Unit 2 is all taking us back to The Dark Ages.
Good morrow, Lords and Ladies!
This week, we are starting Unit 2, which focuses on Medieval literature. This is honestly one of my favorite units, and it typically ends up being a student favorite, as well!
We’ll read an exciting excerpt from the famous epic poem Beowulf, follow Dante into the circles of Hell with excerpts from “The Inferno,” and travel to King Arthur’s court to match wits with the supernatural “Green Knight.” We’ll also take a little sojourn to the Middle East to learn a bit about the amazing cultural and literary works that were happening at the time Europe was plunging into darkness and disease.
In addition to reading these incredible pieces, we’ll be working on skills like paraphrasing, answering questions using text evidence, honing our academic writing skills, and practicing note-taking, annotation, discussion, and analysis of key concepts.
Please continue to encourage your students to attend class and do the work! This class gets easier once students begin to do the work in earnest.
As always, I am here to help your scholars and be a resource to your family. If you ever want insight into what we’re doing in class, you want to read along with us, or you have questions or concerns about your student’s performance and progress, please let me know!
Academic Challenges | Identifying areas of growth
Last week, we took our Unit 1 exam. I wanted to share the challenges I see overall so you know what we’re dealing with in class and what we’ll be working on to help get your students up to grade level.
Capitalization
Most of our students struggle with capitalization. Without hyperbolizing, it’s safe to say that 90% of our students do not know or practice the foundational rules of capitalization.
The most common mistakes include:
- Not starting sentences with a capital letter.
- Not capitalizing proper nouns like names.
- Capitalizing a proper noun only once in a sentence and then writing it lowercase after that.
- Capitalizing “I” when they are referring to themselves.
Complete sentences
Many students struggle to write in complete sentences. More often than not, they do not express a complete thought in their sentences, starting mid-thought and drifting off or writing the conclusion without any introduction.
We are practicing the RACE Method which is commonly used starting in elementary school across the United States.
Restate the question – students struggle turning a question into a statement.
Answer the question – students struggle fully answering the questions they are asked, especially if it more than one part.
Cite your evidence – students struggle to find quotes from the text to support their answers and struggle with the proper way to write quotations.
Explain your evidence- students struggle with explaining how the quote they chose from the text supports their ideas.
We will continue to practice this method all year.
Slang, Text Speech, and Writing at Grade Level
This is a big one! Many of our 12th graders do not use academic or formal language when speaking or writing in class. At this point in the year, about 10% of my students write at a 12th-grade level. That will change with practice!
Common words used on tests and in formal writing that should not be:
- Gonna instead of going to
- Finna as short for fixing to, which is not academic, either.
- Dunno for don’t know
- Cuz or cause for because
- Tho for though
- IDK. Instead of I don’t know
- NGL for not going to lie (again, not formal language anyway)
- IMO for in my opinion
- LOL – mostly used right after “IDK.”
I also see and hear a lot of double negatives. The problem with this is that students aren’t saying what they mean to say, and they don’t even know it.
Speaking and writing academically and formally are essential for several reasons, but the two big things:
- If your student is college bound, their professors will expect and demand that their work is written well, spell-checked, and error free. They will struggle in class if they cannot improve their skills. The professors I speak to say that their incoming Freshman often struggle a lot with on-level work because they are graduating from high school without having mastered foundational skills in reading, writing, and critical thinking.
- Clients, bosses, and people out in the world are judgemental. Speaking and writing poorly will indicate to others that your scholar is uneducated. This can cost them job opportunities, raises, and chances to “move up.”
At the end of the day, as much as I love that I’m teaching your kids Byron, Kafka, and Shakespeare, what I really want them to be able to do is read and analyze documents like job offers and lease agreements. I want them to be able to communicate professionally and neatly with bosses, clients, and other people in their lives. These are the skills they learn in my class.
Writing…at all.
Unfortunately, many students either skipped the writing portion of the test or did not read the directions and answered the questions incorrectly.
According to the district’s ELA coordinator, one of the big reasons many of our students fail the STAAR/EOC exams are because they skip the writing all together.
I know many students have challenges with their writing, but this is precisely why they need to practice. Even if AI is becoming more and more prevalent, AI is not always right.
If students lack foundational knowledge, they do not have the skills needed to check and ensure the accuracy of their AI work.
For the exam, students were give the written response questions ahead of time. I also included excerpts from the novel on the test they could use as reference. Students were given the opportunity to use pre-writing notes for the final, extended constructed response question.
Many students did not prepare for the writing portion of the exam and, out of the almost 175 student that I have, only 12 had pre-writing notes prepared for the exam.
There are writing sections on every exam this year and it is not possible to pass my tests if you skip them or do not read the directions. Students are made aware of this, but choose to ignore instruction to the detriment of their grade.
If you want more specific information about your student’s challenges, please reach out at michelle.courtright@manorisd.net. I keep meticulous records and writing samples for all of my students.
Ms. Courtright's Class 
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