#still have to write my 15 page paper and grade 25 short essays

[tarantula-hawk-wasp]

Everything about today has started off badly <3 and I don’t see it improving very much

[sunscreenstudies]

Hey! Congratulations, you did really well in your LC! I was wondering, do you have any tips for people who are going into 6th year? Also, how did you study for Geography? It's so difficult to learn off lists of information 😰

Thank you so much!! :D

And believe me when I say that you already have most of the work done in 5th year! 5th year was wayyy more stressful than 6th year because by April you honestly are just so done with this whole Leaving Cert thing you don’t even care anymore! The *best* study tips that I can give you for going into 6th year, however are:

Take rough notes in school and then rewrite them over the weekend, making them pretty and colourful and breaking all the information down into small bullet points, because lets face it, teachers give wayyy more info that what’s necessary, and by rewriting it, not only can you cut things out, it also helps you remember the topic better, and when your notes are cute and pretty looking, you’ll actually want to study from them!

Download or print out the syllabus for each subject and only write notes for those topics! I found that in a lot of subjects, especially theory heavy ones like biology, the teacher gave way too much information than what was required, and you can still can full marks by cutting out those unnecessary points!

I used a colour-scheme for highlighting which actually helped a lot! For example, I used yellow for headings and subheadings, orange for definitions, blue for people’s names, green for examples, purple for quotes and pink for dates. This way, when you’re revising or doing your homework and you’re looking for a particular definition or an example, you can immediately find the colour highlighter and the information that you’re looking for!

This website : https://www.examinations.ie/exammaterialarchive/  should be your best friend! I know you’re probably sick of hearing this, but doing exam papers and checking the marking scheme afterwards really does help! That way you can learn exactly what you need to get full marks

Subject wise:

When it comes to studying maths, especially for higher level, just reading your notes and doing the same example questions over and over again won’t cut it. I did this throughout my 5th year, and ended up doing great on class tests before almost failing my summer exam. Teachers usually use the examples they gave you in class tests, and I ended up memorising these examples instead of actually learning the methods! So once again, exam papers are your friend.

For English, even though there is an awful lot to learn, you just need to remember key words, and you’ll sail through. In the comparative, for example, you need to compare your texts in every. single. paragraph. You could write a fantastic essay, but if you don’t say “In comparison to this…” “Text 2 however differs from this…” “Similarly…” “The two texts are different in the sense that…” etc. you will get veryyy low marks. In the same way, when answering your poetry question, you need to keep referring to the style of the poet. Every past poetry question can be broken down into two simple questions: What did the poet write about? and how did they say it? If you can answer both these questions on every poem you learn, you’ll do brilliantly! Also, don’t bother learning any more than 5 poems from each poet, and don’t learn more than 5 poets to begin with. By doing this and learning 25 poems in total, you’re covering yourself completely!

Languages are more tricky to study for, but what helped condense the information you need to learn for me, was treating the oral and the written paper as the same exam. For example, if I learned off a paragraph about my family for the oral, then I would learn that paragraph again for the written paper, instead of learning a new paragraph or adding sentences. This way, when you’re studying for the written exam, you won’t have to learn off new paragraphs, because you’ll still remember some of what you learned for the oral! Aural tests are the worsttt and very difficult to study for, so your best bet is to just learn off the most common place names that come up, numbers and dates, and (for German at least) types of weather. Be sure to read the syllabus for the aural exam because in some cases, if you just guess and write down what you *think* the tape might have said, they’ll give you half marks!

Biology is all about the diagrams! That’s what got me through that huge ream of information. If you learn off the diagram, then you already have a rough idea of what’s going on. Learnt the diagrams as if you’re trying to teach it to someone else, and honestly, this makes it so much easier to learn! It especially helps with similar topics such as respiration and photosynthesis, the carbon cycle and the nitrogen cycle, etc. and really helps you to distinguish one from one another. Then, in the exam, you can just draw a quick sketch in pencil at the top of your page, and refer to it every time you get confused or stuck when explaining something.

