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Week In Review

It's been a short week, so not a whole heck of a lot was accomplished. I think, however, we had a bit of fun.

Sophomores took a practice WASL essay test. The entire department will be gathering soon to grade and map out a plan of attack to get them over the testing hump. They also took a reading fluency test. I'm hoping that the scores from that test will be able to be used in a formula that a researcher in Spokane developed to predict likelihood of passing the reading WASL. We also started reading A Christmas Carol.

Juniors read a selection from Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. It was, I quote, "boring." Then we went on to the quotes from Poor Richards Almanac and interpreted them. That was much more interesting.

My AP classes didn't really do a whole heck of a lot as they are were working on the first major analytical essay for the semester. They have to write a paper proving that Pearl is the most modern of child characters and go on to describe how that modernity affects the character of Hester throughout the book. We spent a significant amount of time discussing the prompt and what exactly it means, as well as coming up with a thesis.

Today, the regular classes tried to make as many words out of "Thanksgiving Dinner." I recommend just using Thanksgiving as the inclusion of the word dinner makes for some not so good word choices. Especially if your classes are mostly male. The AP class had a visit from a student just returned from her first foray into college life. She talked about all the great parties... I was really looking for something along the lines of "college is great! AP really helps you!" Ah, well... maybe next time.

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