detail will help them in their adult lives, even though it may temporarily cause frustration now.

So, how can you help them be even more successful in Pre-AP Literature?  Please encourage them to do their homework the night it is assigned, to annotate/highlight assignment directions, to use the rubrics as guides to their writing/creating, and to read for meaning.  I’m finding that some “read” without comprehending, seeming to believe that a quick skimming for major ideas is sufficient.  You might want to chat with them about the reading strategies you use in the workplace or for a challenging piece of text.  I’m encouraging annotation, looking away from the text at the end of each section to review/recite a summary, taking notes, previewing the text before they read, and quizzing themselves on the questions at the end of the text. 

After taking the practice PSAT Critical Reading exercise, students are commenting on their weakness in vocabulary.  Students who have not been avid readers in the past tend to have less sophisticated vocabularies, but this is easy for you to help correct.  You can:

·         Sign them up for Word of the Day through dictionary.com at http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday

·         Suggest that they create their own mini-dictionary, and make an attempt to use those words in reading and writing.

·         Encourage them to read more challenging books, fiction and non-fiction (I posted a list of books for you and your child to read together on the website—look for “Outside Reading for You and Your Parents”).

·         Encourage them to regularly read news sites, especially the beautifully-crafted articles at New York Times

·         Help them to break words down into prefix/root/suffix (example: point out that  “inestimable” literally means “not able to be estimated”).

·         Deliberately use more challenging vocabulary with them, and ask if they know that word

·         Force them to listen to NPR (this may be a battle J) and then comment on the new reporters’ and commentators’ beautiful, engaging word choice.

·         Reinforce the fact that stronger vocabularies will help them in reading, writing, college, and career.

As a side note, I updated grades on Wednesday.  Everything is entered on Skyward except the “You Think I Am” poems (only one class complete so far), the in-class essays (just back from the theme reader yesterday), and the Anglo-Saxon boasts turned in by periods 2 and 3 so far.  If a grade is missing, it is because I did not have the assignment by Wednesday at 6:00 p.m.  If your son/daughter is missing an assignment, and he/she is convinced that it was submitted, he/she should e-mail me or talk to me on Monday.

That’s it.  I hope that you have a wonderful weekend with your great kids.  What a blessing it is to spend 100 minutes with each class every other day—thank you for sending them to THS.

Brooke Dillon