BINDER  CORE:                 4/29/2013

CONTINUED MEETINGS… [repeat]

Many waited until too late, but conversations are flowing. Please do not wait too long to address problems or discrepancies in student grades. If your child(ren) are telling you one thing, but EdBox is saying something else…then please contact me sooner than later. I continue to meet with many frustrated parents and students. I share the frustration. I am also hearing from many please parents and students as well. It is nice to have a balance. A little yin with a bit of yang.

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READING DISCUSSION #6

Students will be reading and working on the second assignment of the fourth quarter’s discussions this week. The list of chapters or pages to read and each person’s assignment is listed on the bookmarks that were handed to each student. The assignments for the fourth quarter and the bookmarks are available on the “Reading” page of my website.

I recommend keeping the bookmark and assignment with the novels the students are reading. Students should work on the assignment as they read, not try and cull meaningful quotes or descriptions after reading the entire section. The only exception might be the summarizer, but even then the student could be summarizing each chapter into a sentence as s/he goes. Yes, reality says that most students will not do that. It would, however, make their lives a lot easier.

Discussion #6 assignments are due at the beginning of class on Thursday (5/2) and the discussion is Friday (5/3). Students will complete the “post discussion” portion of the assignment after the discussion and submit it to the correct (AM or PM) reading tray.

The assignments, like all good things, have changed slightly. All students are being asked to create two generic and two specific discussion questions as well as listing and evaluating two quotes. Other portions of the assignment ask students to describe characters, the setting, and the plot. As always, directions should clearly delineate the expectations and the point values. Questions should be asked earlier, rather than later.

LITERARY SCRAPBOOK [repeat]

The culminating activity for the fourth quarter discussion novel is a literary for a significant character in the novel. For the chosen character, students will be creating a scrapbook—a visual and written memento illustrating several aspects of the character’s life within the novel.

As students read the novel, create a scrapbook that represents a main character. This is an opportunity to use creativity—add art, poetry, music to demonstrate your “reading” of the book. Students will be given a minimum of thirty minutes a week to work on the scrapbook. Students are provided a minimum of seven work sessions before the project is due. The scrapbook is due at the beginning of class on Friday, June 7. You will make a brief presentation of your scrapbook to the class.

Students have been given a handout delineating the requirements and providing a list of suggestions. I continue to provide hints, clarify directions, and provide solutions that the students should be writing down on the handout. If you see no notes on the handout, then the student is not doing his/her job. Questions, alternatives, and variances should be discussed sooner than later for the project.

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WRITING

CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE

Originally created for ten to fourteen year-olds, the books are written in the second person. The protagonist—that is, the reader—takes on a role relevant to the adventure; for example, private investigator, mountain climber, race car driver, doctor, spy, etc. Stories are generally gender and race neutral, though in some cases, particularly in illustrations, a white male bias is evident. In some stories, the protagonist is implied to be a child, whereas in other stories, he/she is presumably a young adult.

The stories are formatted so that, after a couple of pages of reading, the protagonist faces two or three options, each of which leads to more options, and then to one of many endings. The number of endings is not set, and varies from as many as 40 in the early titles, to as few as 12 in later adventures. Likewise, there is no clear pattern among the various titles regarding the number of pages per ending, the ratio of "good" to "bad" endings, or the reader's progression backwards and forwards through the pages of the book. This allows for a realistic sense of unpredictability, and leads to the possibility of repeat readings, which is one of the distinguishing features of the books.

Choose Your Own Adventure originated as a series of children's gamebooks where each story is written from a second-person point of view, with the reader assuming the role of the protagonist and making choices that determine the main character's actions and the plot's outcome. The series was based on a concept created by Edward Packard. Choose Your Own Adventure, as published by Bantam Books, was one of the most popular children's series during the 1980s and 1990s, selling more than 250 million copies between 1979 and 1998. When Bantam, now owned by Random House, allowed the Choose Your Own Adventure trademark to lapse, the series was relaunched by Chooseco, which now owns the CYOA trademark.

