Hargrove's Class

This is my second attempt at a Beowulf test that is more aligned with the philosophy of the CCS than tests that I have traditionally used. It does still contain a recall portion and the Beowulf translation in the McDougal Littel English IV textbook is what my students read for that. The passage for the passage based portion is a passage from the Beowulf translation used in the Holt Rhinehart English IV textbook. (I apologize for any problems with the line numbers on the passage.)

One movie that I always make time to show is To Kill a Mockingbird and since I typically make the students write when we watch movies, I use this as an opportunity to tackle analytical writing. Freshmen typically struggle with this and using a movie seems to help. I've just included the prompts but I do a great deal of direct instruction with the writing of this essay.

This project bookends a study of Shakespeare's Macbeth.

This is my first day of the semester assignment. I walk them through it, discussing all the steps and simplifying the thesis statement portion for my younger students. After the initial whining about writing on the first day, they settle in & knock it out. I like this assignment because it provides me with a sample of their writing immediately and it allows me to learn a little about them. It is an assignment that we revisit several times throughout the year to gauge how they are doing on a

At the end of our study of Romeo & Juliet, the students always want to watch a movie and if we have time, I allow it; however, students never just watch a movie in my room. I always make them write about it. This is the writing prompt that I use when I show West Side Story instead of one of the movie versions of the play. For my sanity, I like to switch it up.

I use this essay at the end of our unit on the Age of Romanticism in British Literature as the written assessment that accompanies the multiple choice common assessment.

This test contains recall questions that require the students to remember events from our class reading of the play. It also contains passages and passage-based questions.

This has become my favorite essay. Following a class study of Harry Potter, the students are asked to analyze a character from another previously studied work of literature; the analysis is centered on the character traits assigned to the four different houses at Hogwarts. I love listening them to discuss and debate after I assign this one.

I use this activity to re-introduce poetic elements before we jump into Romeo & Juliet. We also have all these great poems that students do not study and I use this as a way to squeeze in some more.

This is a brand new assignment but one that I am excited about. For me, it is a different way of approaching the research papers that my students were previously required to complete. This way they get to propose something they value for their community. I use the sites Edmodo & Turnitin.com with this but other sites could be used as well as more traditional print methods.

At the end of Act I, I have the students write letters as one of the title characters to show their understanding of the events of the act. We do this in place of a quiz.

This is the activity I use at the end of Act II of Romeo & Juliet with my English I students. They are always bummed that the wedding is not featured in the play & so I have them write their own vows. For many of them, I have to explain what vows are. A surprising number of my students have not attended a wedding, so I troll YouTube for wedding vows for them to view. Then we discuss our primary characters because for me the most important factor in this assignment is how well them make th