Monthly Archives: March 2016

3/30/2016

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Today was a pretty interesting day that showed a great amount of maturity in my students. I honestly was really impressed with the comments that people made.

First, we printed the lyrics to Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get in On”, listened to the song, and highlighted persuasive language in BLUE and highlighted references to TIME in yellow. Answer the three questions and drop off your highlighted lyrics (if you were absent so I can give you credit for highlighting along with the three questions).

Let's Get It On

We talked about the speaker and his audience (a girl) and analyzed that relationship. We highlighted evidence of carpe diem (time) in the poem, highlighted IRONY in the song, and highlighted references to LOVE in the song. We also specifically talked about how the song was contradictory and how it related to TIME (“stop beating ’round the bush”, and “this minute”).

We were really puzzled about the lyrics, especially the phrase “threatin’ you, baby”, so I did a little research. First, I wanted to make sure that I got the lyrics right, and it seems I did. So then, I went to Wikipedia and read this little tidbit. It seems Mr. Gaye had a troubled childhood and used his music to work through some of his issues. The power of poetry!

We talked about consent, and how the audience in the song has obviously NOT given consent.

Students then sat there puzzled as to why we listened to that song, so we read “To His Coy Mistress” to explain. It’s the original “Let’s Get It On”, just much creepier.

You can download my notes in a Word document so you don’t have to copy notes. Just save it wherever you save my stuff.

Coy MistressCoy Mistress2I showed you eagles twirling and how that fit into the poem.

Lastly, we did the Syllogism Pyramid foldable. You can find the template in LMS.

For each triangle, create a text box and write the following:

  • If… (1st stanza – lines 1-20) + image
  • But… (2nd stanza – lines 21-32) + image
  • So… (3rd stanza – lines 33-46) + image

You will need to ROTATE the text box. Grab the little green ball and turn it. Make sure that the text box faces the hypotenuse. Don’t worry about the text that is already on the pyramid – that will be hidden when you fold it up.

3/28/2016

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We started today out by doing a Google slide.

questions

We talked about how the phrase I was looking for was “life begins at 40.”

Then, we did group work where the class explained the graphs from the BBC’s “What’s the Prime of Your Life?“. We figured our from the graphs that there is no one best time of your life – there are perks to each age. While our memory is the best that is it ever going to be, we still have to look forward to a peak in creativity, happiness, and knowledge. The best is yet to come!

Fitness Information Processing knowledge life satisfaction

We read To The Virgins, To Make Much of Time.

To The Virgins

While I “chopped and screwed” this poem, I explained why I found this so offensive and shared some personal stuff from my life. Remember – English is supposed to be about sharing life experiences and thoughts, not an EOC test or a grade. I want you to find connections in the literature to real life!

We also talked about peaking in high school. If you peak in high school, then the rest of your life will be pretty depressing.

Then we did Hexagonal Writing over the poem. I had different colored triangles and for each triangle, you answered a different question.
hexagonal trianglesThen we glued them together on the giant blue paper to create a hexagon.

hexagonal

3/24/2015

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So today, we had three smallish assignments that are due today. I explained them all at the start of class and then let you work on them.

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In the Carpe Diem section, click on the Seize the Day folder. Read the story for Lingerie and follow the directions. Pretty easy. All you have to do is find ONE WORD. Then, explain how the story is carpe diem. You can do this is the comment section.

Then, grab the #carpediem or #yolo PowerPoint. These are all tweets that I got a few years ago and whited out the actual hash tag. For each image, click it and go to PICTURE then COLOR and then choose PURPLE for carpe diem and BLUE for YOLO.

Then, finish your bucket list and turn it in.

bucketlist BL Drop Off

3/21/2016

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It’s Term 4! That means we have ten weeks of school left before we get our for the summer holidays! Hooray!

We did a group activity called Creative Coloring and then wrote a response to it. If you weren’t here, go to First Day activities and then Creative Coloring Response and the answer the questions as best as you can about group work in general, focusing on how attendance affects group work, maybe even giving a personal anecdote (story) about how you have been personally affected by it in class.

Then, we hopped over to Carpe Diem > Bucket List and did the 48 Hours e-mail.

48 hours email

You can just e-mail me a list with what you want to do. :)

Here’s my list:

  • Eat all of my favorite foods
  • Spend time with my family
  • Skype with loved ones who are not local
  • Write letters to my children for special events
  • Try to stay calm: meditate, acupuncture

Afterwards, We read the Top Five Regrets of the Dying and talked about hospice care and which regret you thought was the most meaningful. We ran out of time, so we’ll start tomorrow off with the Cubing Activity.