Tag Archives: the dash

4/4/2016

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We started today talking about Death and the Devil Surprising Two Maidens. If you weren’t here today, there is a drop box assignment for this in the Carpe Diem folder in Obituary.

Death and the Devil Surprising Two Women

We talked about how death generally isn’t considered evil – that it’s a natural part of life and doesn’t always have to be a negative thing.

Then, we read the poem The Dash by Linda Ellis and discussed what eulogies and obituaries are. We are going to eventually be writing our OWN obituaries later this week, so we are going to prepare for that by working on a timeline of our future milestones in life. So, contrary to what Horace told us to do, 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.

Then, we ended the day with talking about avocado moments with a buddy. If you weren’t here, send me an e-mail with the answers to these questions.

avocado reflection

11/3/14

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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.

4/7/2014

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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.

IV – 11/1/2012

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Riley started out by giving us time to finish the Blog of Death. Go to the Blog of Death and find the obituary of one person who is a great example of Carpe Diem. Copy the obit, and paste it in the discussion board (in the Obituary folder) entitled “Who Seized the Day?”. Make sure you write at least one sentence explaining why that person was a good example of carpe diem.

We then read The Dash and Riley explained that this is the point of writing our own obituary – don’t focus on the dates, focus on the dash!

You should be able to see the rubric in LMS if you click on the Drop Box.

After your obit is written, copy/paste it in either Wordle or Tagexdo to create an awesome word cloud.

This was the only day that we will work on this class – if you did not get this done today (or weren’t here), you will have to work on this on your own time.