Geography did have a lot of information to learn off and is marked rather harshly. However if you go through past exam papers you will find certain topics that come up every single year eg. Fluvial processes. For me, I studied those guaranteed topics (or mostly-guaranteed topics) really well, and then had a rough overview of the rest of the book. Also, in every answer make sure that you give an example and for the love of god, learn your damn exam diagrams!!! They are literally the best thing ever because if you need 15 points in an answer, then a diagram can count for up to 3 of those!! And even if you’re certain that you have written enough points, put one down anyway because you never know how mean your examiner might be! With that note, for every 2 marks a question is worth, you need 1 SRP (significant relevant point), a sentence that contains a solid fact or example. Eg. For a 30 mark question, you need to give 15 SRP’s, for a 20 mark you need 10SRP’s, etc. etc. Also, learn the theory and the case studies as one answer! So instead of writing down that an earthquake happened in Japan on March 11, 2011 and it was magnitude 8, write down how earthquakes occur and what magnitude means and that for every 1 jump you make on the Richter scale the earthquake becomes 10 times as powerful. You need to pretend that the examiner is stupid and has no idea what earthquakes or volcanoes or tertiary activities are, and that way, you are maxmising your SRP’s. Answer every question as if you’re explaining the topic to a 3-year-old! Your short questions, individual long questions, elective, and option answers are all worth the same exact 80 marks. So do not disregard the short questions because they’re worth the same 16.66% as every other question you answer. Also, if your option is Geology like mine was, then your fucking sorted man! Every single year has at least one questions on biomes, whether it’s the human activity or the characteristics so just learn that and you’re sorted! No joke, there were 10 people in my Leaving Cert Geography class and not a single one of us knew anything about soil or soil processes or characteristics. We all just learnt our biome, and that was it!

6th year is scary and stressful and at times you will want to just bury yourself in your bed and cry, but you will get through this! Just calm down, breathe, take a moment, and remember that even your worst days can only ever last 24 hours. Millions and millions and millions of people have survived the LC and you will too! And this time, next year, you will be collecting your official certificate from your school and wondering just what the hell the fuss was all about!

I hope that these tips/pieces of advice helped, and if you have any other questions please please please feel free to ask me because I really could have done with an Irish studyblr back when I was in your position!

And always always always always alwaysssss remember, that you are more important than your grades! It doesn’t matter if you’re aiming for 10 points or the full 625, your health and your well being and your happiness is so so so much more important that what you get at the end of the day! Do not let your good grades be at the expense of your mental or physical health because while the Leaving Cert is such a huge deal to you right now, in 5 years time, it won’t matter anymore. So please please pleaseee take care of yourself and always put yourself first! 😘

[hightlm-eng21-pierce-thurs]

ENGLISH 21: English Fundamentals   

Pierce College, Woodland Hills, CA

Instructor: Lisa Hight

Section #   3138      

Spring Semester 2017

Thursdays                 

7:00 pm to 10:10 pm at Juniper Bldg., Room 819

hightlm@piercecollege.edu

lhight1@mtsac.edu

Office hours: Mondays & Wednesdays from 10:00 am to 11:00 am at the Center for Academic Success (CAS) which is on the first floor of the library building

Tumblr Page:  https://hightlm-eng21-pierce-thurs.tumblr.com/

Course Objective

Welcome to English 21.  This course will emphasize paragraph construction, organization, and grammar.  You will get a chance to develop your writing skills, but you will also have the opportunity to develop your reading skills. The reading material and writing assignments will offer you a chance to analyze various types of writing.

You will be required to complete:

4 writing assignments

3 quizzes

1 in-class final exam (grammar quiz and in-class paragraph assignment)

Required Textbooks

40 Short Stories: A Portable Anthology, 5th Edition (editor Beverly Lawn/Bedford St. Martin’s)

A Common Sense Guide to Grammar and Usage 7th Edition (editors Larry Beason & Mark Lester/Bedford St. Martin’s)

In addition, I will hand out reading assignments that are not in the textbooks.

