Eng 9: Mahershala Ali, Songs of Myself & Stations

Eng 9: Mahershala Ali, Songs of Myself & Stations

Today we'll start a new routine for us: a video, reading, or listening about a current event or issue and a comprehension/critical creativity exercise to explore that understanding.

We're going to review sketchnotes quickly and then take ten minutes to sketchnote this video from the actor, Mahershala Ali, who won a Screen Actors Guild award yesterday for his performance in the film, Moonlight.

How might we capture the essence of what Ali is saying via a combination of word and image?  Take pics of your sketchnotes.  You'll be putting them up on your class blogs during our station work.  We'll have a ten minute or so discussion of his ideas.  

STATIONS. 

THREE Key Stations Today.

1.  Three Songs of Myself.  You'll have twenty minutes to complete this work described in this FlipGrid.  

2.  Blog Set Up.  I'll sit with this group and make sure everyone has their class blog set up and has figured out how to post content to their class blog.  I'll also help folks get links to their blogs going on the blog tracker.  The what?  Yup.  During that station.

3.  Roots 9.   The other stations are pretty intense.  This one will be a bit more mellow.  Roots 9 will simply be digging into the Roots 9 terms on Quizlet (check the links in the sidebar here) and then making sure you're also reviewing Roots 6-9 for the Quiz NEXT WEEK.

SHOW YOUR WORK

Blog. Finish the Songs of Myself work and get it posted on your blog; include your Potent Quotable of a lyric that relates to you.

Blog.  Sketchnotes of Mahershala Ali speech.

Eng 9: Mahershala Ali, Songs of Myself & Stations

Today we'll start a new routine for us: a video, reading, or listening about a current event or issue and a comprehension/critical creativity exercise to explore that understanding.

We're going to review sketchnotes quickly and then take ten minutes to sketchnote this video from the actor, Mahershala Ali, who won a Screen Actors Guild award yesterday for his performance in the film, Moonlight.

How might we capture the essence of what Ali is saying via a combination of word and image?  Take pics of your sketchnotes.  You'll be putting them up on your class blogs during our station work.  We'll have a ten minute or so discussion of his ideas.  

STATIONS. 

THREE Key Stations Today.

1.  Three Songs of Myself.  You'll have twenty minutes to complete this work described in this FlipGrid.  

2.  Blog Set Up.  I'll sit with this group and make sure everyone has their class blog set up and has figured out how to post content to their class blog.  I'll also help folks get links to their blogs going on the blog tracker.  The what?  Yup.  During that station.

3.  Roots 9.   The other stations are pretty intense.  This one will be a bit more mellow.  Roots 9 will simply be digging into the Roots 9 terms on Quizlet (check the links in the sidebar here) and then making sure you're also reviewing Roots 6-9 for the Quiz NEXT WEEK.

SHOW YOUR WORK

Blog. Finish the Songs of Myself work and get it posted on your blog.

Blog.  Sketchnotes of Mahershala Ali speech.

Senior Seminar: Who Am I? (at the Moment)

WHO AM I? (at the MOMENT)

Day ONE This week we're just getting started.  Since the whole semester is going to be about your individual heroic journey through high school, we're going to begin by taking a look at where you are at right now.

You'll complete a "Who Am I? (at the Moment)"  graphic organizer with sketchnotes to take a personal inventory.

Then represent those sketchnotes in LEGO bricks.

That's day one.

Day TWO, we establish the ways in which we will document our learning.

We'll set up folders on Google Drive.  Share those folders with me -- make sure I'm an editor -- and that's where you'll turn in work for the course.

Then we'll set up our class blogs on Blogger.  (You'll also be creating a personal branded blog as part of this course.  More on that later.)  This is another way for us to document and share our thinking and learning this semester.

Finally, we'll use FlipGrid for the first time.  This is a video tool used to conduct discussions, document learning, and interact with other people in the class.   We'll finish the class by embedding our 1st FlipGrid videos on our blogs.


Day THREE will be quite a bit of watching, listening and responding.  More on that come Friday

AP Lit: Hamlet Begins

This week we begin our work with Hamlet.  I'm currently trying out my iPad to type this so apologies for wonky formatting.  I bought a keyboard case for it but it is sorely lacking.

Monday we explored some of Shakespeare's thematic ideas that emerge in Hamlet: trust, knowledge, discomfort, awareness, observation, power, control. Of course these are just ideas and topics, not themes unto themselves -- what Hamlet forces us to consider, those will be the true themes of the play.

