Freshmen English students explore the American dream, learn about idioms

A new school year is well underway and our English 1 freshmen students have been hard at work. During the beginning of the year, English 1 students were not only getting acclimated to high school, but also learning about the idea of the American dream.

Through a variety of short stories, the students learned what the American dream meant, when the term was coined and how impactful the idea of the American dream is today.

Additionally, the students were tasked with exploring what their American dream was. For this, they created a poster or presentation that included what they wanted in their future and what their parents wanted for their future. Thank you, parents, for helping out with this!

Many of the students showed initiative and created unique projects that displayed their American dreams and their creativity as well. The posters have been hung up all over my room and have added to the room decor.

That wasn’t the only opportunity for freshmen to put their creativity to the test. As we explored idioms, the freshmen created an example of an idiom. They chose one idiom from a list and illustrated the physical meaning of the words and then explained the hidden meaning behind the phrase. For example, one student chose “fish out of water” which physically means a fish that is out of water. However, the hidden meaning is, “a person who is uncomfortable in a certain situation.” The student then illustrated a fish jumping out of a fish bowl to illustrate the physical meaning behind the words.

The group has been a blast to work with to start the year and I’m looking forward to diving into our first book of the year!

~Neal Hogden, English teacher