Student Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, students will be able to:

produce a writing assignment of at least 250 words, which has a thesis, an introduction, body, and/or conclusion.

write sentences that are complex with dependent clauses and proper parallel structure.

understand grammar issues such as proper comma and apostrophe usage and learn to correct errors such as fragments, run-ons, agreement problems, etc.

analyze essays and fiction and be able to write about them in the writing assignments

Grading Policy

The grading in this class is based on a percentage system (with a possible total of 100%). Writing assignments, quizzes, plus the final exam are 15% each.  The totals for each requirement are listed below:

         4 writing assign. = 60% (15% per assignment)

         3 quizzes           = 15% (5%     per quiz)

         final exam          = 15%

         homework          = 10%

         Total Points        = 100%

The breakdown of the final grade for this class is outlined below:

100% - 89%=     A

88% - 79% =      B

78% - 69% =      C

68% - 59% =      D

58% - 0%  =      F

Although the assignments above are based on points, every major writing assignment will have a point total and a corresponding letter grade.

Please note: your percentage total will be rounded up or down to create a whole final grade percentage.  For example, if your percentage total is 88.5% or higher, I will round it up to 89%.  If your percentage total is 77.4 or lower, I will round it down to 77%.

Extra Credit

Extra credit will be offered if you choose to seek tutoring at the Center for Academic Success.  You can visit the center for one-on-one tutoring sessions, and I will allow a maximum of four tutoring sessions.  I will offer 1.5% points for each tutoring session (you must provide proof that you had a visited a tutor at the center), so you can earn a possible total of 6% points of extra credit. 

Due Dates for Essays and Homework

Unless otherwise noted, homework assignments are due the next class session.  Due dates for writing assignments will be printed on prompts.  Most importantly, only hard copies handed to me in class are considered to be on time.  Anything given to me after that class session will be considered late even if you turn in your work the same day.  Each assignment will be date stamped, and late assignments will be noted down as well.  If I decide to accept any late I will enforce the following policy:

Rough Drafts: I do accept late rough drafts.  However, I will deduct 3% points from the final grade that the late rough draft receives.  Please     note: the late penalty applies even if you turn in a revision for your late rough draft.

Revisions & Final Drafts (one draft only): I also accept late revisions.      However, I will deduct 4% points from the final grade that the revision receives.  Please note as well: if you turn in a first draft on the due date for the revision, it will be considered a late rough draft and the 3% point deduction will be applied to the late paper.

If you do not turn in any drafts, you will receive 0% points for that essay assignment.

In-class Essay: You will be required to complete one in-class essay.  If you are absent on the day this essay is scheduled, you will not be allowed to complete a make-up essay unless you provide a valid written     excuse such as a doctor’s note.  Please note: I will not allow     any make-up final exams due to unexcused absences.

Quizzes: I will not allow any make-up quizzes (due to an absence) unless you have a doctor’s note or some sort of official documentation that excuses the absence.

Revision Policy

I believe that writing is a process and not a one-shot deal, so you will be given the opportunity to revise certain writing assignments.  For the first two writing assignments, you will get the opportunity to turn in a first or rough draft, and I will write suggestions.  Then you will write a revision or final draft to be turned in for a grade. 

Attendance Policy

Please note that I do take attendance daily for my records only (no attendance policy is attached to your grade), and I usually leave the choice of dropping the course to the students enrolled in this course. However, if a student has stopped attending the class and has accrued more than two weeks of consecutive absences, I will drop that student by the deadline of 5/7/17 unless that student has contacted me.  Students should be aware that if I drop them from this course between the dates of 2/21/17 and 5/7/17, they will receive a “W” on their records.  All students who are still enrolled after 5/7/17 will receive a letter grade (or pass/no pass option if that student has chosen that option).

Please note as well: if a student is enrolled in this class and does not show up on the first day of the semester, he or she may be dropped from the class.

