Week of December 20

Hello and Happy Holidays to Everyone!

This week, our Sophomores created "Butterfly Poems" to hang in the classroom.  Each butterfly represents an individual member of our class.  Over the Christmas holiday, students will be reading Elie Wiesel's poignant autobiography Night.  While reading, the students will keep a reading journal which they will turn in after the vacation.

Freshmen will be starting William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet beginning after the holiday break.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!  I hope your vacation is safe and joyous!

Mr. Hacker

Week of December 6

Hi,

This week in all Sophomore classes we will be presenting our "Identity Box" projects.  This project is the beginning of our Holocaust Unit in which we will read Night by Elie Wiesel, watch Schindler's List and perhaps Life is Beautiful.  The Identity Box project is the most important assignment students will have in my class this year because it is so personal in nature.  I shared my Identity Box with classes last week and this week, students will share themselves with the class.  Identity is important to this unit because so many identities were attempted to be "erased" by the Nazis during WWII.

In our Freshman class, we are continuing our work on The Hobbit.

I hope you are all enjoying the holiday season and as always, if you have questions, please email.

Mr. Hacker

Week of November 29, 2010

Hello Everyone,

I hope you all enjoyed the Thanksgiving holiday with friends and family this past weekend.  The holidays are upon us and it truly is the most wonderful time of the year.

In class news, the Sophomores have all finished reading Macbeth and we will be having our test this week on the play.

The Freshmen are in the middle of reading The Hobbit.  On Thursday and Friday of this week, the class will be lead by Mr. Blomquist, a student teacher from Boston College.  The freshmen will finish reading The Hobbit next week and will be tested on it towards the end of next week.

As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to email me.

Thanks,

Mr. Hacker

Week Ending November 5

In our Sophomore classes, we finished Act III of Macbeth and will have a quiz next week.  We will finish Act IV fairly quickly and have a quiz on that Act on Friday.

In our Freshman class, we handed in our essays on Luke and Odysseus and began reading The Hobbit.  Students should be finished with five chapters by the end of next week.

Week Ending October 29

This week in our Sophomore classes, we continued work on Macbeth, reading Act II.  We will have a quiz on Act II today (10/29) and then we will begin reading Act III for next week.

We also have new blogs for classroom use.  They are as follows:

C-Block - http://kidblog.org/MrHackerCBlock/
E-Block - http://kidblog.org/MrHackerEBlock/
H-Block - http://kidblog.org/MrHackerSophomoreEnglish/

Please feel free to check them out to see what your children are working on.  Some of their posts are very insightful and mature!
In our Freshman class this week, students began planning out their essays comparing Luke Skywalker and Odysseus as heroes.  Next week, on Monday and Wednesday, we will be in the computer lab typing them out and they will be due on Thursday.  We will also begin the prereading process for JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!  HAVE A SAFE WEEKEND!!!

Week Ending October 22

In our Sophomore classes this week, we began reading Shakespeare's Macbeth.  We finished Act I and had review questions for homework Thursday night.  Classes will have a quiz on Act I at the beginning of next week and then we continue with Act II.

In our Freshman class, we continued studying Luke Skywalker as a hero.  We will finish our examination of him on Tuesday and begin the planning stages of writing our compare and contrast essay next week.  Much of the essay will be written in class to be handed in the following week (week of Nov. 1st).

Week Ending October 15

This week in our Sophomore classes, we finished Of Mice and Men by handing in our essays on Wednesday. On Thursday and Friday we started pre reading for Shakespeare's Macbeth. Next week we will be starting to read the play itself.

In our Freshman class, we continued examining Luke Skywalker as a hero in conjunction with Odysseus. We will finish our examination of these two characters and then we will begin a compare and contrast essay of these two characters the following week. After that, we will start reading JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit.

Week Ending Oct. 8

Hello,

In this week's Sophomore classes, students completed work on Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.  Our test was on Wednesday and students passed in their "George's Letter" assignment today.  On Tuesday, students will be headed to the computer lab to complete an essay on Friendship, based on a former MCAS prompt.  We will be starting Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth next week.

In this week's Freshman class, students completed work on Homer's epic "The Odyssey."  We had our test on Wednesday and we began work on our next Heroic epic Star Wars, tracing Luke Skywalker's path to heroism.  In the future, we will compare Odysseus and Luke as heroes, and trace their progression and maturity.  To complete the "Hero Unit" in my class, we will read JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit in late October, early November.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email.

Thanks,

Mr. Hacker

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog!  Here you can find out what will be happening in our English class at Waltham High School.  Enjoy!