Theme: perseverance often allows us to become stronger individuals

Coyotes,

As I reflect back on this past week, the first word that comes to my mind is ‘perseverance’.  We were tested emotionally with the tragic loss of one of our beloved Coyotes, we were tested physically/mentally with late night homework marathons, and we were tested on our ability, amidst the already challenging tasks this week, to persevere through challenge and loss, which is the greatest test you’ll ever take. Fortunately, a growth mindset welcomes challenge as a means of becoming better/stronger, and it was an honor to see you all ‘grow’ this week.

This week, we read Ursula K LeGuin’s ‘The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas’ before practicing summary and analysis of the theme ‘we often make great sacrifices for what we believe in’. We then compared the ways in which Harrison Bergeron and the teens who left Omelas approached their conflicts by writing a comparative analysis.  We will culminate our analysis on Monday by creating a dual diorama depicting the scenes discussed in our analyses.  Many of your responses have been insightful thus far, and I am pleased to see that you are beginning to make ‘analysis’ a natural part of your reading/writing.

Enjoy the weekend, take time to 'smell the roses', and I'll see you Tuesday/Wednesday.

~Mr. Allen

RAFTs Are In!

Hey Coyotes,

Let me begin by offering a well-deserved congratulations for the personal narratives that you showcased in class yesterday! The hard work and creative effort you invested into your RAFTs during the past three weeks was evident in the responses elicited by your peers upon reviewing/listening to your pieces, and I was certainly pleased with the level of writing that I saw emerge from your papers.  You have effectively employed the narrative strategies that we practiced in class, but more importantly you took risks with your writing by trying these new strategies while openly discussing very personal, meaningful moments in your life. I am honored to have been able to read them. Thank you.

Upon submitting the final RAFTs, we used laptops and iPads to respond to fellow authors, providing feedback and recognizing the strengths of each paper. We then conducted an 'Authors Chair' in order to provide authors with a larger audience with which to share their narratives. Great pieces!

In regards to reading, we began practicing strategies for identifying and correctly stating a theme from a given piece of literature. Your insight and discussion regarding ‘Harrison Bergeron’ and ‘Fahrenheit 451’ demonstrated your ability to take the greater themes of the pieces and apply them to our current world. Well done!

As we head into our next week, we will focus on comparing and contrasting the motivations of literary characters in these stories, performing analysis of author styles, and begin using our reading blogs to track our reading progress.

Be well, enjoy the weekend, and I’ll see you Monday morning.

Mr. Allen