3-31-2008 Scribe/ Beginning of 1984

It's time for scribing once again! Suprisingly, Mrs. Smith came into class rather today rather dazzled from her spring break. Usually, she has herself all pulled together! I have to admit it's not the greatest thing to be back in school, but we should all start off on a good note.
We are pretty much jumping right into 1984 and tonight we have to read pages 1-37 for tomorrow. Don't forget to do those grammar exercises (1 and 2). Also, if you did not finish your summary and review on the poster and videos then finish that up! Mrs. Smith began by telling us about the new FishBowl system. There are several groups and on each fishbowl day they will have the chance to present their thoughts and teach the class about the reading. There are many requirements for these presentations. They include:
1) Have a syllabus (teaching plan) on hand in the form of a power point or on paper.
2) Create a quiz for the class room in any way of your choosing. The ideas are endless. However, make sure that you include strong questions! Don't forget that you will also have to have a way to grade the quizzes.
3) The night after your presentation, come up with a blog question and post it on the blog. This should be a good discussion question that can be answered with more than a "yes" or "no".
4) Lastly, during class you should have a way to lead the class in a good discussion. Be creative and make sure that the chapter is discussed and disected thoroughly! No one wants to sit around and listen to pointless chatter.
After Mrs. Smith introduced this to us we started off with an introduction to 1984 in the form of a poster and two videos. We then had to write a summary and review about it. They were actually pretty interesting!
Well, have a great rest of the night and get a lot of sleep! (I'm sure that we all need it!)
~Liz Carlson

Welcome Back!!!

Hello everyone,
Welcome back to school and the never ending strive to learn!
Today in 5th period:
Homework!!
1) We got a new grammar packet!! It is a biggy so better get started ASAP on the introduction of punctuation: end marks and commas!!
2) Time to put on your magnifying lenses and read 1984 (could they have made the type any smaller). finish through page 37 by Wednesday
3) Finish your summary response to the freaky videos and poster!! (Find something to interconnect all of them)

HEY!!!! Come Sunday morning at 9 am be in downtown Littleton for the 1/2 marathon ms. smith is running! Bring along your bike and ride beside her!!! GO GO GO!!!!!!

Did you sign up for the day that you are in charge of the class????
This is what you and your group should be doing to discuss the pages that were assigned
1) syllabus plan (you could be a copy cat and do what ms.smith does with the power points)
- put it so all can see it
- you also need to know and present the homework that will be assigned
2) facilitation (how are you going to plan out your day)
3) QUIZ!!!!! You even get to make it yourself!
- Any kind (multiple choice, essay, fill in the blank, true or false)
- You have to grade them too! It is not Ms. Smith’s job! You made it, grade it!
- Make good questions too! Spend a lot of time thinking, they are hard to come up with!
4) Blog question
- Link to other books
- Think big, outside of the box
- 1 big ahha question
5) Collaborate on Google docs/ wikispace/ what ever you want!
6) Get Creative!! The Pressure is on!!!!

TOMORROW WE GET WORK TIME! SO WORK, WORK, AND WORK!!!!!

Don’t forget to do your summary paragraphs on the freaky videos, find connections, and make discoveries!

One last thing, I do not think that Stevens computer likes him very much! Maybe it is because Ms.Smith is playing it as a piano and calling it Eric! What if it is a girl and its name is Sally!

Have a great day!!!

The Dalai Lama Vs. Emmanuel Goldstein

For those of you who have started 1984 and read about the absolute enemy of Big Brother, Emmanuel Goldstein, I would like you to read the following article (it is a bit long) from Time Magazine about the Dalai Lama.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1723922,00.html

I found it interesting in the fist few paragraphs when the author mentioned the recent protests in Lhasa and the reported 99 dead that the Chinese government said were actually 13 "innocents" killed. This connected a lot to the changing of information in the Ministry of Truth in 1984. Also the picture painted of the Dalai Lama reminds me in a few ways of Emmanuel Goldstein, former top member of the Party who broke away and formed "The Brotherhood" to bring down Big Brother. The Dalai Lama lacks the violent tendencies of Goldstein but relates to him nonetheless. Here is a Wikipedia article about Goldstein that I also found interesting that explains some of the people who he could have been based off of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Goldstein

I know it's spring break, but I thought those of you who have started reading might find these articles interesting.

Have a great break! (Even though Big Brother is watching!)

Darkroom Poem

To do this exercise, you need to spend some time locating a photograph that holds a genuine and compelling interest for you. It need not be a "good" photograph- in fact, sometimes, the botched one will have more resonance, especially if you took it yourself and can reconstruct the gap between your astonishing vision and what actually showed up on the print. You might choose a photograph that someone has taken of you or of someone you know, a photograph that is more self consciously artistic (Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Diane Arbus) or a journalistic photograph that documents a historical event.

When you have found your photograph, spend some time writing out just what you see in it in as much detail as possible: objects, landscape, people, clothes, trees, architecture, light, and shadow. In a sense, you will have to narrate the photograph, or at least create a discernible image so that we can, literally, see what you are talking about. Then, using the same photograph, write a poem from any of the following perspectives or points-of-view:
1. Speak the poem as the photographer.
2. Speak the poem as someone or something in the photograph.
3. Speak the poem as someone or something in the photograph addressing the photographer.
4. Address the poem to someone you know who has not seen the photograph.
5. Address the poem to someone in the photograph.
6. Address the poem to the photographer.

