Marking Period 4

Summer is almost upon us, students! Not yet though!

To Kill a Mockingbird online text

TKAMB audio book

TKAMB Abridged

To Kill A Mockingbird Guided Notes

The Nose Short Story


Week 2 folder (Writing 1, Review guidelines, Vocab 1: Arbitrate, Amiable, Expound)

Week 3 Folder (Writing 2, TKAM Historical Context PPT, Vocab 2: Unfathomable, Quell, Vehemently)

Week 4 Folder (Writing 3: Character Chart, Vocab 3: Abide, Extract, Oblivious)

Week 5 Folder (Writing 4, Vocab 4: Ominous, Garish, Reckon)

Week 6 Folder (Writing 5: Benchmark Essay, Vocab 4: Ominous, Garish, Reckon)

Week 7 Folder (Vocab 5: Turbulent, Convene, Elucidate - Vocab 6: Formidable, Temerity, Idealist)

Week 8 Folder ( Vocab 7: Heathen, Apprehension, Elude - Vocab 8:  Reprimand, Astound, Qualm)

Avengers: Ultron -Technology Article

Welcome Back Everybody

I'll make this very quick and simple, since there is a sense of urgency to keep track of. We seem to be having problems with getting everyone subscribed to REMIND101, so I'll be posting links on this page as a way to give everyone access to the materials we use in class.
Marking Period 3: 

ANTHEM by Ayn Rand online text

ANTHEM audiobook Download from Dropbox

Anthem audiobook Stream from Soundcloud

Youtube The Village film

Qatar restaurant article

March Madness article

Harrison Bergeron

Allegory of the Cave

Writer's Checklist for Essays

Schedule Request Survey

Vocabulary Builder

 Julius Caesar Study Guide

Julius Caesar NO FEAR SHAKESPEAR

PARCC Online Simulation 

Paper-Based PARCC practice test

Answer Key

Valkyre Film Assignment and movie file (Writing Center 1) 

Week 1 Folder [MLK "Letter from Birmingham Jail" Reading Center 1]

Week 2 Folder [Reading Center 1, Writing Center 1, Vocab Center 1: Acquaint & Prodigious]

Week 3 Folder [Vocab 2: Superstition & Reverence]

Week 4 Folder [Reading 2: PARCC Practice Test, Writing 2: PARCC Practice prompt]

Week 7 Folder [Vocab 3:Apparition & Mourning, Writing 3: Caesar Funeral Rhetoric]

I will continuously update this page for now until we resolve REMIND101 issues

Intelligent Consumer: Bias

Two starts to today's lesson. The first would entail these clips:

It dawns on me that after a while, kids might not catch a William Hung reference, so feel free to just enjoy this video one without my commentary.


The question to consider is whether or not that went exactly as you thought it would? Something about Hung's appearance and behavior suggested that Simon Cowell would not be enjoying what would happen next. It is your judgement of Hung that forms the opinion before you hear him sing, which only confirms what you already decided upon in your mind. The next video obviously plays on that expectation.


A Susan Boyle reference might be closer to your memory to get the gist of what we're getting at. You can't possibly judge a book by it's cover. Unfortunately, we do -which is why we feel guilty when we're then blown away by talent. We applied the same level of judgement as we did on William Hung, and look like jerks in the process. This is our bias.

If you need an actual definition, you'd find bias as a, "prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair."

Because of our tendency to judge before actually taking the time to be considerate and listen, shows like The Voice have become a response. Case in point:


Now the idea behind The Voice is to remove all bias from the judge's path to hearing what essentially is the only important aspect of a singer -their voice. Duh. However, no one is shocked by the idea of a nun with a talented voice. Churches have songs too. The shock in this case is our bias against nuns -we don't think they're capable of being current and trendy. We don't think nuns listen to the radio. It's much like the same logic students apply towards their teachers when they make some form of cultural reference. Apparently you all think we plug into a wall and shut down at the end of the school day. We have lives too, kids. Apparently, so do nuns. Lesson learned.

We'll be progressing further with our unit on Native American writers, by covering some more recent work concerning the Native American community today. Bias is now a tool we will use to assess the writing we encounter. Now that we realize we're not all exempt from having a bias, it's an important element to identify in writing, and it relies heavily on our ability to distinguish fact from opinion.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/us/wind-river-indian-reservation-where-brutality-is-banal.html?_r=0

As we cover the NY Times article, "Brutal Crimes Grip an Indian Reservation", consider the author's bias. If we can understand how the author might feel about the subject, we can then look at their motivation for writing. Questions to ask include:

How does what I'm reading tell me how the author thinks?
Why does it matter what the author is thinking?
Inversely, how might the author's opinionated thoughts affect their writing?
If I decide to side with the author's opinion, what could the author gain from my approval?

