4/6/2016

The Big Grade: our first major writing grade!

Today, we started out by talking about obituaries in general. They are the written notices of death that usually include a brief biography of the person. Then we read the poem The Dash by Linda Ellis and talked about that poem supports this quote from the Blog of Death:

Some people view obituaries as morbid stories, but in truth only one line of an obit deals with death. The rest of the story focuses on the amazing lives people lead.

We also read the obituary that I wrote that I’ve been writing for the past ten years. Honestly, it has inspired me. Every time I read it, it’s a reminder of what I want to do. While you guys are finishing writing this tomorrow, I’ll be editing my own – I need to add my children! <3

We are going to write our OWN obituary in class. You need to focus on CARPE DIEM – how did you make your life extraordinary? You will need to be at least 75 years old (or older) – it’s hard to carpe diem a life when it’s short. Think about the Bucket List pre-writing and the Bucket List that we did this week – use those to find your focus. Is it family? Is it being successful? Is it helping other people? Use that focus to help you figure out details and events to your life.

Under Carpe Diem: Obituary, you can find instructions and examples, one of which being my own. Yes, I do every assignment that I ask you to do. The reason that I do this is so that I can share things that helped me when I did the assignment. The thing that helped ME the most when I wrote my obit was the Blog of Death. Seriously. I used it not for ideas, but for sentence structures and modeling. Use your Sentence Models that we did on Tuesday for help and inspiration!

For example, here is the first sentence of Demetius Newton’s obituary:

Rep. Demetrius C. Newton dedicated his life to improving the human condition, first as a civil rights attorney and later as a politician and public servant.

It’s a great sentence, but obviously, I’m not a civil rights attorney, politician, or a public servant. But it’s a great sentence.

So what I would do is this: I’d take out the specific information and leave blanks.

_____ dedicated her life to improving ____________, first as a ________ and later as a __________.

Now that it’s not specific, I can add in my own information.

Vanessa Riley dedicated her life to educating others, first as a teacher and later as the director of the at-risk high school that she founded.

If you look in BB, you can see the rubric that will be used to grade the obituary. You need to have a minimum of 500 words.

9/8/15 – B

The Big Grade: our first major writing grade!

Today, we started out by talking about obituaries in general. They are the written notices of death that usually include a brief biography of the person. Then we read the poem The Dash by Linda Ellis and talked about that poem supports this quote from the Blog of Death:

Some people view obituaries as morbid stories, but in truth only one line of an obit deals with death. The rest of the story focuses on the amazing lives people lead.

We are going to write our OWN obituary in class. You need to focus on CARPE DIEM – how did you make your life extraordinary? You will need to be at least 75 years old (or older) – it’s hard to carpe diem a life when it’s short. Think about the Bucket List pre-writing and the Bucket List that we did this week – use those to find your focus. Is it family? Is it being successful? Is it helping other people? Use that focus to help you figure out details and events to your life.

Under Carpe Diem: Obituary, you can find instructions and examples, one of which being my own. Yes, I do every assignment that I ask you to do. The reason that I do this is so that I can share things that helped me when I did the assignment. The thing that helped ME the most when I wrote my obit was the Blog of Death. Seriously. I used it not for ideas, but for sentence structures and modeling. Use your Sentence Models that we did on Tuesday for help and inspiration!

For example, here is the first sentence of Demetius Newton’s obituary:

Rep. Demetrius C. Newton dedicated his life to improving the human condition, first as a civil rights attorney and later as a politician and public servant.

It’s a great sentence, but obviously, I’m not a civil rights attorney, politician, or a public servant. But it’s a great sentence.

So what I would do is this: I’d take out the specific information and leave blanks.

_____ dedicated her life to improving ____________, first as a ________ and later as a __________.

Now that it’s not specific, I can add in my own information.

Vanessa Riley dedicated her life to educating other, first as a teacher and later as the director of the at-risk high school that she founded.

If you look in BB, you can see the rubric that will be used to grade the obituary. You need to have a minimum of 500 words.

1/29/2015 – B

Today, we just worked on our Obituary in class. It was pretty much a shut up and work day.

It will be due tomorrow, and we’ll have a little time to work on it in class, and we’ll be doing a foldable with it as well.

Remember – if you get stuck, use the examples in the Blog of Death and the student examples in BB. You don’t have to live a crazy life in order to carpe diem – just think about the legacy that you want to leave.

Oh, and just in case you think obituaries have to to be serious in tone, here is the SELF-PENNED obit of a man who had FUN writing his obituary.

 

1/28/2015 – B

Even though Horace warns us not to, we are going to look at our long term goals today. In doing so, we can identify the short term goals we need in order to reach the BIG goals. Capiche?

There is a link in BB that will take you here:

FT1

So, you’ll start out here. All you need to do here is add your name and the title Future Timeline. and then hit start.

FT2

Here, you’ll add your first item. Click on the timeline to see this screen. All you need focus on are the label and the picture. Don’t worry about adding the short or the long description – this is just a pre-writing activity for ideas. You’ll do the writing about it during the Obituary, which we are starting today!

