Geography Challenge results

Congratulations to Nicolas W., Jeff, and Matthew for qualifying for the finals on Thursday. Bring a blue and red pen, come to English for attendance and then you will go to the library. Good luck!

Tips and Reminders...

I am away on Wednesday, but I look forward to having a great report from  the TOC regarding your hard work.  I am open for Flex on Thursday if you need further help.

You will spend 1 block reviewing editing / proofreading skills and 1 block using them with your buddy.  Check this link and go to pages 382-390 for samples regarding language expectations.Essay writing expectations and samples

Last Writing Assignment Preview

Lots of choices..... You will choose one topic from this list.

Learning Intentions: 

·         Demonstrate the writing process (primarily in class)

·         Create a multi-paragraph composition

·         with references (CONNECTIONS)  to 2 or more of our resources from this semester

The movie, The Dead Poet’s Society, and the novel, Stargirl, explore a variety of themes. 

1.    Learning may happen in a variety of ways.  Consider the questions in DPS on the role, purpose and structure of schools presented through the contrasts of a more formal, structured delivery of curriculum at a boy’s prep school and Mr. Keating’s more unusual teaching methods.  Consider also the life lessons learned beyond the classroom through the social culture at MAHS and from Archie.  Choose a or b below for your writing topic.

a)    In your essay, discuss the role of education in today’s society (What does society expect of a public education system?  What function does society want it to serve? Why?) and compare the different models presented.  Discuss how Fraser Heights fits in with these models and which you prefer and why.

b)    There were several teachers in this semester’s literature choices – create and describe your ideal teacher with references to 2-3 of the teacher characters in our literature and 1 teacher from your past / present.  Focus on how they teach and how it helps or would help you to learn better or to grow into a better person.  (Focus on the positive characteristics for this one and acknowledgement of / connections to your learning style.  Do not focus on the minutia – eg.  “My ideal teacher would never give homework,....”)

2.     The relationship between teachers (mentor-figures: coaches, role- models, peer mentors/idols,…) and their students has a great influence on a young person’s growth and education.  DPS and Stargirl pose the questions - how close should students and teachers become and what is the effect on the education of the student?  (*Reminder - For this paper we are not discussing any legally inappropriate relationships (beyond those in our literature / movie. *)

Argue one side of this debate – either…

a)     The benefits of strong student-teacher relationships enhance the educational experience of students.

or

b)    Strong student-teacher relationships are unnecessary for (or hinder) the educational experience of students.

Hint:  If you are writing a 5 paragraph essay your first body paragraphs should state your position and your third body paragraph refutes potential opposing arguments.

3.     Several of our references also examined the relationship between parents and children and the role communication plays in developing that relationship.   Communication is the responsibility of all involved.   Suggest alternative communication strategies or alternative decisions made by specific characters in specific moments and how they might have affected the outcome or subsequent events in their stories.

4.     What are the benefits and downfalls of nonconformity? Use examples from our references and your own life to answer this question.

5.    Several of our references emphasise the interconnectedness of everyone.  Individually we are influenced by other individuals and the societies we live in (remember time / place).  Support or refute the following:

Individuals have responsibilities within a society (time / place are important here – a family, team, or country can all be considered societies) and the best way to support a civil and productive society is to fulfill those responsibilities by conforming to social norms (expectations placed upon us by that society). 

6.    Friends should be positive forces in your life; however, friendships can be both supportive and destructive.  Examine the role of friendships in the references we have used this semester.  Discuss the characteristics of the positive influences and the negative ones.

7.    Society does not accept people or ideas that are socially different.  Agree or disagree

8.     Some of the characters we have read about this semester are different than society expects.  Some of our stories have suggested it is better to be different, and true to yourself, than to try to be like everyone else.  Yet some of these characters experienced hurt and disappointment.  Which is better?  Explain.

9.    Being a friend is hard work.  Leo Borlock is your average teenager. There is nothing exceptional about him. Only when he begins to spend a lot of time with Stargirl does he realize how painful life can be when others view you as different.  Leo must choose between being accepted by his peers or continuing a friendship with someone whose "differences" set him apart also.

