Thursday - Jan 30, 2013

General Info:  READING LOGS DUE TOMORROW.  SPELLING TEST WEEK 3 TOMORROW.

7th Grade: 
-DOL
-Spelling Test - Week 3 for 7th Period students.  4th period will take test tomorrow. 
-Read the poem "Annabelle Lee" by Edgar Allen Poe, and the story "Narcissus and Echo" in the text from pages 430 - 438. 

Reading Logs due Tomorrow. 
Current Events due for 4th period tomorrow.

8th Grade:
-DOL
-Continue watching video "A More Perfect Union"

10th Grade:
-DOL
-We watched a number of effective and not so effective persuasive videos in class today. 
-We finished taking notes on how persuasion appeals to our logic, our emotions, or our values.

History:
Working in the Lab for History Day Projects. 

Wednesday - Jan 30, 2013

7th Grade:  Read the story beginning on page 416 about a boy and his computer.  There is a description of hyperbole on page 417.  Find 2 examples of hyperbole in the story and come prepared to discuss them tomorrow.

8th Grade:  Continue A more Perfect Union video

10th Grade:  We shared our comments we found from internet stories that were . . . less than persuasive.  Then we started taking notes on the three types of persuasive arguments:
1.  Logic
2.  Value
3.  Policy

We will continue viewing examples and reading stories about these types of persuasion for the next few days. 

History:  Work in the lab on History Day Projects.  Rough drafts should be ready go for Friday.

Tuesday - Jan 29, 2013

7th Grade:
-DOL
-Revision video to understand the process and reasons for revising our writing.
-We watched the introductions to about 8 different movies to examine them for the 9 different kinds of foreshadowing students took notes on last week.

8th Grade:
-DOL
-Video for the next few days:  A More Perfect Union which ties in with history and English classes right now as we begin our constitutional unit in the history and Language Arts textbooks.

10th Grade: 
We began our Persuasive Speech unit today.
-Read pages 560, 561, 564, 565 in the text book about persuasion.
-Assignment:  Read through the comments on pretty much any internet story and there are people who try and persuade with innefective methods.  The most common are calling people names, shouting or arguing vehemently till you overwhelm the other person, or using half baked, illogical counter arguments.  When all else fails, swearing at a person seems to be a favorite method too.  I asked the kids to find and read an article that interests them, and then to report back to the class tomorrow on some person who was less than persuasive in the comments. 

Monday - Jan 28, 2013

January Reading Logs due this Friday, Feb 01, 2013!!!!!

7th & 8th Grade:
Spelling Words - Week 3

pedestrian – walker, average, boring

agreement – group consensus
assuage – relieve, comfort
indispensable – must have it
aerate – air out
memorandum - message
prevaricate - liar
ecstatic – very happy
unsavory – vulgar, not tempting, personality
grouse – complain

7th Grade: 
New Spelling Words:

Analyzing videos from the sophomores for persuasive appeal.

Homework:   Journal - Using 5 of this week's spelling words, write about either of these topics:

*How I feel when people don’t keep their promises to me.

*How to get along with your siblings and family members

8th Grade: 
Same as 7th, but no journal entry.  Be working on History day stuff with this extra time!!!!!  You need to have your working rough draft of your tri-fold boards finished this week.


10th Grade:
DOL notes: 

Conflict – The problem or struggle in a story that triggers the action.  There are 5 basic types.

·         Person vs Person – Someone has a problem with someone else

·         Person vs Society – Someone has a problem with society: Eg, The school, law, culture, rules, etc.

·         Person vs Self – What to do in a certain situation.  Rescue the car full of people, or your girlfriend?

·         Person vs Nature – Heat, cold, tsunami, avalanche, tornado, mutant ninja turtles . . .

·         Person vs Fate (god) – battle with what seems to be an uncontrollable problem.  Out of your power.

Spelling - Week 3

1.  Thoroughly - completely

2.  Afghan – holy blanket

3.  Irritability - Crankyness

4.  Feign - pretend

5.  Mortgage – home loan

6.  Harassment - bullying

7.  Facade – fake front

8.  Reminiscent - remembering

9.  Tableau – artistic arrangment

10.  Choreographer – dance move teacher

 

Active vs passive voice:

In writing, using an active voice will help your writing stand out.  This means taking OUT the helping verbs.