I didn't take any pics of our staring at one another, but that's a great deal of what we did.  And then  discussed how we felt, what we experienced; we also did an exercise in observation.

And just barely started the play.

Wednesday, we dig further into the play.  We will read a great deal of the text in class and do some close readings.

Friday, you will present your True Grit as poetry presentations and explore various productions of Hamlet.

Show Your Thinking.

Read: Hamlet Act I.  Due Friday.

Blog: Analytical and Design.  Potent Quotable.  Choose a line from the act I you believe captures the essential TONE of the play so far.  The attitude Shakespeare as author, creator, intent driven artist is bringing to the words of the play.  Playful? Pedantic? Satiric? Doleful?

Then take that one line and illustrate with either an original photograph of your own or an image from Unsplash.com.  Use fonts and your design skills to create a visual.  Post it along with a written or recorded explanation of your intentions behind your design.  Posting your intentions is necessary to meeting the standards for media and reading.

Blog:  Critical Creativity.  Color Palette.  Use ColourLovers.com to create a three to five color color palette for Hamlet Act I. Give each color a unique name that reveals your understanding of the characters thus far.  Explain your intentions to meet the reading standard.

Independent Book Project: design a solution to a problem posed by your free choice work and present that prototype next Tuesday.  Be certain to justify your prototype intentions based on the text evidence you uncover.  Empathize with your user, consider what truly meets the needs and how you know.  Present to class next Tuesday.

True Grit as Poetry.  Make the case that True Grit follows the structure, form, qualities of an epic, ballad, or sonnet.  Design a visually effective presentation to make your case.  Think about the aesthetic qualities of those poetic forms, consider the devices that best define them, consider tone, subject matter, associated with each.  This should be a challenging question to answers, case to make.

Flipgrid in Eng 9

English 9: This Week. One Goal. Take Your Work to the Next Level.

This week we start experimenting with FlipGrid.  Take a look



Following these experiments, each day will be 100% about this little sketchnote.

Make sure everything is your Google Drive English 9 IN folder.
Make sure you have named each document.
Make sure you submitted evidence.

Think about tools you can use to PROVE YOUR INTENTIONS with your Tiny House.
You could take us through a video walk through using YouTube.
You can mark up photos using Pages or Google Drawing or Preview.
You can create interactive images with ThingLink.

Lots of tools.

Also Roots 8 (6, 7, 8) on Thursday/Friday!

Eng 9: Presenting Tiny Houses & Stations in Transition

This week we continue sharing our Of Mice & Tiny Houses design challenges.  Remember to check out the rubric available here and to use the empathy map and intention map graphic organizers in your Google Drive English 9 OUT folders.

We will be using stations to help our transition from Of Mice & Men into our Marketing with Empathy unit that will result in us taking over WickedFocus.com from last year's classes.

Stations this week will include.

Jenga Your Roots.  Create Jenga constructs to represent Roots 7 terms.  Post images in your Google Drive folder.  Prepare for a quiz next week.

Frankenword.  Design new words using your Roots 6 & 7 terms.  Put them to work in sentences that relate to the bigger messages and themes from Of Mice & Men.

Theme.  Complete a Notice/Wish/Wonder over this video on Theme.

No Red Ink: Commonly Confused Words II.   Complete the diagnostic on No Red Ink and the practice, if you so choose, to prepare for a quiz next week.

Designing & Writing:  Several folks still need to complete their narrative writings and their tiny house designs.  There will be some time to do that at one of the stations.

Potent Quotables:  At the Potent Quotables station, you will be learning how to combine words from a text -- in this case Of Mice & Men -- and images from a source -- in this case, Unsplash.com -- to create a visual worth of sharing on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest and beyond.  That visual will speak to one of the THEMES evident in Of Mice & Men.  You will need to explain your thinking and intentions as this will end up being a reading assessment for the quarter.

Here are some examples from the first sessions of Potent Quotables.

SHOW YOUR WORK.

OF MICE AND TINY HOUSES.
All work due ASAP.
Documentation (any photos, videos, notes, graphic organizers, etc.) must be in your Google Drive Eng 9 IN folder.

NARRATIVE WRITING 2.  Tell a story about the lesson you learned from the Cardboard Challenge.  Use powerful imagery and meaningful details to deliver a well organized story.
Revisions and Drafts due ASAP.
Must be in your Google Drive Eng 9 IN folder.

ROOTS QUIZZES.
NO RED INK MUGS Quizzes.
Coming up next week.
Retakes require evidence of practice.