April 21st in English 9 Honors

Today was a much needed light day in Smith’s Second Period English Nine Honors Class.

Smith started by talking about Honors Language Arts for next year. If you have below a “B”, Smith will not recommend that you continue on the honors track. If you do have below a “B” and want to continue in honors you need to go in to talk to her. If you do not continue in honors your sophomore year, you can audition to get back into honors at the end of next year. On the other hand, if you have a “B” or above and you do not want to take honors next year, you need to talk to Smith ASAP so she can let the teachers know that there is an open spot in honors for other students who are auditioning in.

We then debriefed on the fishbowl from yesterday. First we went around and commented on the good and the bad from the fishbowl. Overall the class and Ms. Smith agreed that:

• we did a good job referring to the book
• we did a good job asking questions to one another
• asking others to back their opinions up with evidence from the book
• bringing in the Drive passages and TED talk articles were good things
• there was a lack of movement into inner circle
• it is important that everyone makes there way into the inner circle at least for a short time
• we need to do a better connecting to the bigger picture: discussing the relevance of the material

After the fishbowl debrief, Smith talked about the next chapter of A Whole New Mind, Story. She talked about how telling stories to illustrate ideas is becoming an increasingly popular technique. She showed us how advertising uses stories to promote their product. She showed us examples from Honey Bunches of Oats, Vitamin Water, Chipotle, and Organic Valley. We need to read “Story” by Monday.

The rest of the class period we were given time to work on our TED talk or read “Story”.

Homework:

• Read the next chapter in AWNM “Story” by Monday
• Be thinking about your TED Talk topic