FT3

When you are done, it should look something like this, except yours will be real items. :)

FT4

If you have to quit BEFORE you are done, you’ll hit SAVE at the top and save it as a RWT file. This is a rough draft. You can’t turn this in.FT5

When you are done, you’ll hit finish and see this screen. Then, you’ll hit SAVE FINAL.

FT6

Save this as a PDF and turn this bad boy in.

The Big Grade: our first major writing grade!

Today, we started out by talking about obituaries in general. They are the written notices of death that usually include a brief biography of the person. Then we read the poem The Dash by Linda Ellis and talked about that poem supports this quote from the Blog of Death:

Some people view obituaries as morbid stories, but in truth only one line of an obit deals with death. The rest of the story focuses on the amazing lives people lead.

We are going to write our OWN obituary in class. You need to focus on CARPE DIEM – how did you make your life extraordinary? You will need to be at least 75 years old (or older) – it’s hard to carpe diem a life when it’s short. Think about the Bucket List pre-writing and the Bucket List that we did this week – use those to find your focus. Is it family? Is it being successful? Is it helping other people? Use that focus to help you figure out details and events to your life.

Under Carpe Diem: Obituary, you can find instructions and examples, one of which being my own. Yes, I do every assignment that I ask you to do. The reason that I do this is so that I can share things that helped me when I did the assignment. The thing that helped ME the most when I wrote my obit was the Blog of Death. Seriously. I used it not for ideas, but for sentence structures and modeling. Use your Sentence Models that we did on Tuesday for help and inspiration!

For example, here is the first sentence of Demetius Newton’s obituary:

Rep. Demetrius C. Newton dedicated his life to improving the human condition, first as a civil rights attorney and later as a politician and public servant.

It’s a great sentence, but obviously, I’m not a civil rights attorney, politician, or a public servant. But it’s a great sentence.

So what I would do is this: I’d take out the specific information and leave blanks.

_____ dedicated her life to improving ____________, first as a ________ and later as a __________.

Now that it’s not specific, I can add in my own information.

Vanessa Riley dedicated her life to educating other, first as a teacher and later as the director of the at-risk high school that she founded.

If you look in BB, you can see the rubric that will be used to grade the obituary. You need to have a minimum of 500 words.

11/4/2014

If you are registered voter, make sure you get out and vote!

Today, we just worked on our Obituary in class. It was pretty much a shut up and work day.

It will be due tomorrow, but we won’t have any time to work on it in class tomorrow, since we’ll be doing the collage during class.

Remember – if you get stuck, use the examples in the Blog of Death and the student examples in BB. You don’t have to live a crazy life in order to carpe diem – just think about the legacy that you want to leave.

11/3/14

Some of you get an easy start this morning because you scrambled Friday to get your Future Timeline done. Everyone else started with this this morning!

There is a link in BB that will take you here:

FT1

So, you’ll start out here. All you need to do here is add your name and the title Future Timeline. and then hit start.

FT2

Here, you’ll add your first item. Click on the timeline to see this screen. All you need focus on are the label and the picture. Don’t worry about adding the short or the long description – this is just a pre-writing activity for ideas. You’ll do the writing about it during the Obituary, which we are starting today!

FT3

When you are done, it should look something like this, except yours will be real items. :)

FT4

If you have to quit BEFORE you are done, you’ll hit SAVE at the top and save it as a RWT file. This is a rough draft. You can’t turn this in.FT5

When you are done, you’ll hit finish and see this screen. Then, you’ll hit SAVE FINAL.

FT6

Save this as a PDF and turn this bad boy in.

The Big Grade: our first major writing grade!

Today, we started out by talking about obituaries in general. They are the written notices of death that usually include a brief biography of the person. Then we read the poem The Dash by Linda Ellis and talked about that poem supports this quote from the Blog of Death:

Some people view obituaries as morbid stories, but in truth only one line of an obit deals with death. The rest of the story focuses on the amazing lives people lead.

We are going to write our OWN obituary in class. You need to focus on CARPE DIEM – how did you make your life extraordinary? You will need to be at least 75 years old (or older) – it’s hard to carpe diem a life when it’s short. Think about the Bucket List pre-writing and the Bucket List that we did this week – use those to find your focus. Is it family? Is it being successful? Is it helping other people? Use that focus to help you figure out details and events to your life.

Under Carpe Diem: Obituary, you can find instructions and examples, one of which being my own. Yes, I do every assignment that I ask you to do. The reason that I do this is so that I can share things that helped me when I did the assignment. The thing that helped ME the most when I wrote my obit was the Blog of Death. Seriously. I used it not for ideas, but for sentence structures and modeling. Use your Sentence Models that we did on Friday for help and inspiration!

For example, here is the first sentence of Demetius Newton’s obituary:

Rep. Demetrius C. Newton dedicated his life to improving the human condition, first as a civil rights attorney and later as a politician and public servant.

It’s a great sentence, but obviously, I’m not a civil rights attorney, politician, or a public servant. But it’s a great sentence.

So what I would do is this: I’d take out the specific information and leave blanks.

