welcome
Welcome to room 217!  This is our public online space to share ideas, collaborate on projects, and reflect on the themes of our  course. Adding content and sharing has never been easier! We will build the knowledge on this site together by contributing to online discussions, sharing our research, and through creating and and posting to your personal online portfolio sites as a way to showcase our course creations.
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Overall, this site should help us reflect on the themes course, celebrate our accomplishments, and streamline how we learn and share information.
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your teacher
An interest in helping young people discover and define their writing voice and reading interests drives Ms. Jennifer Ward to cultivate a student-centered learning environment, one that supports individual learning goals and incorporates purposeful use of technology. In March 2017, Ms. Ward was named teacher of the month by Michigan's 86th district state representative, Thomas Albert.  In March 2016, she was named a TED-Ed Innovative Educator and is also a Google Certified Innovator, National Writing Project Consultant, and a 2014 PASCD Emerging Leader.  Ms. Ward taught for 13 years in a Philadelphia suburban district and returned to her home state in 2015. 

​This is her fifth year as a Grandville Bulldog.  Ms. Ward teaches 10th grade honors American literature as well as 10th grade Composition Through American Literature courses. She is also the faculty advisor for the Knit Wits (our GHS knitting club), the GHS Writing Club, the Dungeons and Dragons club, and the Political Action club. She also serves as the coordinator for the GHS Seminar MIproject program.

​ms. ward

stay informed:

​social contract:

to be successful:
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 Ms. Ward's students and their parents can sign up to receive a daily text message of our homework by clicking on the appropriate class below: ​
Respect-
  • When you interact with others either in class or online, it is important to be respectful; be respectful of other people and respect yourself. This means that personal attacks, inappropriate language and content, insults and harassment of any kind are strictly forbidden. Our digital classroom spaces are an extension of our physical classroom. Ask yourself if your comments would be acceptable in our physical classroom setting.
Rigor-
  • Before posting a comment, question, or blog entry, ask yourself, "will this forward the discussion we are having?" Your thoughts and ideas should be supported, and you should be using specific details to illustrate your ideas. Your posts should build on the discussion by responding to comments other students have made on a particular subject.
Grit-
  • Grit is one of those words that you hear quite a bit at Grandville High.  Grit is the willingness to persevere in the face of initial difficulties.  This will be important in our course as well. Indeed, many of the readings and exercises have been selected precisely because of the particular difficulties they present to the student reader.  Successful students will develop the ability to work through the following steps more or less independently:
    • acknowledge that the difficulty exists;
    • formulate the question which will allow the difficulty to be approached;
    • think through as many possible answers to the questions as they can;
    • bring the question and the most likely answers to class to share them;
    • listen and evaluate the comments of other students about the issue at hand; and
    • reconsider and reformulate their own ideas based on what they have heard.

what we're working on:

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10th GRADE HONORS AMERICAN LITERATURE (2nd, 3rd, and 6th hours)
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UNIT 3: America's Revolutionary Spirit
Without a doubt, the cornerstone of the American Dream is the ideal of freedom.  Americans fought for this freedom in a war that changed not only this nation but also the world.  The Revolution was not just a war about money, specifically taxation, but it was about the natural rights of man.  The philosophical and religious ideas that spurred the American Revolution also raised other important issues about the rights of women and the institution of slavery.  While these problems were not solved with the Revolutionary War, they were addressed at other times in our history.  And so whenever Americans are faced with injustices that deny our rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” America’s Revolutionary Spirit lives on as we try to reclaim and restore the ideals of “liberty and justice for all.” 

Unit Learning Standards:
  • Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
  • Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone.
  • Analyze seminal U.S. documents of historical and literary significance, including how they address related themes and concepts.
  • Present information, findings, and supporting evidence clearly, concisely, and logically such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning and the organization, development, substance, and style are appropriate to purpose, audience, and task.
  • Analyze revolutionary speeches and essays to learn about rhetoric, or the art of persuasion; study how writers and speakers use language in a variety of ways to connect with, persuade, incite, educate, or rally their audiences.
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10th GRADE COMPOSITION THROUGH AMERICAN LITERATURE (CTAL 10)  
(4th and 5th hours)

UNIT 6: Our Reading Lives
“We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel… is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become,” states author ­­Ursula K. Le Guin. What is your reading identity and how have you changed and grown as a reader throughout high school? Over their lifetime, readers build a repertoire of reading habits and strategies to engage with the ideas and meanings in all sorts of texts.  We develop an understanding of the similarities and differences between nonfiction and fiction and how each genre works to express the central ideas developed. In personal reading choices and in our conversations about what we’ve read, we build our understanding of how texts are crafted. Reading matters.  A lot.  Reading matters to nearly every aspect of our daily lives. 

Unit Learning Targets:
  • I can develop close reading skills to demonstrate my understanding of characterization, foreshadowing, diction, motif, symbolism, tone, and theme. 
  • I can respond to the text as I read for my connections between my self-developed guiding reading question and themes found in the text.
  • I can participate in small group and whole class discussions by posing questions that connect the ideas of multiple speakers, responding to questions, and elaborating on my own ideas and/or the ideas of others to propel the discussion.
  • I can respond thoughtfully to diverse perspectives presented in discussion, integrate them with my own when appropriate, and justify my thinking based on evidence introduced by others or found in my text.

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