Everyone has an agenda (or motivation) behind their actions, we've established that in this class. By understanding what bias is and learning how to catch it, we can become more aware of how other's might want to try and push that agenda on you.

Identifying Main Ideas and Summarizing

By now we all know what a #Hashtag is, right? If you don't know what a hashtag is, then you live under a rock, and more importantly: How are you getting internet service from under a rock?

As we get into reviewing concepts behind summarizing, let's take a look at how I think hashtags are used best on Twitter: #FirstWorldProblems is the example we'll look at.

#FirstWorldProblems

#FirstWorldProblems

#firstworldproblems

In this instance, the idea behind the hashtag is to summarize the sentence preceding it in the tweet. Regardless of what the tragedy is that this well-to-do person is dealing with, it can simply be summed up in three quick words. Similarly, we will be learning various ways to wrap up whole entire articles and readings into summaries a fraction of their size. In a way, you've already done this when we discussed identifying themes, but we'd be getting more specific with deciding what details are important and which are not, and what is relevant at the end of the day. What a day, am I right?!

I'll leave you with this playlist of Jimmy Fallon's Hashtag game from the Tonight Show. He's got countless examples for how summary and main idea are used for FUN!

We'll be using a couple of works from Native American writers to help practice in class (also FUN!)

[9/23]

I just wanted to add a few more things that we'll go over to build on our review of Summarizing and Identifying Main Ideas:

When summarizing longer passages, including book chapters and entire articles, you can find yourself writing way more or less than you need to. This is where we as a reader need to get picky with what we're reading. 

KEEP, REMOVE, SUBSTITUTE

You don't need to remember this, because most of us already internalize these three steps when building our summaries for a passage. To spell it out, you're basically just figuring what information is important enough to KEEP in your short summary, REMOVE any details that are extra, and SUBSTITUTE those pieces information you're keeping with your own words. In other words, paraphrase.

As I mentioned, this is something we are already doing when we read -as it's probably been taught to you and repeated every year. Through a conscious effort to acknowledge what steps we take when doing this, however, we can remind ourselves of why we do it in the first place and how to improve on this skill.

Costa's Levels of Questioning

Now that we're all adults here, or like to believe we are, it's important that we start thinking like one. Smart ones. Not like adults that behave like children and play Call of Duty and eat Takis all day.


Very often, we find ourselves limiting our thinking to basic questions. What did you say? What is this? Where does this go?

If you think of questioning as a form of growing up, think of the kinds of questions you asked as a toddler:  "What is _______?" You may have been very eager to know the names of everything you could point to.

When you grew into your later stages, you may have been extremely interested in understanding the mechanics of the wide wonderful world around you and asked "Why does ______ happen?"

Unfortunately, for many of us, we remained at that level of questioning in our lives, shifting from asking "Why?" to understanding the world towards a "Why?" simply to challenge authority and get out of cleaning our rooms.

You all probably know by this point that I love to ask questions. Ask away. Challenging information and those around you through questioning is at the very foundation of change. But before we get to that stage of life-changing questioning, we need to dial it back to the kinds of questions we'd ask in the classroom.

Costa's levels of questioning help us to place the questions we ask on a scale from lower to higher thinking -the higher you go, of course, the harder your have work that brain. Honestly though, in breaking down these levels, you'll find that you don't even have to break a sweat to begin to ask the more interesting kinds of questions:

Level 1 (the lowest level) requires one to gather information. 
Level 2 (the middle level) requires one to process the information. 
Level 3 (the highest level) requires one to apply the information. 

To better understand the content being presented in their core subject areas, it is essential for students to learn to think critically and to ask higher levels of questions. By asking higher levels of questions, students deepen their knowledge and create connections to the material being presented.

I used this example in class: The Story of How Mr. Rodriguez Ruined his iPhone
By Brian Rodriguez

During school testing, teachers that are not asked to proctor exams are asked to sit in the hallway. They are to sit there in silence and nothing else is to be done. Mr. Rodriguez did not feel like complying with said instructions.

"Screw that," Mr. Rodriguez decided, "I'm playing blackjack!"

