This has been the craziest beginning of a school year.  Heat has been so horrendous that, a full five of the last nine days have been half days!  (Climate change, ladies and gentlemen, it’s not a hoax.) This is going to be our first full day this week.  I’m a little bit intimidated by the idea of teaching all 8 periods in the day.

Last week was all 10th graders for 45 minute of Enrichment English.  This week is 4 sets of 9th graders for 45 minutes of Enrichment English and 1 teensy group of SEI (Sheltered English Immersion) 10th graders for a 90 minute block.

The plan for my SEI 10 class is to finally use a lot of my Interactive Notebook purchases from several years ago.  I bought them from TeachersPayTeachers three or four years ago over the summer, but had my schedule changed at the beginning of school and I haven’t had the opportunity to delve into it properly since then.  For this class, I’m going to start with The Pearl by John Steinbeck.  It’s not one of the official UPG  (Unit Planning Guide) choices, but I think it will be a better fit for my kids, and I can hit all of the unit priority standards with it.

For my Enrichment 9 classes, we start by looking at The Humility Code by David Brooks and then writing 5 paragraph Pro/Con essays.  Enrichment 10 classes started with making SMART goals and now are creating academic timelines of what they remember from school.  It’s bizarre how much students claim they don’t remember.

Off to prep!