Today is a podcast day! I’m realizing that we’re not going to get through all of it, but we should knock out most. Here is the link, and here are the questions (radiolab-patient-zero-podcast-questions).

There’s no homework for this weekend, other than reading the article for your exam on Monday (see yesterday’s post).

Today we will be reading an article about the response to the Ebola crisis two years ago and answering some multiple choice questions (the-most-terrifying-thing-about-ebola-slate-article). As I told you yesterday, we will have a multiple choice critical reading exam on Monday over a lengthy article about the people who put their lives on the line in the Ebola crisis (time-2014-person-of-the-year-the-ebola-fighters). I will give you a paper copy of the article on Friday – you will take it home and annotate it (you won’t have a reading guide over the weekend), and you may use it on the exam on Monday.

Tomorrow (Friday), we’re going to be listening to a podcast, so if you would rather listen independently instead of having me play it for the whole class, please remember to bring a listening device.

Today we went over both the latest Hot Zone reading guide and the Masque of the Red Death reading guide. We watched a quick film interpretation of the Masque of the Red Death story. The next reading guide (the-hot-zone-reading-guide-6) is due on Friday.

Today we read a piece of short fiction related to some of the themes in The Hot Zone – “The Masque of the Red Death,” by Edgar Allen Poe. Here’s the story and the reading guide (the-masque-of-the-red-death).

I’m sorry for the late post! WordPress seemed to be having trouble last night. On Monday we took our vocabulary quiz – the most common score was a 100! I passed out Reading Guide 5 (the-hot-zone-reading-guide-5), which will be due on Wednesday.

We spent all of today talking about what we have read! I distributed your reading guide 4 (the-hot-zone-reading-guide-4), which is due on Monday. Please also make sure that you are ready for your vocab quiz (no grammar!).

Today students finished reading and responding to “Wild Flavor” – we’ll talk about it in class tomorrow (along with Reading Guide 3). There’s no additional homework!

We had lots going on today! I told you that I will be out tomorrow taking my French family to the rodeo in San Antonio, and I gave you the materials that you will need for tomorrow.

Today we read an article of literary criticism about Dracula (a-disease-with-a-bite-reading) and you began writing a precis using the Google Classroom.

Tomorrow you will turn in your Reading Guide 2 and will finish writing your precis. You will also start reading another article (wild-flavor-abridged) and complete a reading guide (wild-flavor-reading-guide).

And I went ahead and gave you the third reading guide, which is due on Friday (the-hot-zone-reading-guide-3).

We had some interesting discussions about Ebola today! Homework for the next two nights is Reading Guide 2 (the-hot-zone-reading-guide-2), which is due Wednesday. With the remainder of class, students took this week’s grammar and vocab quiz. We had a lot of people who were absent, so if you fall into that category, please come make it up Friday during lunch.

Sorry this is a little late! The website was having trouble uploading documents.

On Friday we went over the first vocabulary list for The Hot Zone (under the Vocabulary section). Students also practiced rhetorical analysis by looking at some political cartoons (ebola-political-cartoons).