And so Mr. Rodriguez continued to sit in the hallway, entertaining himself by practicing how to count cards whilst playing on a blackjack app. Suddenly, he heard footsteps from around the corner, and hid his iPhone on his lap, under his hand. As the footsteps reached the corner, he saw that it was an administrator that was making a round of all of the classrooms testing. Mr. Rodriguez crossed his legs to further obscure the device from sight, and smiled the biggest smile he could smile. When the administrator was out of sight, Mr. Rodriguez let his guard down in relief and uncrossed his legs to return to playing. Upon moving his right leg, however, the iPhone became unstable on his left and fell to the ground.

To Mr. Rodriguez's dismay, upon picking his dropped iPhone from the ground, he noticed that the screen had suddenly turned black and white. 

"What is going with my phone?" Mr. Rodriguez asked inquisitively, as he searched the phone for any damage. There was no visible damage but the screen would not return to normal.

He could still see images clearly, but all of the color had been sucked out of the phone, as if it were something out of Pleasantville. 

"Uh oh!", exclaimed Mr. Rodriguez.

"Uh-oh is right!", responded the administrator, whom had returned and was now looming over Mr. Rodriguez's shoulder.

The End

In this example, watch how the three levels of questioning occur on a natural level:

Level 1: What is wrong with my screen? (The colors are gone)

Level 2: Why would I be able to see images so clearly, but be missing all of the color? (The cable that connects to the screen must be loosened or damaged from within the phone.)

Level 3: Now that I have diagnosed my phone, what option is most cost efficient for fixing my phone (Throw your phone away in the trash and just get a new one, Mr. Rodriguez. You're like two generations of iPhones behind. Get with the times, man.)

Hopefully my example helps to break down the levels of Costa's Questioning more easily for you guys. If not, then at least just understand the struggles I have to deal with on a daily basis with clumsy hands, expensive gadgets, and pressure from administrators.

The common misconception is that Level One questions are to be avoided in favor of sticking to Level Two and Three questions -this couldn't be further from the truth. Level One questions are often necessary to establish the group’s basic understanding of facts or situations. In order to move up towards higher thinking, we often need to make sure that we're on the same page with the basic facts and understandings. You have to know what you're going to be playing with, kids.

Obviously, questioning should not remain in Level One, but should advance to both Level Two and Level Three -to allow for further digestion and processing of the information. In my opinion, Level Three is when you're able to enjoy the information by stretching it and molding it into new questions and applying them to new situations.

We'll find time to play with developing our own questions, as it will help us in our ability to identify these questions when working on tests, discussions, or other assessments.

I personally like to play a modified version of Scattergories:

http://www.hasbro.com/games/swf/scattergories_demo3.swf

I make categories relevant to the reading (i.e. Juana) and assign what level to stick to, in place of assigning a letter to that round. Those who can ultimately stay within the level of questioning assigned, and come up with unique questions, win more points than those who have either submitted a question from the wrong level, or have created too simple of a question.

These levels, like much of the material we've been covering these first couple of weeks, will remain an important aspect of our class, so be sure to be familiar with them.

Race Politics

Another theme that will continue to play out over the course of The Pearl pertains to race relations amongst the indigenous population of this Mexican town and the European colonists that have brought their way of life to this same place. We will address the relationship and conflicts that have arisen between Native Americans and European Settlers over the course of history at a later date, but for now I'd like to bring the idea of racial conflict closer to home by discussing the current climate in our country between White and Black communities. We will be bringing in two recent songs and analyzing their lyrics in our fishbowl discussions and culminate with a review of the most recent article pertaining to police brutality.

http://mslaurynhill.com/post/95329923112/black-rage-sketch

Here is the link to the Vice article on police brutality:

http://www.vice.com/read/is-obedience-the-only-way-to-avoid-police-brutality-915

I will refrain from going too much into discussing the topic here, because I'd like the fishbowl discussion in class to be driven strictly by your opinions, but here are the questions I will present to the group to get the ball rolling:

- In what ways are the songs relevant to the topic of racial politics?
- Which song do you find more effective at communicating it’s message?
- What is the role of police within the community?
- Is obedience the only way to avoid police brutality?

Lastly, I'd like for you to connect some of what will be explored concerning conflict between races, and elements of abuse of power to what we will be dealing with as we continue with Kino's struggles in The Pearl.

Themes

Virtually every form of media comprises of some sort of message being delivered. When media is used for storytelling purposes, that message becomes a theme. Themes are essentially topics or subjects that can be communicated as inherently important and worth the audience's attention. They can be as simple as figuring out that the theme explored in Lil Jon's "Turn Down for What" is to party.