Passive – I have been watching TV all night long

Active – I watched TV all night

Passive –  The bus had been chased by the dog

Active – The dog chased the bus

Passive – The boy was hoping to be able to ask the girl to prom

Active – The boy wanted to ask the girl to prom

Passive – Do you think, if it’s not too much of a problem, that you might consider, assuming it’s not too inconvenient, whether or not you may or may not want to spend the next few decades of your life entwined with mine in a combined effort at raising a family?

Active?

Journal – the most passive journal ever written

Topic:  how to date your future mate

Due:  Wednesday

1 full page

Wednesday - January 23, 2013

7th Grade: 
-DOL from internet comments.  These can be quite funny.
-Turn in Journals and 5 "I wonder" statements from story yesterday.
-Powerpoint notes on Foreshadowing.  There are 9 rules.  Here is the information from the first 4 rules we discussed in class today:  We will finish the rest on Thursday. 

1. Foreshadowing with a "Pre-Scene"

Picture the scene...

We are in the cockpit of an airplane. The plane hits turbulence and the captain struggles to regain control. It doesn't last long, and everything is soon seemingly fine again...

But the reader implicitly understands that this is going to be anything but a trouble-free flight.

Or we are in a Wild West saloon. The hero walks in and orders whiskey. Over in the corner, the baddie watches him drink. As the hero leaves, the baddie spits on the floor. And that is it...

But we know that their next meeting will probably not be so uneventful.

A pre-scene is simply a smaller version of a larger scene to come. They are not significant by themselves, but they imply that there is something more spectacular waiting to happen right around the corner.

In fiction, unlike in real life, everything happens for a reason. Every cause has an effect. If the reader of a novel witnesses an event that fizzles out before anything dramatic happens, they know that the drama will come later in the story.

2. Foreshadowing by Naming an Approaching Event

Simply naming the event and indicating why it is likely to be momentous is one of the simplest ways of foreshadowing there is. So you might begin a chapter in a novel like this...

Fred left the house at eleven o'clock and drove into town. He was meeting his father for lunch at Brown's. Officially, they were just 'catching up', but they both knew Fred needed money again - and not such a small amount this time, either.

Out of all my examples of foreshadowing, this one is hardly the most subtle - but it does the job.

Fred is on his way to a difficult meeting and, as readers of this story, we are looking forward to seeing how it plays out before either character has even reached the restaurant.

For added impact, you could foreshadow this lunch date earlier - the night before perhaps. Or else you could give Fred several other tasks to perform in town before he meets his father.

That way, the reader will anticipate the upcoming meeting for several pages, not just for a paragraph or two.

3. Using Irrational Concern

A teenage girl leaves the house for an evening out with her friends. Her mother makes her promise to be back before midnight. The girl kisses her mother and tells her she worries too much. She'll be fine, she says.

...but us readers know she won't be.

·         In the real world, mothers worry over nothing all the time, however old their children are (it's part of their job description).

·         In fiction, however, there is no such thing as irrationality. If a character worries, the reader expects - indeed, demands - that these worries are for a reason.

The obvious outcome here is that the daughter does not make it home safely. But how about using some of that misdirection I talked about earlier...

Here is how it might play out...

Midnight has come and gone and the mother is standing at the window. She hears the back door and runs to meet her daughter. But it is a masked intruder carrying a knife.

The reader would have been expecting bad things to happen to the daughter, but in the end it was the mother who was in trouble.

Foreshadowing, in this case, has enabled you to create both suspense and surprise.

4. Foreshadowing Through Apprehension

As a man gets ready for work, we see that he is tense and sweating. His wife kisses him goodbye and wishes him good luck. The man throws her an uneasy look and picks up his briefcase. We don't even know what is about to take place yet, but we are certainly looking forward to finding out how it turns out.

If a character in a novel is apprehensive about something, the readers will also be apprehensive (assuming they care about the character, that is).

In the previous example, I created both suspense and surprise. Here, I have managed to create suspense and mystery. So not only are the readers uncertain about how this upcoming event will work out, they don't even know what the upcoming event is.

5. Using Narrator Statement

When Ruth Jones's alarm clock woke her at seven o'clock that morning, she had no idea that today would be the longest day of her life.

Again, as examples of foreshadowing go, there is nothing subtle about this. And it also pre-supposes the fact that you are using a disembodied narrator, rather than showing the events of the novel solely through the viewpoint character's eyes.

If you are writing a first person novel, or a third person novel in which the "camera" is positioned behind the viewpoint character's eyes throughout, this method of foreshadowing won't be an option.

