I will actually be gone today, so I anticipate that my sub will need a few minutes to take attendance and orient herself to the classroom.
Additionally, as you may have noticed with the break down of minutes here, I have the whole block period for instruction today (to make sure we can get through the end of the movie). With our time-constraint and in the interest of an easy day, I will have the sub skip SSR.
It isn't ideal to have to miss the day before spring break, but it is sort of unavoidable in this case, so I am hoping that the structure of the day will allow my sub to get through all of my plans with no problems.
This was not an ideal set-up, having to be gone on the last day of book club meetings, but I am trusting that the students have had enough time and practice to be fairly self-guided in these discussions. Though I won't be there to observe them, I will hope that my students are continuing to make progress towards meeting the following standards:
I will ask my substitute teacher to collect their folders at the end of the discussions.
The remainder of class will be spent finishing the viewing of The Island. Similar to the other short viewing sessions we had earlier, students will be analyzing the film for dystopian elements and comparing their novels' representations of themes to the representations of the themes as presented in the film (RL.9-10.7). Students will fill in their graphic organizer as they watch. I will ask my sub to collect this from students at the end of the period.
I will make sure that the substitute teacher knows to finish early enough to collect papers and to send the students on their way to a great spring break.
I will also ask her to remind students of a few things during this class period, mainly that they should be sure to complete their last blog discussion post before the end of break. I will also ask her to tell students that they will be finalizing their portfolios on the Monday after break, so they should, if they haven't already, wrap up any missing work they have for those as well.