As the series progressed, both Packard and Montgomery experimented with the gamebook format, sometimes introducing unexpected twists such as endless page loops or trick endings. Examples include the "paradise planet" ending in Inside UFO 54-40, which can only be reached by cheating, and the potentially endless storyline of Race Forever.

Students will be working individually, or with a partner, to create a Choose Your Own Adventure story. We will be reading a few examples of spectacularlly awful CYOA stories and spend a little time discussing familiar stories. The purpose of discussing familiar stories is to evaluate alternative choices the character or characters could have made. This introduces the concept of the “chooosing”.

The overall project is not due until Tuesday, June 10, but there are a lot of little steps along the way. Good luck and try to keep up. Would you like to walk [turn to page 5], bicycle [turn to page 18], or use the pedestrian escalator [turn to page 73]?

VOCABULARY #14 We continue our regularly scheduled

vocabulary program. Words and work time commence at the beginning of the week (Monday and Tuesday 4/29-30) and the assignment is due at the end of the week (Friday 5/3).

Again, we continue to struggle with the same issues. Many regular vocabulary students are using part, parts, or all of the definition to provide context for the vocabulary words. Many Word Within the Word students are still not rereading the example sentences with the definition they created to see if their definition “fits and makes sense” in the example sentence During the fourth quarter I will simply hand back the entire assignment for revision—having marked only the first instance of not following the directions.

I did, however, offer an incentive for completing assignments on time and to the best of a student’s ability. Students will earn a percentage off of the final for each completed vocabulary assignment—as long as it is on time and to the best of the student’s ability. If I have to hand an assignment back to be completed, then it is not on time. Sorry.

The quiz is next Thursday (5/9). Only a quiz and a final remain.

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HISTORY CURRENT EVENT #14

We start current event #14 this week and the news item must come from Oceania. We have but one more world region left to study—Europe.

Students are still not coming to class prepared and rehearsed in what they will be presenting. The reading time I provide the daily show groups should be used for practicing transitions, “commercials”, special segments, etc. The twenty minutes should be used effectively and with a purpose. That is still not happening.

In an effort to adapt and make things better, I altered the format of the presentations in order to help students. The assignment is roughly the same, but the presentation is from the article. Students should select meaningful and purposeful sentences from the article that provide the necessary information we (the audience) need to understand the article. Students will be reading straight from the selected article text, rather than from the written summary. It is essentially what news reporters do. Students are still required, however, to complete a summary in their own words (the who, when, where, what, map, and other information).

Presentations are all week; from Monday through Friday (4/29-5/3). Make-up and missing presentations will be next Monday (5/6). We will review the most interesting and significant items on Tuesday (5/7). The class will also review and learn the map of Oceania on Wednesday and Thursday (5/8-9). Maps have been provided and are available online via my “Current Events” website.ß

RENAISSANCE & REFORMATION [partial repeat]

The Renaissance was a period in European history marked by a cultural flowering. Numerous conditions combined to spark the Renaissance, and this period in history was marked by huge changes for people living in Europe. Historians continue to unravel the history of the Renaissance centuries later, and many people appreciate the distinctive arts, intellectual achievements, and scientific advances which marked the Renaissance. The term is also used generically to talk about a sudden explosion in the arts and culture.

Culturally, Europe made so many significant advances during the Renaissance that it would be impossible to describe them in this brief newsletter entry. The advent of printing brought about a much greater breadth of knowledge for citizens, while Europeans began to value education and vigorous scientific training. Numerous scientists, artists, philosophers, poets, and writers flourished during the Renaissance, including William Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Niccolo Machiavelli, Sandro Botticelli, Erasmus, Martin Luther, Copernicus,Galileo, and Thomas More, among many others.

We continue our last unit in history with an exploration of the roots and beginnings of the Renaissance. We will be taking notes together for the first part of the chapter, and then students will attempt to tackle the demon of note-taking on their own. A quiz on chapter 29 will be a part of the individual portion of next Friday’s (5/10) quiz.

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