6. Showing the Reader a Loaded Gun

An old man is sitting at his desk looking at his stamp collection. When he opens the drawer for his magnifying glass, his fingers brush against a revolver. He finds the magnifying glass and closes the drawer...

But us readers know that the gun wouldn't have been shown to us at all if it wasn't going to be fired later in the novel.

I said at the top that these examples of foreshadowing are just suggestions to give you the idea of how to foreshadow. You can use them any way you like. For example...

·         It doesn't have to be a gun in the drawer - it could be a bottle of poison or an unidentified object wrapped in brown paper or an unopened letter.

·         Or how about making it the absence of something - an empty bottle of heart medication, a fuel gauge close to empty.

7. Foreshadowing Through Opinion

Here is the final line from a chapter in a first person private-eye novel...

I told myself there would be no more bodies, but I didn't believe a word of it.

When the leading character in a novel states an opinion, us readers believe them. The private eye above might have no rational reason for believing there will be more murders.

In the real world, he could well be wrong.

But in fiction, opinions and hunches and gut instincts on the part of the hero and rarely wrong.

8. Foreshadowing Through Prophecy

As a novel writer, you have the gift of being able to predict the future. At any given point in the story, you know precisely what is coming next (because you invented it!)

The characters in the story do not have this gift. But you can give them (and the readers) premonitions about what happens next...

·         When a fortune teller looks into her crystal ball, she closes her eyes and crosses herself.

·         When the leading woman reads her horoscope, it promises a troubled week ahead.

·         When a man goes downstairs for breakfast, he sees his lucky horseshoe has fallen off the shelf.

If any of these events happened to me personally, I wouldn't be troubled in the least. To me, crystal balls and newspaper horoscopes are meaningless. But as a reader and writer and teacher of fiction, I know there is no such thing as "meaningless" in a novel.

Now for the last of my examples of foreshadowing...

9. Foreshadowing Through Symbolic Omens

The first thing Mary saw when she pulled back the curtains was a solitary magpie sitting on the fence. She waited for a second bird to appear, but no magpie came.

Any reader who knows the magpie rhyme "one for sorrow, two for joy..." will immediately suspect the worst for Mary, even if Mary herself is untroubled by the sighting and soon forgets about it.

The same thing would apply if Mary had opened her curtains to see storm clouds gathering on the horizon.

In novels, symbolism counts. Here is how Ernest Hemingway famously foreshadows an early death in the opening line of A Farewell to Arms...

The leaves fell early that year.

 8th Grade: 

-DOL of Internet sentences from comment boards. 

-Show Mr. Hawley the rough drafts you brought to class for 10 points. 

-Peer review of rough drafts.  Have at least 2 other students edit your paper.  Then revise it for a second draft you will bring to class tomorrow to show me.  After you bring your second draft, have at least one COMPETENT adult edit it again for you.  Revise that for your final draft which you will turn in to me on Mondat this coming week.

-Don't forget, spelling tests are tomorrow!

 

10th Grade:

-We watched the commercials from the students in the other class today.  There were some quality productions made.  Well done, everyone.

The poem "O Captain, My Captain" by Walt Whitman is about the death of President Lincoln.  He wrote about Lincoln's death as the captain of a ship which President Lincoln has brought back safely to the harbor, despite losing his own life.  Here is the poem:

 

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!	5
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
2       O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;	10
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,	15
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
3   My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;	20
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

 

Walt Whitman – Published posthumously - 1900

- Assignment:  This is a visually rich poem.  Draw a picture that visualized the written metaphor of this poem.  You don't have to be a great artist.  Stick figures are fine if that is all you are capable of (like my own not-so-impressive art skills).  What pictures does this poem bring to mind?  Due Thursday. 

-Don't forget, spelling test is tomorrow.

 

 

Tuesday - Jan 22, 2013

7th Grade:  Read the information on pages 388-389, and then read the story "After 20 Years" by O. Henry.  As you read, make 5 predictions about what is going to happen in the story.  I call these "I wonder"'s.  Then, when you find out if your predictions were correct or not, answer your own questions.  Please use complete sentences.  Due Wednesday.

8th Grade:  Still working on the persuasive essay paper.  Students should have brought a prepared outline of their topics to class today for 10 points.  We had other kids in class peer review the outlines for organization and structure.  Homework:  Bring a first draft to class tomorrow for the first round of editing by other students in class.

10th Grade:  Finally finished the commercials!!!  Next project - Persuasive oral essay.

