AP English 11 Honors: 2017-2018: March 2018

Thursday, March 15, 2018

Links to student surveys: PLEASE HELP YOUR PEERS

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Consent form for RESEARCH INTERVIEW

(Title) Consent Form

You are being asked to take part in a research study of . I am asking you to take part because . Please read this form carefully and ask any questions you may have before agreeing to take part in the study.

What the study is about:

The purpose of this study is to

What I will ask you to do:

If you agree to be in this study, I will conduct an interview with you. The interview will include questions about . The interview will take about minutes to complete. With your permission, I would like to tape the interview.

Risks and benefits:

There is the risk that you may find dome of the questions about to be sensitive.

The benefit is that

Your answers may be quoted in the project. I will send you a copy of that portion before I finalize the project for your review.

Statement of Consent:

I have read the above information and consent to take part in the study.

Your signature:

Date:

Your name (printed):

In addition to agreeing to participate, I also consent to having the interview recorded (audio only).

Your signature:

Date:

Monday, March 12, 2018

Sample STUDENT Annotated Bibliography entries

Caskey, Micki M., and Jan Carpenter. "Building Teacher Collaboration

School-Wide." AMLE Magazine, Oct. 2014. AMLE, https://www.amle.org/BrowsebyTopic/

WhatsNew/WNDet/TabId/270/ArtMID/888/ArticleID/446/

Building-Teacher-Collaboration-School-wide.aspx. Accessed 5 Mar. 2018.

Micki M. Caskey and Jan Carpenter, educators and members of the Association for Middle Level
Education, in the informational article “Building Teacher Collaboration School-Wide” (
Oct. 2014, AMLE Magazine), develop that there are multiple ways to improve teacher collaboration
in middle schools; each method has its own unique ways of benefiting teachers and students.
Caskey and Carpenter compare and contrast different collaboration methods and use process analysis
to explain how to implement collaboration overall. Caskey and Carpenter affirm that teacher
collaboration has invaluable uses and benefits in middle schools in order to convince the audience
to utilize it in their own schools. Caskey and Carpenter craft a positive, slightly informal relationship
with their intended audience of current and past teachers and administrators using an approving,
enabling tone in phrases such as, “with time, teachers can develop authentic collaborative communities
in which they… advance their skills, knowledge, and dispositions related to student learning.”

The advice offered by Caskey and Carpenter on ways to implement new teacher collaboration
methods is worded in such a way that it’s clear they are confident in the success of those who follow
it, because they’ve been on the same road themselves. The insight they supply as educators adds
reliability and would act as encouragement for teachers starting to collaborate. While Caskey and
Carpenter’s advice is like that of Merritt in her article “Time for teacher learning, planning critical
for school reform…,” in that both pieces offer an insider perspective and do so in an enabling,
approachable way, Caskey and Carpenter’s carries more respectability due to the high reputation
of its source, the Association for Middle Level Education. Caskey and Carpenter help to counter
the popular argument that implementing increased teacher collaboration is impossible due to
the individual nature of modern education and lessons and add a personal aspect to the technical
solutions examined and analyzed by Juvonen, Le, Kaganoff, Augustine, and Constant in
Focus on the Wonder Years: Challenges Facing the American Middle School.

Corno, Lyn, and Jianzhong Xu. "Homework as the job of childhood." Theory into Practice,
vol. 43, no. 3, 2004, p. 227+. Academic OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A122163704/AONE?u=nysl_ca_nisk&sid=AONE&xid=3aa6aaf0.
Accessed 28 Feb. 2018.

Corno, Lyn, and Jianzhong Xu in their research article, “Homework as a Job of Childhood,”
(Theory into Practice, vol. 43, no. 3, 2004) assert with bias that homework can prepare children
for jobs that they may have in the future. The authors supports this thesis with examples as well
as acknowledging the other side and providing solutions. The authors want the reader to view
children’s homework as their job in order to understand the benefits of this view such as,
“[demonstrating] responsibility and [becoming] skilled at managing tasks.” The authors intend
for this paper to be used by professors and researchers, using a professional tone.

This source made me think more about the potential benefits of homework. When I first read
this I was completely against homework for elementary school students but this article made me
think that specialized homework assignments that involve the student and make that student
do activities would be beneficial. In short, this changed my thinking from against homework to
changing the homework system. I think that Jamie M. Gregory from “How Much Homework
Is Just Right?” would agree with this article. While the article was pro-homework while Gregory
was against homework, the homework problems that Corno, Lyn, and Jianzhong Xu found lined
up with Gregory’s problems with homework. Their suggestions support Gregory’s general solutions
while going into more detail. Aside from using the research data from their study, I will use their
homework reform suggestions when I am shaping my own solution to the problem in Niskayuna.

Thursday, March 8, 2018

Sample student precis

Advanced Placement United States History Teacher Pete Blagaich, in his scholarly article “Advanced Placement
Courses Are Not for Everyone” (The History Teacher, vol. 32, no. 2, Feb. 1999), suggests that difficult AP
classes should not use an open enrollment policy and should instead have strict enrollment criteria for
admittance. Blagaich supports his thesis by using anecdotal and empirical evidence; he includes
evidence of how his students performed better on the AP U.S. History Examination after his school enacted
AP enrollment criteria. Blagaich intended to educate his teaching peers on the benefits of enrollment criteria
so that they too would implement the criteria and see increased testing performances. Blagaich writes from the perspective of a teacher, uses educational jargon, and maintains an academic tone because he is writing for fellow history teachers in an academic journal: The History Teacher.

Monday, March 5, 2018

PRECIS INSTRUCTIONS

The précis is a highly structured four sentence paragraph that records the essential elements of a unit of spoken or written discourse, including the name of the speaker/writer, the context of the delivery, the major assertion (the claim), the mode of development and/or support, the stated and/or apparent purpose, and the relationship established between the speaker/writer and the audience (the last element is intended to identify the tone of the work). Each of the four sentences requires specific information; be sure to integrate a brief quotation to convey the author’s sense of style and tone.

Format:

1. Name of author [optional: a phrase describing author to flout their credibility], genre and title of work [date and additional publishing information in parenthesis]; a rhetorically accurate verb (such as "asserts," "argues," “suggests," "implies," "claims," etc.); and a THAT clause containing the major assertion (the claim) of the work.

2. An explanation of how the author develops and/or supports the claim (for instance, comparing and contrasting, narrating, illustrating, defining, relating personal experience, using examples, etc.), usually in chronological order – always identifying the rhetorical mode(s) employed.

3. A statement of the author's apparent purpose followed by an IN ORDER TO phrase in which you explain what the author wants the audience to do or feel as a result of reading the work.

4. A description of the intended audience and/or the relationship the author establishes with the audience and the tone the author uses.