_____ dedicated her life to improving ____________, first as a ________ and later as a __________.

Now that it’s not specific, I can add in my own information.

Vanessa Riley dedicated her life to educating other, first as a teacher and later as the director of the at-risk high school that she founded.

If you look in BB, you can see the rubric that will be used to grade the obituary. You need to have a minimum of 500 words.

4/8/2014

Pretty easy day today. We are just finishing up the Obituary and doing the Obituary Timeline.

When doing the Tagexdo, make sure that you follow these instructions word for word, otherwise it you won’t be able to see the text. Also, I don’t want JUST the image – I want the FOLDABLE.

First, go to Tagxedo and click create.

diorama1Before you do anything else, click Fonts.

Diorama Step 2From Fonts, Click USE LOCAL FONTS.

Diorama Step 3It should look something like this if you have done it correctly:

Diorama Step 4Exit out by hitting the X in the top right hand corner. You are now ready to add text.

Add text by hitting LOAD and then copying and pasting your ENTIRE obituary in the “Enter Text” location.

Diorama Step 5It will look really short. As long as you copied/pasted your entire text, it will be there. It’s just spread out horizontally. Make sure when you are done that you hit SUBMIT.

Diorama Step 6COLOR: This changes colors in your palette. If you don’t want all BLUES, then you’ll need to click on THEME.

THEME: This changes the theme of your colors. If you want, you can even create your own theme.

FONT: You can respin your fonts to find fonts that you like.

ORIENTATION and LAYOUT: This changes how the words appear on your word cloud.

ALL: This randomized all of those options.

SHAPE: This is where you can change the shape.

So this is what I made mine to look like:

Riley

Save as a 16 MP.

Then, download the Diorama template in the Obituary folder. Put your picture in the top section, and then answer the three questions in the bottom section. Make sure your name is on it, and make it pretty.

I will print these in color for you. :)

This is how you cute and fold:

20140408_091001[1]

4/7/2014

Gradespeed was down for the entire weekend, so while there is a grade in the gradebook, it isn’t necessarily updated and accurate. I’m hoping to fix that by the end of today.

Not everybody finished the Future Timeline last Friday, so if you haven’t gotten that done yet, finish that first. That is the prewriting activity for the major writing assignment that we are starting today and it will hopefully make writing easier.

Today, we started out by talking about obituaries in general. They are the written notices of death that usually include a brief biography of the person. Then we read the poem The Dash by Linda Ellis and talked about that poem supports this quote from the Blog of Death:

Some people view obituaries as morbid stories, but in truth only one line of an obit deals with death. The rest of the story focuses on the amazing lives people lead.

We are going to write our OWN obituary in class. You need to focus on CARPE DIEM – how did you make your life extraordinary? You will need to be at least 75 years old (or older) – it’s hard to carpe diem a life when it’s short. Think about the Bucket List pre-writing and the Bucket List that we did this week – use those to find your focus. Is it family? Is it being successful? Is it helping other people? Use that focus to help you figure out details and events to your life.

Under Carpe Diem: Obituary, you can find instructions and examples, one of which being my own. Yes, I do every assignment that I ask you to do. The reason that I do this is so that I can share things that helped me when I did the assignment. The thing that helped ME the most when I wrote my obit was the Blog of Death. Seriously. I used it not for ideas, but for sentence structures and modeling.

For example, here is the first sentence of Demetius Newton’s obituary:

Rep. Demetrius C. Newton dedicated his life to improving the human condition, first as a civil rights attorney and later as a politician and public servant.

It’s a great sentence, but obviously, I’m not a civil rights attorney, politician, or a public servant. But it’s a great sentence.

So what I would do is this: I’d take out the specific information and leave blanks.

_____ dedicated her life to improving ____________, first as a ________ and later as a __________.

Now that it’s not specific, I can add in my own information.

Vanessa Riley dedicated her life to educating other, first as a teacher and later as the director of the at-risk high school that she founded.

If you look in BB, you can see the rubric that will be used to grade the obituary. You need to have a minimum of 500 words.

11/6/2013

As of 1:29 today, all grades are accurate and updated. If you are missing something, turn it in. If there is a MISTAKE, explain it on a post-it note and leave it in the Parking Lot. You must submit these things in writing to me.

As we near the end of our Carpe Diem unit, we are going to watch Dead Poet’s Society. This movie will last today and tomorrow, so make sure you use your time wisely. If you are working on assignments, make sure that you read the summary from Wikipedia because there will be final exam questions over this movie.

The “Timed” test and the Obituary will both be due tomorrow. That means if you turn either of these things in Friday, there will be points deducted from your score (whatever you score out of 150 points). Remember, that’s going to be -5 points each day late. So if you earn 130 points and turn the paper in 2 days late, that will be -10 points for a final grade of 120 points. Easy? Easy.

Your grades should be updated and accurate in BB after today. While you guys are working (and the movie is playing), I am transferring grades from BB to Gradespeed since my computer does not work at home. IT is working on the issue, so I hope it will be resolved soon. 🙂