Themes can range from generic topics, such as Love, Family, or War -or they can grow increasingly specific ("Differences in abilities don’t have to be limiting" is a great example of a very focused theme).  Below you'll find a website that lists some common themes found in storytelling and literature:

http://homeworktips.about.com/od/writingabookreport/a/themelist.htm

Their description goes further by describing ways in which themes present themselves -either through a common pattern or motif reoccurring throughout the story, or as a result of a build up of events culminating with the theme. Some are easy to identify almost immediately, others take time to sink in and come to full realization.

Either way, themes are used because they are the common denominator of our lives. We deal with what are essentially themes everyday, broad or specific. It's essential to use themes in a work because they provide a connection with the reader. To say a theme in a work, for example, is Family would immediately resonate with the audience's personal knowledge of families.

As you watch these trailers, try to figure out what themes are prevalent:




Now because themes go back as far as oral history and storytelling, we're bound to come across the same themes throughout various works.

Case in point:

When the movie Avatar was releasing in theaters, everyone was talking about it. This was James Cameron's latest major work since Titanic, and was to be the first major motion picture using using groundbreaking new 3D technology - expectations were high.



As was expected, the results were mixed, but fell short of where most people thought. Primarily, the biggest criticism was the value -with IMAX 3D tickets at 20$ per adult, there were complaints about whether it was worth the price to essentially watch the same movie for the 3rd time. When that argument was thrown around, these were usually the movies they were referring to:



The Last of the Mohicans synopsis: "As the English and French soldiers battle for control of the North American colonies in the 18th century, the settlers and native Americans are forced to take sides. Cora and her sister Alice unwittingly walk into trouble but are saved by Hawkeye, an orphaned settler adopted by the last of the Mohicans."



Pocahontas synopsis: "An English soldier and the daughter of an Algonquin chief share a romance when English colonists invade seventeenth-century Virginia."

When you return to looking at Avatar, you see the same basic trio of themes explored almost to the T,

-Love
-War
-Colonialism

Take a look:

Avatar synopsis: "In the future, Jake, a paraplegic war veteran, is brought to another planet, Pandora, which is inhabited by the Na'vi, a humanoid race with their own language and culture. In exchange for the spinal surgery that will fix his legs, Jake gathers intel for the cooperating military unit spearheaded by gung-ho Colonel Quaritch, while simultaneously attempting to infiltrate the Na'vi people with the use of an "avatar" identity. While Jake begins to bond with the native tribe and quickly falls in love with the beautiful alien Neytiri, the restless Colonel moves forward with his ruthless extermination tactics, forcing the soldier to take a stand - and fight back in an epic battle for the fate of Pandora."


We look at these three very similar works and we ask ourselves: Why are these themes so popular that the basic story is recycled over and over to push these themes forward?

Or, maybe you don't ask yourself that. Either way, it's a message that begs for your attention.

[Magical segway into introduction of course novel] (Lesson from 09/16)

You can find countless examples of stories and theme collections being recycled, much for the same intent of pushing a message that begs to be heard by the audience. One such concerns the collection of the following themes:

- Fortune
- Corruption of morality
- Family

See if you can spot how these themes become prevalent to the story in these works



And while there is no official trailer for The Pearl by John Steinbeck, we can resort to it's synopsis:

"Like his father and grandfather before him, Kino is a poor diver, gathering pearls from the gulf beds that once brought great wealth to the Kings of Spain and now provide Kino, Juana, and their infant son with meager subsistence. Then, on a day like any other, Kino emerges from the sea with a pearl as large as a sea gull's egg, as "perfect as the moon." With the pearl comes hope, the promise of comfort and of security.... A story of classic simplicity, based on a Mexican folk tale, The Pearl explores the secrets of man's nature, the darkest depths of evil, and the luminous possibilities of love."

The idea of fortune, itself, goes back to a medieval concept of philosophy known as the Rota Fortunae, or as we've come to know it as:

This ancient way of seeing the world basically implies that we are all in constant motion on a revolving course of good and bad fortune. We have our good days and our bad days -there are even moments where we experience fits of lucky streaks or the opposite. Either way, this vertical wheel reminds us that what goes up, must come down. In literature, this element of rising and falling is commonly portrayed in a character's status over the course of the novel. Often times, we're introduced to a poor man who comes up big, or a superior individual who loses everything. We see this in our everyday lives as well:

There are of course more underlying themes that push forth throughout the course of reading The Pearl, and we'll address them soon enough. For now though, reflect on this theme of Fortune and Corruption. Is it possible to win big in life and still manage to maintain a sense of integrity?