Argue that being friends with someone "different"--like Stargirl—while difficult, is worth it.  (You may also wish to adjust this topic to include other character references – Peter Brownrigg, Neal and his group of eclectic friends, Hermia and Helena, someone from your own life experiences.)

10.  “Ideas confine a man to certain social groups and social groups confine a man to certain ideas.” -- Josephine Klein

Explain the meaning of this quote and support or refute its opinion.

(Hint:  setting – time / place, define your social group.)

Questions.

What is the movie "Dead Poets Society" sayng about poetry?

In the movie Mr. Keating thinks that the school's assigned poetry textbook is not affective for his students, even though these textbooks are a tradition Mr. Keating thinks of poetry in a different way. Mr. Keating sais that " Poetry is what you make of it and you can go as far as you want with it.
Mr. Keating made all the students walk in the courtyard one day, as he expected all the students copied each other walking at the same pace and stance.
He then put in there mind that in Poetry every one has a different pace and look about it and not to write about what every one else would be writing about.

poems from before the break

I can't find my poems from before the winter break. The ones we have to analyse for homework. Can anyone help pls O.o

New blogs....

Spread the word -all groups have not invited me to their new blogs. Send me the invites so I can see your dead poet posts please.

Homework for the holidays

Don't forget your food bank items!!! See you at breakfast :)

Homework logs.... 2 weeks and no posts...hmmm...

Merry Christmas everyone and enjoy reading over the break.

See you in the New Year!

My email is down

Post questions here.

Webs

Ms.Lees, sorry to bother you, but I heard that some people got extensions, and so I was wondering if the whole class got extended or there are certain qualifications. Thank You

Old blog groups

Keep them online for the semester as the work will be compared to the work you put on your new group's blog.

Blogger

So if we are in new blogging groups, what do we do with our old blogs?

Extra flex this week

In addition to Thursday, this week I will open on Wednesday between 11:10 and 11:50.

Concept map rubric

See web links for concept map rubric. You will receive a printed copy in class Monday Nov 28. Reminder - Bring your webs in progress. You will have class time Monday and maybe Tuesday during conferences to work on your webs.

Additional Opinion

I already shared my opinion about whether we should continue blogging or not. Now, I have a little additional opinion to say.

Even if we decide to not continue Blogging, I strongly suggest that we should keep the Homework Blog going. It reminds us what the homework is and makes it much easier to find out the homework when we miss the class. In addition, it also summarize the in-class tasks and analyse the intention of them.

Should we continue blogging?

Yes we should. Why? Because it is a great learning experience and also because of these reasons.
¤ comments from other group members really helped me correct weak areas.
¤other group members can set an example for you to use as a guideline for your own post.
¤Ms Lees usually takes about a week or more to mark our work handed in or it somehow gets lost. Blogger can prevent that from happening.
¤Blogger will help one to problem solve. For example, if there are tech issues, you can just post it as a comment or just do a hard paper copy of it.

Should we countinue blogging?

In my opinion, Blogger has been a great tool towards my learning and I think we should continue blogging. Not only because this knowledge we're learning from Blogger will help us in the future, but because it makes us work on our work habits. It's easier to see who does their homework on time and who doesn't. It also allows us to comment on each others posts to give feedback and talk more about the ideas we are trying to show our group members.

Although this seems to be easy, if one of the members does not post on time the other members can't fully finish their homework, which brings us back to work habits. If we are going to continue using blogger to do projects, homework posts in group I think we should be encouraging our group members to post on time. This will benefit the group members and herself/himself too, it will change his/her work habits and more likely start posting on time, and the group members would be able to finish their task of commenting on his/her work.

Further more as my group member said, we could do some hand in homework too, not everything has to be about blogging all our homework. In conclusion for our blog, it's a yes to continue blogging, but our members should be posting on time.

Shall We Continue to Blog?

For the most part, blogging has been a completely difference experience for me; and along with the unorthodox approach of doing homework online, it is apparent that we all benefited much from this enriching approach to English class. Albeit, this hasn't been the same for us all; namely, some of my fellow classmates did not take an advantage of this system and follow the given instructions; which would have made this blogging experience reach its full potential.