History:  Page 186-190 in your textbook.  Section 6.3.  Do questions 1,2,5 in complete sentences.  Due Wednesday.  After you are done reading section, work on History Day Project.

Monday - Jan 21, 2013

Spelling Words:  7th & 8th Grades:

Obstinate – Stubborn

Precipitate – To cause; To rain

Ominous – Threatening

Omnipotent – All powerful

Capitulation – to give in, give up

Incredulous – I can’t believe it

Adjacent – Next to, across from

Conjecture – Guessing

Corporal – Body, military rank

Filament – Thread, string

 

 

7th Grade:  Lots to do this week. 

-Spelling words week 2

-2nd Draft of Persuasive essay is due today.  I just need to see that you have it.  Now take it home, have an adult edit it, and bring back the final draft tomorrow. 

-Journal:  1/2 page.  Describe your best and worst classes and why you do or don't like them.  Use 5 of this week's spelling words in the journal, and HIGHLIGHT them so I can easily find them.

-Homework:  Read pages 330-335 on critical reading and answer EVERY question you find on those pages about those four stories, including the constructed response. 

 

8th Grade:

-Spelling words - week 2

-Write an outline for a persuasive essay of your choice.   Due tomorrow.  This essay will be worth 100 points in the end, and will require several drafts before you are done.

 

 

Spelling and Lit terms - 10th Grade

Protagonist: The main character or hero of a story

Antagonist: The person or thing working against the Hero

Foil – The dude who gets under your skin or pushes your buttons.

Spelling – Week 2

1.  Duress – Forced against your will

2.  Allocation – Amount you get

3.  gourmet – Fancy food

4.  Ulterior – selfish motives

5.  Municipal - City

6.  Replete – Full, complete

7.  Defiantly - Rebellious

8.  Ecstatic – Very Happy

9.  Desperately - Frantically

10.  Disappearance – Vanish

10th Grade: 

 

-Spelling and LIt terms

-Vocab worksheet - week 2

Commercials.  One more day and we will finish up with this project. 

 

 

Thursday - Jan 17, 2013

7th Grade:
-DOL
-Appositive Grammar Worksheet. pg 134 (Number got cut off to only 34)  See Mr. Hawley for extra copies and any help or instructions you might need.  Due Friday for A schedule, and Monday for B schedule.
-Peer Review of Persuasive Essay 1st Drafts.  Correct the mistakes, improve organization and writing, and bring a 2nd draft to class on Monday for Points.


8th Grade:
-DOL
-Adverb Clauses Worksheet A - pg 93.  See Mr. Hawley for extra copies, and any help needed
-Read Ray Bradbury story in Text.  Pages 428-437.  Answer questions 9,10,11,13  Due tomorrow.


History:
-We looked at geography as it influences Politics.  Urban, crowded areas are more liberal.  Rural, empty areas are more conservative.  Why is this?
-Read Chapter 6, Section 2 for Monday.
-Don't forget to turn in a current event for Friday, even though we are on A schedule and won't have History class together.

Wednesday - January 16, 2013

7th Grade: 
-DOL
-We Peer - reviewed the Outlines for the Persuasive Essays today, and began writing rough drafts.  Please make sure you double space on all three drafts of this paper.  Tomorrow, bring the 1st rough draft for peer review in class.

8th Grade: 
-DOL
-Style Essays.  We read a short excerpt from a Bill Cosby essay, and two excerpts from essays in a running magazine.  We discussed the various styles we have read so far. 
-Homework:  Write about a daily routine, or a mundane day in the style of a newspaper article.  250 - 500 words.  Due Thursday (Tomorrow)

10th Grade:  Finised watching Clash of the Titans.  Spent the remainder of the period working on Commercials.  No homework . . . YET!  ;-D

History:  Read Chapter 6, Section 1 from pages 166 - 173.  Answer questions 1 and 7 in short essay form.  Due Tomorrow.  Remainder of time given to work on History Day projects.




Tuesday - Jan 15, 2013
7th Grade: 
-DOL
-We are beginning a unit on essay writing.  This essay should be very well edited and will have an outline and at least 3 drafts before turning it in.  We brainstormed in class for topics and how to outline the essay, then students worked on making their outline for class tomorrow. 
-Homework:  Have an outline ready for peer review in class tomorrow.

8th Grade: 
-DOL
-We read the story "Raymond's Run" in the textbook.  Still looking at various styles of writing.  No homework other than finishing the story.

10th Grade:
Clash of the Titans.  No Homework

History:  Lab day for Wyoming History Day project.