Interim grades are on HAC. Please check that all your work is in.

Because we have testing all week, and interims are Friday, these are the grades I will be using for interims.  If you are missing work, you need to get it in now.

I entered three grades today.  One was to have the rough draft of the TED Talks outline.  I will be reading these and providing feedback over the course of this week.

I gave two grades for a Smarter Balance practice paragraph.  I gave a formative grade for citations.  Students were supposed to state where their supports for their claim came from.  I told them to use at least four.  It is formative because it is practice.

I gave a summative grade on the content of the paragraph.  We have discussed the first twenty pages in depth.  In fact, one day I even copied four pages and we searched for supports together.  There is no reason why students cannot explain how the germ of hope caused the Jews to ignore the dangers which lead to their deaths.


Here is an example of what I was looking for.
(I have noticed that a few too many students simply put the page.  They must work the page number into the sentence.  I will reteach that.)

The germ of hope infected millions of Jews during the time of the Holocaust, it was the reason why millions of Jews including Elie’s family did not leave or do something about their impending deaths.  Moshe the Beadle is one of the few people who didn't catch this germ, he was taken away too quickly to latch onto hope.  Moshe was among the foreign Jews who were expelled from Sighet first, during this time he barely escaped death by the Gestapo.  He returned home and it became clear he no longer cared to live, all he wanted to do was warn his community before it was too late.  However everyone refused to let themselves believe him, they thought he had gone mad (page 7).  The writer starts off with Moshe’s story to show the reader that the Jews had so much hope that something as horrible as Moshe’s story could never happen even though it was taking place right before their eyes.  Elie and his family had multiple opportunities to escape from their death.  One of them was right after Moshe came back to the community and shared his story, emigration permits for Palestine were still obtainable (page 6).  The next opportunity they were offered was after they were taken to the ghetto.  Their servant Martha visited them and begged them to come back to her village where she could provide them with a safe refuge (page 20). These examples show that their hope blinded them from the danger of the situation and so they saw no danger in staying in the ticking time bomb they called their home. Jews kept telling themselves and each other unreasonable statements to try and convince themselves it wasn’t that bad.  On page six, the author states “Was he going to wipe out a whole people?  Could he exterminate a population scattered throughout so many countries?  So many millions!  What method could he use?  And in the twentieth century!”  This shows us that the Jews didn’t believe anyone could be so mad and capable of killing so many people.  Another example is stated on page 18, “Who knows?  Perhaps we are being deported for our own good.  The front isn’t very far off; we shall soon be able to hear the guns.  And then the civilian population would be evacuated anyway..”  All of these examples and turned down opportunities were all sponsored by the infamous germ of hope, which is also the reason why millions of Jews including Elie Wiesel's family did not try and escape or do anything about their approaching deaths, their hope is what killed them.