I have really enjoyed getting to know you all this semester – you made class interesting and fun for me! I hope that you all get a very well-deserved break over the holidays, and I’m looking forward to seeing you in the new year.

Happy Friday! One more weekend, and then we’ll all have a good bit of time to relax and enjoy our friends and family!

Today we discussed the prompt for the final exam essay (how-a-journey-can-change-a-person-essay-prompt), which you will write on Monday. Remember, you may research, you may pre-write, you may outline, but you may not bring a rough draft with you when you write your essay on Monday.

We continued our work on the hero research today – please remember that tomorrow, you will turn in to me the completed assignment page/rubric, along with printed copies of your three research pages.

Also – you still have a couple of days to donate to the pet food drive! Please see if you might be able to contribute to this worthy cause.

I told you that you will receive the prompt for your final exam essay tomorrow, and that you will write the essay in class on Monday (though you may prepare by researching, writing an outline, and prewriting over the weekend, if you would like).

Finally, I also gave you materials to review for your final exam. Please see me to pick up paper copies of those materials. Completing that is not required, but recommended.

On Wednesday, we went over how to use Google Scholar to look for credible, academic sources about your hero. Students had the period to continue their research.

Students – if you took a biography from my room, you need to bring it back! Those are library books that I need to return, and students in other class periods need to use them.

Today in class, we will begin our research on heroes for a big project that we will complete in the spring semester. The research notes that you take will count for a major grade and will be due on Friday. Students will have all of Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday in class to complete this assignment (and your only homework will be to work on this).

Here is the assignment instruction sheet – hero-research-project-assignment-sheet.

And here is the template for the notes that you will need to take – research-notes-template. (Notice that you will ultimately need to print these out after you have typed the notes that you need.)

I have a huge collection of biographies in my room, which you will use to complete this assignment.

Here’s the quiz distribution from today. The average score across all classes was an 82.

The only thing that you need to do tonight is to submit your revision of your revenge essay by clicking on the link a few posts down on this website. You’ll turn in the rubric tomorrow in class.

We’re participating in the pet food drive to benefit Bellaire’s PAWs (People for Animal Welfare) Club. Bring in cans or bags of pet food (a small bag = 5 cans; a large bag = 10 cans), and you class could win a freshly-baked chocolate chip cookie party!

PAWs has asked us to make sure that the pet food is of medium quality (such as Pedigree, Purina, or Alpo) – is doesn’t have to be gourmet, but they want to make sure that there aren’t any ingredients that could hurt the animals.

Submit your essay on revenge by clicking on this link. You must turn this in by the beginning of your class period on Tuesday!

And happy Friday! We began today with a discussion of the penultimate CMC reading guide. The next (and last!) one is due on Monday (cmc-reading-guide-10).

We also discussed infinitives – please come get a paper copy of the notes.

Finally, please make sure that you study for your quiz on Monday – it will be over the vocabulary from The Black Count (only that vocab list – not any of the ones from CMC), participles, and infinitives.