Week 5 - Transcendentalists & Grammar Groupies

This week, we're focusing on both Transcendentalism and ACT grammar in preparation for the final unit assessment next week and the Grammar Groupies Games we will create and play this week.

Monday: Discuss these notes on Transcendentalism. We set up three columns in our notebooks: one for Transcendental elements (from the notes), one for relevant texts and ideas, and one for evidence that Transcendentalism lives in and influenced pop culture today. We also watched the end of Into the Wild today. All the feels.

Tuesday: We will visit the media center lab to practice the ACT English section, then spend time at the tables analyzing our grammar skill level and ACT English score baseline, then making a plan for improvement. Before we do any practice, though, it'll be worth our time to brush up on the grammar, mechanics, usage, and rhetoric lingo - to this end, we will spend about 30 minutes prepping via this Quizlet set of grammar rules.

Wednesday: We will begin class by using Quizlet practice questions. Students identify type of question it is and what grammar rule is being tested. Afterward, students will analyze exactly what types of grammar skills they missed on the exam by doing a line-by-line analysis of each section. (Students who performed well in Grammar & Usage will focus on the Rhetorical Skill questions, and vice versa.) We will then become Grammar Groupies, creating grammar rule-based games for our peers to play tomorrow in class.

Thursday: Grammar Groupies Game Day.

Friday: 1. First, we will do some ChompChomp practice. One of these and one of these. And then....

2. A grammar test. Dun dun duuuuunnnnnnnnn.

3. Afterward, write one blog post for the week about your plans to prepare for the ACT and

SAT. Will you sign up for a mock test? When? How will you continue your preparation? What key grammar skills should you study so that you go in wwith a game plan? What other skills are you concerned about? Be thorough and honest here.

4. Finally, begin your final project research by finding one text by Henry David Thoreau and

one by Ralph Waldo Emerson (any essay, poem, or longer text is fine). Hyperlink them to a new blog post, and begin reading them and making notes about how they present the ideals or elements of American Transcendentalist literature (you have notes on the elements, notes that are also linked on the Monday entry of this blog post).