Before I begin blogging about fourth
quarter, which has already begun, I want to send a quick update about
third. Though it was a disrupted quarter
in many ways, students got a done of reading done, and I was really proud of
their engagement. My guess is that a
little over 1,000 pages is about what an average student at Pentucket would
read in English over the course of the year,
but I asked these students to read at least that this quarter, and they really
came through. So, first an update on the
pages that they recorded out to me:
Ben D.L. – 1071
Ben K. – 1159
Brayden – 1007
Chris – 1015
Colten – 2243
Eric – 1114
Jak – 986
Jess – 1037
John-Luc - 1022
Kelcy – 1410
Lauren – 1208
Max – 1280
Michaela – 1084
Mike – 1354
Nicolette – 1194
Riley – 1379
Yiannis – 1223
These are
definitely our highest numbers of the year, and I hope that we can match them
fourth quarter, despite that the seniors have fewer weeks to work with!
A
couple other highlights of the quarter:
While
Eric was posting about food, he was contacted by a health food web site and
asked to be a contributor! That was
really exciting news because it’s what blogging is all about, bringing people
from different circles together. I was
very excited for him. :)
Max
wrote some really neat entries about music, which I know is one of his
passions. He also wrote an excellent
synthesis entry about the styles/intended audiences for each of his books. Go
on his blog and check it out if you have a chance!
Mike
took on a sophisticated topic in reading about African culture. This led him to read some tough books and
work to interpret them on his own. My
favorite part of his final blog, though, was when he wrote about the learning
curve he experienced and how the reading gave him a different perspective on
his own life. He said, “More than
anything I have come to notice the importance of education in today’s
world. When people think of “strength”
and “power” it is commonly conceived by physical traits such as man and
gunpowder. This quarter I have come to
understand that it is education that runs our world. This is something that made me start to think
seriously about my own education, which I started to talk about a little bit in
my earlier blog. I am certainly not as
far along in my own education as I would like to be, and it is almost been a
bit of a wake-up call.” Right on,
Mike! Education is certainly key, and
reading is one way to become educated and to develop critical thinking skills. I’m so glad you see this.
http://www.google.com/imgresimgurl=http://crescentok.com/staff/
This
class has been very engaging, and teaching it even recently won me an award in
my district! I love reading the blogs every
week and having hope that these kids will continue to read, to seek
intellectual development and even the catharsis that comes with reading, on
their own after high school. I’m glad that we have another quarter, and
then a final project!, left before it’s all over for the year.
CJF