Plagiarism

What is plagiarism?  Plagiarism occurs when a student takes sentences or phrases from another writer and inserts these sentences or phrases into his or her writing and does not acknowledge or indicate that these are from another writer or outside source whether it is an essay, article, book, blog, etc.

You must be careful in how you present outside sources.  If you turn in any work that uses unacknowledged ideas or concepts from other writers, you will receive an F grade (0 points) with no option for a re-write.  I will also report any instance of plagiarism to the school; this means that the school will investigate the report and will take appropriate action against the plagiarist.

Special Services

Students with disabilities, whether physical, learning, or psychological, who believe that they may need accommodations in this class, are encouraged to contact Special Services as soon as possible to ensure that such accommodations are implemented in a timely fashion.  Authorization, based on verification of disability, is required before any accommodation can be made.  The phone number for Special Services is (818) 719-6430, and the office of Special Services is located in the Administration Bldg, Room 1024.

ENG 21 SCHEDULE FOR SPRING 2017

Please note: this is a rough schedule.  There may be changes to the schedule due to time constraints or other unforeseen circumstances, so please listen to and note down any announcements regarding changes to the schedule.

WEEK 1 (2/9): introduction to class; introduction to character analysis

WEEK 2 (2/16): more on character analysis; dependent clauses & comma usage; Thursday (2/16) is the last day that you can add the class using an add slip; Monday (2/20) is the last day that you can drop the class without incurring any penalties.

WEEK 3 (2/23): more on character analysis; introduction to comparison & contrast

WEEK 4 (3/2): more on comparison & contrast; the rough draft for Writing Assign. #1 (character analysis) will be due this week; QUIZ #1 (dependent clauses & comma usage) scheduled for this week

WEEK 5 (3/9): more on comparison & contrast; fixing fragments & run-ons

WEEK 6 (3/16): introduction to image and symbolism; the final draft for Writing Assign. #1 (character analysis) will be due this week.

WEEK 7 (3/23): more on image & symbolism; more on fixing fragments & run-ons; the rough draft for Writing Assignment #2 (comparison & contrast) due this week

WEEK 8 (3/30): Non-Instructional Day – no class scheduled

WEEK 9 (4/6): Spring Break – no class scheduled

WEEK 10 (4/13): more on image & symbolism; introduction to proper punctuation & pronoun agreement; QUIZ #2 (fixing fragments & run-ons) scheduled for this week

WEEK 11 (4/20): introduction of analyzing an essay; more on proper punctuation; the final draft for Writing Assign. #2 (comparison & contrast) will be due this week.

WEEK 12 (4/27): review of analyzing symbolism; more on analyzing an essay; review of dependent clauses & comma usage.

WEEK 13 (5/4): review of grammar; the rough draft for Writing Assignment #3 (analyzing symbolism) will be due this week; Sunday (5/7) is the last day that you can drop the class; please note: you will receive a “W” on your record.

WEEK 14 (5/11): more on analyzing an essay; QUIZ #3 (proper punctuation) is scheduled for this week.

WEEK 15 (5/18): review of grammar; more on analyzing an essay; the final draft of Writing Assignment #3 (analyzing symbolism) will be due this week.

WEEK 16 (5/25): review of grammar; Writing Assignment #4 (analyzing an essay), which is an in-class writing assignment, will be scheduled for this week.

FINAL EXAM: The in-class final exam is scheduled for Thursday, 6/1, from 7:30 to 9:30 pm.

[hellofastestnewsfan]

Editor’s Note: In the next five years, most of America’s most experienced teachers will retire. The Baby Boomers are leaving behind a nation of novice educators. In 1988, a teacher most commonly had 15 years of experience. Less than three decades later, that number had fallen to just five years leading a classroom. The Atlantic’s “On Teaching” project is crisscrossing the country to talk to veteran educators. This story is the second in our series. Read the first one here.