Indeed, we all started out kind of testing the water little by little; and eventually we were able to grasp the technicalities of using an online blog and advance. Here comes the question though: should we continue to use Blogger? I have mixed feels with regards to it. Blogger has thrown a few obstacles out at us here and there, technical problems in general, but I believe that the biggest problem here is the work habits section. Perhaps students think that by using the Internet for homework can opt them out of finishing it before the deadline, or maybe even to the extent to have an excuse to not do their homework. Furthermore, I also believe that the quality of the comments should be reinforced to contain more aspects of useful constructive criticism. I feel that this is more crucial to blogging because it involves the success of our classmates; if I don't finish my homework, then my blog members will not be able to complete theirs.

Another aspect of this question is whether or not blogging is a more effective approach than carrying out in-class homework. I would think: not quite.; using blogger has given people more excuses to not finish their homework on time. Frankly, my opinion is that my writing or reading would have improve much more if I were doing it by hand with the help of actual classmates in the form of solid. This, however, can be put aside because it is inevitable that we will have to use technology greatly in the future. Doing homework in class and handing it in class gives people more of an obligation to finish their homework, that much I believe is true.

My final opinion on this matter is that: yes, we should continue using blogger; however only to a certain extent and only if 2 conditions are met. We should only use Blogger moderately and mixed in with actual in class homework. The 2 conditions I believe are: students MUST finish their homework on time, and be obligated to accomplish quality work (and comments to the best of their potential). If these two conditions are met, I believe that this is a practical approach to learning and to improve greatly in reflecting; or how Ms.Lees likes to say it: thinking about our thinking.

Should we continue blogging?

In response to Ms. Lees' question, we should continue blogging. When blogging, we are using an effective data output tool, with one’s posts able to be seen by people from all over the world. As well, comments, an indispensable resource, are so instant and convenient through Blogger. That way, we can quickly receive feedback for our work and use it to revise our work. On a side note, designing a template for our blogs and making it aesthetically pleasing while at the same time legible is a useful lesson in presentation.

When using blogger, we learn a multitude of skills, such as learning how to make constructive comments on other people's work and using others' feedback to improve your own work. Having such expedient comments through blogger certainly helps. Being able to make constructive comments is a vital life skill, as it allows you to work with others by collaborating and pointing out flaws in others' work while at the same time being encouraging. In addition, bearing in mind how Blogger is an electronic medium, it is susceptible to various techinical issues. This requires us to use critical thinking in order to solve issues that may arise. For example, if the spaces in your posts appear different from how you wrote them, you could experiment with Blogger to find a solution, such as editing the text directly in HTML to fix formatting errors.

As for suggestions to augment our blogging experience, larger groups would be a better idea. In a group of six to eight people, there would be more posts to comment on. As well, if the teacher said to comment on three other posts, and someone garnered numerous comments while another received none, it would be a valuable lesson in sense of audience. As well, having more members would mitigate the negative effects from members who do not post in a timely manner.

Should We Continue Blogging?

Should we continue blogging? 


To be honest, I only have one problem with blogger.

The learning intentions behind using blogger include teaching us how to use blogger, encouraging the quieter students to speak up, allowing us to write for a bigger audience - and them giving us constructed criticism to improve our writing and responding skills.

However, when we actually do start blogging, which of these intentions are actually fulfilled? From my experience of blogging, many of these intentions were not achieved because of the lack of response from the "quieter students". We are not encouraging students to participate more if they refuse to try. As were some group members - simply responded with a "good job", "nice structure", or "I agree with you". This makes it extremely hard to expand on the conversation and connect beyond - especially if they don't respond to my response to their posts. Hence, I don't feel that my writing skills have improved by much, in fact, I believe that my writing skills have improved more from the in-class peer-edits rather than the response I receive from my blog group members.

Personally though, I think with the right system, we can work this problem out. I would suggest grouping the students with similar skill abilities would create more interesting discussions. But I do understand the downside of this resolution is that those groups with perhaps less skills in this area will not benefit as much since there might be less discussion and the responding skills will lack.

Nevertheless, other than this issue, I have nothing against blogger.

Regarding the Question

Since the question is should we keep on blogging, are we supposed to write formally or as our opinions, that is, using the I voice? Thank you