What Did My Students Learn This Year?

Yep, school is done. And that's something to celebrate--as well as the learning that happened during that year!

• I am very happy that I took this class because I feel that I have grown not just academically, but also as a person.
• In this class, I learned how to read with happiness…. I used to…close a book and review it with just one word: “bad,” “good,” okay.” But now it’s impossible to just say with one word all the thoughts in my head.

I have a magic teacher wand that can change a terrifying word like “exams” into an opportunity to make people—both students and myself—happy. Because “happy” includes growing—doing, realizing, and articulating it. It’s taken me a while to find this magic wand, but now that I can articulate significant class goals in a course statement and target, teach, and assess those goals, a big part of what I have to do at mid-year and year-end exams is simply remind students of the goals and ask, “Are you half-way there? Are you there? How do you know?” If you want to see my full course description and final exam prompt, scroll to the bottom of this page. But here are some of the 10th grade responses--in addition to the two at the top of this page--to the final third of my exam: Write an assessment with support of how you have grown as a reader, writer, thinker, speaker/listener this semester.

As a reader...

• I now don’t fear reading poetry.
• I realized poetry is not meant to be understood on the first read, and that it actually is very relevant.
• After Dark…really changed my approach to not just English books, but also Japanese books. I was so blown away by the details and the emotional connection I was able to have with not just Mari and Takahashi,  but also Eri, Shirakawa, Korogi, and Kaoru. It really felt that all of these characters reflected society. The details in this book were amazing, and Haruki Murakami’s diction and sentence structure were very beautiful to me. It did not feel boring reading all these descriptions, but he made me want to know more. This book really challenged my attention to detail because all of the detail felt very important. Haruki Murakami did an incredible job…connecting all of the characters. For example, when Takahashi felt this “wall” between him and the criminals was not as thick as he expected, but he felt a “thick wall” between him and Mari like nothing will get through.
• A Doll’s House, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, [the excerpt from] The Female Brain, the Introduction to the Song of Songs [from the NIV Study Bible], and the essay at the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream all went so PERFECTLY TOGETHER. What a unit. We learned the science of love, the actions we do under love, and the meaning of love. Another thing I learned from this was that Shakespeare is still relevant. The Bible can be very relatable, too. This unit changed my whole thinking that just because literature is old means that it doesn’t apply to me because it was written 500 years ago. But when we broke down each act, each scene in class, and got to the core meaning of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it blew my mind. Shakespeare didn’t have science, but he still captured the essence of it and even imagined a flower which could make people fall in love! 500 years ago Shakespeare thought of oxytocin!

As a writer...

• Perseverance is key in writing. If you keep writing, you’ll come across a good idea.
• As a writer, I learned to write with purpose. I wrote my essay about love because I truly believed in what I was writing, and not just because I wanted an A. I wrote my “Who Am I” paper because I believed what I wrote reflected who I am. Through this year, I’ve developed the ability to express myself on paper. Like the…short story I wrote. Peer pressure is a true problem I’ve dealt with, and I was able to convey a message about it through a story of a boy sitting at different lunch tables.
• I enjoyed writing my short story as we learned how to incorporate theme and dialogue in our own style.
• I definitely grew as a writer this semester. I remember how you taught me to just keep writing my thoughts down instead of overthinking my first drafts and only being able to revise one paragraph.
• Being in Honors English 10, my writing improved a lot. I learned how to start the writing, how to write the thesis, how to write the conclusion, and more. However, the most important thing that I learned through writing was who I am. I believe that it is very important to know yourself, and I am glad to know who I am through writing. One of the quotes that I found said that “without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.” Through writing, I improved as a writer but also I improved as a person.

As a thinker...

• I…learned about perspective. When I first read A Doll’s House, I thought Nora was a bad person. But after reading and comprehending, I understood what she was going through.
• After Dark taught me about empathy and how we should use it. I learned people are not always the way they seem by reading about the characters in After Dark.
• I found out “ordinary” looking people like Shirakawa [in After Dark] are definitely not ordinary.… Also, everyone has a very personal story, you just have to get to know them to find out, like Korogi and Takahashi. 

As a speaker/listener...

• I also got better at speaking in front of the class and sharing my thoughts. Before, I was easily scared and shy, but as I got more into the reading, I had this strong urge to share my thoughts.
• Talking in different groups and with different people helped a lot because they would always find things vital or just interesting that I had missed [in the reading]. That happened a lot in After Dark…. I had never talked with friends about an assigned book outside of class ever before!
• I constantly found things that I would’ve never thought of if I hadn’t done a group discussion. And I also was able to share my own ideas that some other people didn’t think of.
• The Man with No Face in After Dark was an interesting topic to talk about. Speaking and listening to my friends was very interesting because each one of us had a different perspective…. “The mask has no holes for the nose, mouth, or eyes, but still it does not seem to prevent him from breathing or seeing or hearing.” At first, I had no idea what this symbolized. But at the end… [b]y speaking/talking, we ended up with a great answer. It gave me confidence to speak/listen and made me practice to tell my perspective to other people.

I am excited about what my 10th graders learned. I had a great time reading my exams, and I am ready to celebrate with a summer break.

What are your course goals? Did your students reach them? How do you know? How do they know?

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My exam prompt:

Course description from syllabus: A literate life confers the ability to define ourselves, to enter the perspective of others, and to have a voice in the world. This is my experience as a literate person, and it is my dream for my high school English students. So students in Honors English 10: World Literature engage with critical reading, listening, thinking, speaking, and writing in academically rigorous and personally powerful ways as we interact with people from many different times and places--their perspectives, their stories--and discover what it means for us to become part of that conversation. Students will read, journal, write, discuss, research, and present as they grow in their mastery of communication.

We are finished with the course. Did you achieve the above description? The semester 2 exam is the opportunity for all of us--students and teachers--to assess what kind of progress was made toward the lofty goals articulated in those beginning-of-the-year statements. Because a rich command of language, knowledge of how that language works, the ability to apply that knowledge in reading and writing, and the ability to self-assess one’s own growth are all important components of being that “literate person,” your exam will consist of the following 3 parts:

• Vocabulary. Multiple choice for the entire semester. (50 out of the 120 words we have had will appear on the exam. See Quizlet folder posted on Google Classroom for the 6 sets of words, definition list and context sentence list for each set.)
• Skill transfer to reading. You will receive a short piece of fiction writing on which to demonstrate your ability to understand, analyze, interpret, and apply an author’s intent by annotating your close reading. You will need to be able to paraphrase/summarize, identify literary elements and elements of style, visualize images, ask questions, make inferences, and connect to your life, the world, and/or other texts.
• Self-assessment. Write an assessment with support of how you have grown as a reader, writer, thinker, speaker/listener this semester. Be sure to address each of the 4 areas. If you feel you have not grown in a particular area, please state why and articulate a plan for how you will grow next year.