Week Twenty-Three - Letters!

This Week

This week students are working on finishing up their letters. There aren't any pictures to show because each day has featured students working hard to craft their arguments and match their evidence to their reasoning. I've been conferencing with students individually each day as they need help and students have been given time to peer edit/critique. Today is the "big day" when they actually submit their letters. I will be doing my best to grade them over the weekend, but as this is one of the most complex pieces of writing they will do all year, I do ask you to be patient as I grade these 90 letters!

One student I wanted to highlight this week is Kayla Cindric, whose letter is looking awesome! It has a clear thesis and the evidence is very detailed. All of the evidence supports her reasoning, and it's exactly what I'm looking for when I grade this project - great work Kayla!

In terms of revisions once I do get through the letters, I explained to the students that my hope is that all of them will meet every aspect of the rubric that is necessary in order for them to get a 100%. If they do not, they will be able to revise up to a 90%. The rationale for this is that I want students to put forth their best effort on the first draft, and while I always want them to be able to revise up to an 'A', earning an A on the first time around is different than earning it on the second, third, fourth, or fifth draft, hence the difference between a 100% and a 90%.

As long as students follow my syllabus for how to revise work, they may continue revising up to the final week before the end of the quarter. If you have any questions about my revision policy, please feel free to reach out to me. My dream is that it won't be necessary because everyone will earn 100%!

Upcoming Week

Next week students will be working on their posters (finally!) Ms. Reid and I will be helping them turn their ideas into reality as they go through the process of creating an image, tracing it, carving it, inking it, and adding text.  If you'd like to see how the process works and what the end result looks like, check out this video ~

As a follow up to our unit on Bosnia, check out what's happened just today with some of those accused of committing genocide during the Srebrenica massacre in this BBC story.

Have a great weekend!

~Mr. Grieve

PS - Someone gave me an idea for how my beard could be trimmed if we reach that $1,000 mark...

Not sure it would look good on me or not... but I guess that's not really the point.