“I want to say something important about writing,” Pirette McKamey told 25 seniors in her English class at San Francisco’s Mission High School one fall afternoon in 2012. It’s incredibly hard, and always incomplete, she explained. “I’ve reread some of my essays 20 times and I still go, ‘I can’t believe I made this mistake or that mistake.’”

“I’m going to read a powerful essay as a model today,” said McKamey, who frequently shares her students’ work at the beginning of class as a way to showcase examples of effective and creative approaches to writing. She appreciated the student’s paper for “the heft of its content,” she told the class. “It also feels real. It was written with real engagement and honesty.”

In his essay, one of McKamey’s students wrote about his life ambitions, including his desire to become a musician. He compared his goals with those of two other individuals, chosen from the many real and fictional people the students had studied earlier that year in a five-week-long unit titled “Quests.” The vision behind this unit was rooted in McKamey’s observation that as teenagers approach adulthood, they want to examine how people from different eras and cultures have defined values such as success, goodness, and courage.

After McKamey finished reading the essay, students discussed what made it work—and which approaches they could employ in their own writing. As the discussion winded down, McKamey passed out a grammar worksheet.

Today, there is a growing consensus that students need strong writing skills to succeed in the workplace and to fully participate in society, but educators passionately disagree on the best ways to teach those skills. Some call for greater focus on the fundamentals of grammar: building vocabulary, identifying parts of speech, and mastering punctuation. Others believe that students need more opportunities to develop their writerly voice through creative expression and work that allows them to make connections between great literature and their personal lives.

Meanwhile, it appears that many of the methods seem to be falling short: Results from the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress suggest that only one in four 12th- and eighth-graders is meeting grade-level expectations in writing. In both tested grades, Latino and African American students scored lower than their peers in other racial and ethnic subgroups.

[The best writing teachers are writers themselves]

McKamey spent 29 years teaching in majority black and Latino schools. Over the years, she observed that many of her students came into her classroom believing that they “don’t like writing” or are “bad writers.” Since McKamey first started teaching at San Francisco’s Luther Burbank Middle School in 1989, she has been refining her own methods to help dispel these self-perceptions.

In McKamey’s classes, this means that students must feel compelled to write every day. But rather than prioritizing the mechanics of sentence structure or writing rooted in personal experiences, McKamey’s students work on a variety of exercises, including punctuation worksheets, argumentative and narrative essays, poetry, fiction, and long research papers. And while McKamey’s methods have evolved significantly since she first started teaching, her goal has remained the same: help every student develop a portfolio of high-quality work, which will serve as irrefutable evidence that they are capable of writing.

McKamey’s approach to writing instruction was shaped in part by her own experiences as a high-school student. One of just a handful of African American students at a Quaker boarding school in Pennsylvania, she noticed that most of her teachers would return papers with feedback that focused on what she did wrong. Whenever McKamey’s teachers praised her in the classroom, their feedback usually centered on her personality—rather than her intellectual contributions. Fran Bradley, McKamey’s high-school economics teacher, was an exception. When McKamey asked a question or made a comment, Bradley would engage in an enthusiastic discussion about McKamey’s ideas. He often read passages from her work in front of the class.

Even though McKamey’s parents always told her that she was intelligent and a good writer—despite her uneven grades—Bradley made an effort to cite evidence showing the benefits of McKamey’s intellectual contributions in her writing. When McKamey felt valued for her intellect, she explained, she was more willing to engage with the classwork—and she produced some of her strongest academic writing.

McKamey’s years as a teacher were deeply influenced by the research of the social psychologist Claude Steele. Best known for his studies on what researchers call the “stereotype threat,” Steele uncovered a unique form of distress that suppresses academic achievement in certain situations—during tests for African American students or math classes for women, for example—when an individual has the potential to confirm a negative stereotype about his or her social group. Steele’s research found that certain actions by teachers or mentors can dispel these crippling anxieties—they can signal in their feedback that they hold a student to high standards while also citing spots in the work where the student meets the challenge, for example.

