8/31/15 – B

August 31, 2015 by Captain Riley

I am so glad to be back! I was a little shocked to see that my little class of five has grown to a class a eight! Still small, but a little easier to have class discussions. I’m really excited that so many of you are graduating in October – we just have six more Mondays!

We started off sharing Bucket Lists that were turned in and we reviewed some the Carpe Diem stuff from when I was gone.

Then, we did a shortened version of the Carpe Diem Analysis. You can find this in Carpe Diem: Seize the Day: Carpe Diem Analysis. You only have to do two of your choice. If you do two easy poems, you’ll just get full credit. If you do an easy poem and a hard one, you’ll get +5. If you do two hard poems, you’ll earn +10 points.

8/31/15 – A

August 31, 2015 by Captain Riley

I am SO glad to be back, y’all! Thank you for making it such an easy transition back! Surgery is never fun, especially at the start of the school year.

We spent the first part of the day discussing and reviewing what we did last week. I’ll put the zeros in as soon as I can, but remember – I only take late points off for major work.

We also discussed what Old English was and I read the Lord’s Prayer so you can see just how foreign Old English is from modern day English.

We printed the Anglo-Saxon History (Peanut, Butter, Jelly) into OneNote. We are not going to read this all individually ourselves, we are going to split up the work within our group. The sections you are responsible for are listed on the back of your card.

Read your sections, highlighting what you think are the important notes. If you need help or just want to double check to make sure that you got the best information, call me over so I can double check it.

Once you have read all of your sections, then you can DRAW your notes. You will draw each section on an index card for a total of three index cards.

Here is the one that I have already done for all groups:

Just like I taught the class what each one of these pictures meant, tomorrow, you will teach your groups members the information, make a poster, and take a group test over the information (using your notes and text).

8/28/15 – A

August 28, 2015 by Captain Riley

Everything we did today can be found in BB under Beowulf >Literary Elements. We did three assignments today: alliteration sentence, caesuras magnet card, and kennings.

We started out by doing a word search – Riley gave us a picture from the book Animalia and a sheet with a letter on it. If you have the letter A, write as many A letters down inside the letter that you can.

So, you can see from this picture that there are a whole bunch of A’s in here. Write them down inside your letter.

So, if you were absent and need a letter, choose one of the following:

Or you can choose this one:

To go get the letter, go to BB>Beowulf>Literary Terms> Drop Box: Alliterative sentence to find the PDF file of either C or P. Print it out and start writing down words!

When you are done with that, you will then a ten word alliterative sentence. If you have C, you are going to write ONE sentence that MAKES SENSE that has AT LEAST TEN (school appropriate) C WORDS. If you have P, you are going to write ONE sentence that MAKES SENSE that has AT LEAST TEN (school appropriate) P WORDS. Write this sentence around your letter.

Think of it this way: start out with a base sentence, like:

Ellen Eves entered the east entrance.

That’s only five E words, so I need to add more.

Think of and adjective for Ellen, like this:

Energetic Ellen Eves entered the east entrance.

Look at your VERB. Think of an adverb that can describe it.

Energetic Ellen Eves eagerly entered the east entrance.

Still short? Try adding adjectives such as colors and numbers.

Energetic Ellen Eves eagerly entered the east entrance eight times.

Energetic Ellen Eves, when she was only eighteen, eagerly entered the east entrance eight times.

Nine Words! This is where I suggest going to the dictionary to find an E word that you can incorporate and using PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES.

Energetic Ellen Eves, when she was only eighteen, eagerly entered the east entrance eight times with an entourage after the examination.

Then, we listened to The Breaks and watched Riley dance crazily around the room. You kinda missed the show here, but she was demonstrating caesuras.

What you need to do is on an index card, write caesuras on the front, and then write the following four words around it in the four corners: pause, suspense, comma, break.

On the back of the card, write a definition for caesuras using those four words. Ask a crew member for help if you need it.

