Liz’s Blog

Dear New Students in Mrs. Duke’s Class,

I know that when you first found out Mrs. Duke was going to be your English teacher the first thing you probably did was freak out, because that is what most people do.  There have been so many rumors about how hard the class is and about the huge workload.  Well, I am here to tell you that those rumors are very true.  However, there are really only a couple of really easy things you must do to survive junior English in Mrs. Duke’s class.  If you do these few easy things, it will really make the year and the class much easier.  Take my advice.  I had her for two years in a row and did none of this, and it made the class so much harder than it had to be.    

1)   Look ahead!  Most of the time assignments are put up very far in advance for a reason and if you can get a head start on them it will really, really help!  Chances are that if they are up there in advance, they are going to take more time to do and are a little more in-depth than the normal homework assignments.    

2)    READ THE BOOKS!  Mrs. Duke can always, always, always tell when you haven’t read no matter how good you think you are at hiding it, so don’t even try.  I never got away with it!  If you don’t read, you wont be prepared for what is going on in class the next day and it will make class miserable.  Plus, there are often reading quizzes. 

3)    Make sure you blog by Monday! Once you fall behind with blogs it is so hard to catch back up because there are always going to be more assigned for the next week!

4)    Participate in class!  Don’t talk to other people! Once my participation grade got put in this semester, my grade dropped a lot! And you never know what it is until the end, so make sure you don’t go crazy and participate!

5)    Actually learn the vocabulary instead of just memorizing the words.  This was my downfall of the year.  Cramming doesn’t work for vocabulary quizzes in this class.  There is no such thing as a “normal” vocabulary quiz in here. 

6)    Do your homework every night.  Everything is worth a lot of points because there is no such thing as “busy work” in this class.  If you do it and do it well, you will get all the points.  However, if you don’t do it at all or it is clear that it isn’t your best, you are going to lose easy points. 

7) When Mrs. Duke tells you to get started on something or you will be regretting it later, you should definitely take that advice.  She is the one who assigned it, so she knows how much work it is going to require to complete it.  

If you do these simple things, it will make Mrs. Duke’s class much less stressful and not as bad as all of those rumors you have probably heard! Good luck and I hope you don’t have too stressful of a year!!