Pablo Rodriguez—a former student of McKamey’s, who moved to the United States from Guatemala in 2009—still remembers McKamey’s feedback on his first essay in her class. He recalls the stars dotting the paper next to specific passages, and comments such as, “This is so interesting. I never thought of it this way,” or “I’m so intrigued by the point you are making here. Could you tell me more what you mean by that?”

In the past, most of Rodriguez’s writing earned D’s and C’s, and his papers would come back with a lot of grammar corrections, Rodriguez, who is now 23 and works as a youth counselor, told me. This made him feel hopeless about his ability to write. “Ms. McKamey taught me skills to deal with my weaknesses,” Rodriguez explained. “But she saw my strengths and it made me feel motivated. I wanted to write essays that would make Ms. McKamey love it more than anything she’s ever read, and I started spending hours at the library rewriting my papers.”

McKamey argues that the most important skill for a teacher is his or her ability to build trust with a student, which develops when students can sense that the educator is willing to hear their ideas, thoughts, and musings despite their challenges with grammar, low grades, or test scores in previous classes. This doesn’t mean that teachers need to cushion their feedback with fake praise, but it does mean, she thinks, that schools should help teachers develop skills to recognize what all students, including those who might be considered “low achieving,” do in their classrooms—instead of focusing mostly on what they don’t do or know.

[A educator witnessed school desegregation—and resegregation]

“Just because I struggle with some grammar rules doesn’t mean I can’t think deeply,” says one of McKamey’s former students, Ajanee Greene, who’s now 23 and a student at Jackson State University. In 2012, McKamey says, Greene wrote one of the strongest research papers McKamey had read in her classes, even though she had received a D in English at another school. Her 12-page final paper explored how the long history of racial exclusion contributed to violence in black communities—and affected her own family in San Francisco.

“The newspapers talk about the violence, but they don’t talk about a much bigger epidemic—the private pain of families who are left to live with the aftermath” of that violence, Greene, who became the first in her family to graduate from high school, wrote in 2012. “Personal, private, solitary pain is more terrifying than what anyone can inflict. The violence stays with families and becomes a part of their lives. Nobody feels the same and family relationships get strained. This causes more pain, and the cycle intensifies … The psychological damage destroys communities more than unemployment and poverty.”

For her paper, Greene had read and analyzed 20 articles and studies, interviewed neighbors, and added her own point of view. Before McKamey’s class, Greene had never written a research paper. “Ms. McKamey believed in me and then pushed me to work really, really hard,” Greene explained. She ultimately got an A- in McKamey’s class.

Drawing on the methods she uses in her English classes, McKamey has been coaching other teachers across all subjects for about a decade now. As part of this process, teachers meet in small groups where they review the work of middle-achieving students who have made a recent shift—went from chronic C’s to an A- in a recent essay, or analyzed passages more deeply, or showed intellectual engagement instead of just trying to get a good grade. Teachers then share practices that contributed to the growth in that student’s skills: verbal or written feedback, more explicit instruction in the components of academic writing, or reading student work in front of the class, among others.

Analyzing the work of middle-achieving students—rather than just failing or thriving ones—can significantly improve teachers’ effectiveness with underachieving students, McKamey argues. When teachers focus on the work of the lowest-achieving students, McKamey has observed that such conversations often turn into a space to blame the students, their parents, or other teachers, or they veer off into emotionally invasive discussions of a student’s private life. Focusing on middle-achieving students who showed recent improvement helps teachers dispel unrecognized stereotypes—and learn how to notice and build on their strengths. (One study found that white teachers graded black and Latino students more harshly for the same performance, accounting for as much as 22 percent of the achievement gap.)  

“The task is to educate all students in front of me,” McKamey reflected. “There are so many opportunities to miss certain students: not see them, not hear them, shut them down. Despite years and years of teaching, there are times when the student is communicating something to me and I can’t hear their thinking at the moment, but I can’t ruin it. I have to keep it alive.”

from The Atlantic https://ift.tt/2OUalME