You can also shift the perspective of the poem by manipulating the time, but still using the same photograph:
1. Write what happened just before the photograph was taken.
2. Write what happened just after the photograph was taken.
3. Write what happened as the photograph was being taken just outside the range of the camera.
4. Write the poem as if you have found the photograph years after it was taken.
5. Write the pome as if you were planning to take the photograph.
6. Write the same poem in three versions: present, past, and future tense.

"Any photograph has multiple meanings; indeed, to see something in the form of a photograph is to encounter a potential object of fascination...Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy."

-Susan Sontag

This poem is from the book The Practice of Poetry by Behn and Twichell

Homonym poem

Brenda Hillman wrote a brilliant poem called"Cleave and Cleave" which examines these words that sound and can be spelled the same but have opposite meanings. I'd like you to think of two words that are homonyms but mean different things. , e.g. lie and lie, stone and stone, bear and bear, write and right. Here is a complete list.
Think of an emotional situation in memory that these homonyms might speak to, then imagine yourself "encountering" each of these words separately, in concrete examples- e.g. you are writing your name on a blackboard as a child, over and over; the sun is spilling in the window, fading the slate as you write. you start to think about your "right" to be yourself, and you look at your self, the clothes you are wearing, your hands, etc...
Then bring both words together at the poem's conclusion, like Hillman, who dramaticized the words' opposite meanings by ending with two strong sentences: You might say, e.g." I will write my name over and over on the glass." Then, "I will disappear: my right."
This poem is taken from The Practice of Poetry by Behn and Twichell.

Persuasive Poem

This is a poem where you are trying to convince somebody of something they don’t want to be convinced of. The poem is an argument, an attempt to persuade. Think about all the situations where you are trying to convince somebody of something: getting out of a ticket, getting mom or dad to not ground you for breaking curfew, getting a date with your dream girl/boy, getting mom or dad to give you more money, getting a teacher to let you turn in late work.

Continue the Conversation (with no grades in sight)

For all you 5th perioders, here is a place to continue the conversation on grades in school and how they affect both teachers and students. I would love to hear feedback from educators as well!

Oprah Winfrey poem

I am going to collect all of your secrets and redistribute them. With another person's secret, write a poem telling the story of that secret as if it were your own and addressing what you think about it. You could even look back at the secret as if you were older and wiser.

Learning in Our Everyday Lives

Mr. Fisch's blog post today about how we can go the extra mile, so to speak, in our learning really got me thinking. I commented about how sometimes I would consider going back and commenting on the blog and trying to do research, but I either didn't have the time or the energy (or both) to do it, so I wouldn't. However, that made me feel really guilty. Not all teenagers have the opportunities that we do here at Arapahoe and we should be taking advantage of them. So I started to think (partly to re-deem myself in my eyes) about the difference between learning and school-work. School-work can be exactly that; work. Work isn't always that fun and most often we just try to get through it without taking the time to reflect on what it's trying to teach us. Even if teenagers were finally able to snap out of their age-old custom of slacking off in school (seriously - how many of you reading this right now haven't, at one point in your education, found yourself slacking off in class? Didn't think so), not many of them would really, realistically, want to devote all their time to learning. To do that, they would have to stop spending time with friends, playing sports, and doing other extra-curricular activities. Or, they could change their mind set on learning. They could, instead, take every opportunity in their life as a learning experience. They could start to change the way they thought about work. Work, by definition (courtesy of Answers. com), only means to put time and effort into achieving a goal. That doesn’t sound so bad now, does it?

So my question to you is this; Do you agree with what I've said above? Why or why not? I really think this could bring up an interesting discussion on how our society views education, so feel free to comment on anything changing-education related that you want. Whether or not you agree, would you be willing to change your mindset and thinking about school and education? Why/why not? How? What obstacles stand in your way? How do you think we, as students and learners, could get around such obstacles?

Table of Contents Poem

I was searching through The Practice of Poetry looking for some fun new ways to approach kids writing their own works and came across an assignment called "Index/ Table of Contents Exercise" by Lee Upton. I liked the idea of their life being a listing of where they came from and where else they can go from here. When finalized, the assignment came out as, "List ten significant people events in your life. Think of your life as a book; these are the chapters. Group together what can be compiled. Make sure to create a creative title for each chapter using a poetic term. Also the numbers of pages in a chapter should be reflective of their importance. "

Hey everyone~
I just figured we could all use a blog to ask our final questions regarding our PLJ's and WRP's. This way, we can all answer each other. (Maybe not, but I have a question anyways... :D)

Here is my question:

I was just wondering, for the PLJ's, do I need to cite a website that I used that was recommended in Pink's book (in the portfolio section)? For example: Do i need to cite the results of an online quiz? and/or Do I need to cite just a website that i referred to?

Also, one final question: I used some magazines for a PLJ and i said the name in my response. Should I cite them even though i didn't use a quote?