Then, we worked on kennings. A kenning is pretty much just a fancy nickname. The Anglo-Saxons used them, so to understand the bards, we need a little nickname practice. Go to the Beowulf vocabulary folder in BB and find kennings. You can either give those five objects a kennings nickname for 10 points, or create a Guess Who game for 20 points. It’s your choice!

8/27/15 – A

August 27, 2015 by Captain Riley

We started today off by coloring and labeling this map:We are in British literature, and here are the British Isles. I can a dog and pony show that I can show you if you missed this to help you remember it!

We then took notes over what an epic is and specifically, what an Epic HERO is. We spent a lot of time talking about the VALUES of an EPIC HERO.

We then watched the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny and asked each one of you to ponder a specific questions as we watched:

Who are the epic people featured in the video?
What are the “valorous deeds” that have been accomplished?
What are some examples of the supernatural?

If you weren’t here for this, you can do this in Blackboard. I may have to play the video for you if you can’t get to You Tube on your phone.

We then worked on the Epic Dude. Using our notes, find an epic hero and fill out the template. If you need to see examples, I have some in class that you can see.

8/26/15 – A

August 26, 2015 by Captain Riley

We started the class off today by watching a few clips and discussing Fate and Free will. This isn’t a grade, but if you weren’t here, it might help just to at least look at the questions that were asked.

Then we did a quote sort. For each quote, decide if it shows more fatalism or free will, and copy and paste it to the correct column.

Lastly, we did the Fate Linear Array. In a groupin a group of 2-3), sort the fate/free will words in a linear array. I have an example done with appearances that you can use to illustrate.

It will look like this, but on one side will be FATE and the other FREE WILL.

The list of words in in BB and there is construction paper provided. Again, there should be discussion about where some of these words go. You may need help with some of the nuances of the words, but you can ask people for help with this.

You can get the construction paper from me.

8/25/15 – A

August 25, 2015 by Captain Riley

Today is the day of my gallbladder surgery and my birthday! Boo!

Today, we worked in Beowulf >Values.

Defining Values is the blank copy, and Riley’s example is the one that I did that you can look at if you need an example. I have the envelopes with values in them – just stop by my room if you need them.

The first link for the Values quiz works – Just make sure that you click the link in BB – it won’t work if you try to open it from the Word document. The second link/quiz is (at this time) still blocked by KISD, so just skip that question.

8/24/2015 – B

August 24, 2015 by Captain Riley

Ahoy, mateys! Welcome to the first day of school! I *told* you that I didn’t like my desks were arranged yesterday. To be honest, I’m STILL not sure if I like them. If anyone want to hep me rearrange things when I get back, I’ll be more than happy to move things around again when I get back.

Everything we did today can be located in BB.

First, we talked about how I’m on a points system rather than percentage system. I find this easier to set and meet your goals for the term. The most points you can earn for the term is 1500 points. That means that if you have 1500 points at the end of the term, you will have earned 100%. 1500/1500 = 100% If you earn 1300/1500 points, you’ll have earned a 90, 1200/1500 points earns an 80, 1100 points is a 73, and 1050 points is a 70.

This helps you know just how much work you need to do in order to earn your grade goal. If you want to pass and you only have 1000 points, you know you are only fifty points away from passing. That might be one assignment (depending on what you are missing).

In order to give you a visualize, I have created a chart with levels:

As you progress, I’ll “level” you up, just like in a game.

Then, we talked about how I use rubrics for major grades and what I expect from the different grade levels of work.

We discussed a little bit that I take -5 off major assignments for every day late.

Then, we signed up for my Remind class. You can find my code in BB under the First Day folder.

Since we had some extra time, I talked about how I won’t be here the rest of the week. I briefly explained the assignments that I’m leaving. We talked about the Bucket List and I promised that I’d leave the first part of the Carpe Diem Tower Translation foldable here, so here it is!

I’ll try to Skype at least once this week, but I can’t make any promises.

8/24/2015 – A