Humanities 2BG: Oreo Challenge & Blogs

Today, you we set up our blogs on Blogger.

Blogging.

Blogging Rubric 2015.
You will be keeping a blog throughout the year on Blogger using your school Gmail account. I've embedded and linked the rubric for blogging here.

What content should you include?  Each week you can expect a creative challenge related to our current focus.  The other two-plus entries may come from day to day work you are doing for class, from creative expression, from general reflections.  Show your thinking.  Provide evidence of your knowing.  That's the goal.

After the first week, you should be looking to connect to at least one other thinker in the Humanities ranks, linking to an idea that inspires you to respond. There are several intentions to the blog:

• Demonstrate an understanding of the readings, viewings, and listenings from class.
• Connect and reflect upon one another's ideas.
• Reach beyond the walls of our classroom to share our thinking and benefit from other perspectives.
• Create a record of learning, illustrating your growth over the space of your year.

Design Challenge: HMW Oreo?

You had twenty to minutes to work with a partner, two partners, or solo, use any space on campus, any materials in the room, as you tackled the following design challenge: How might we advertise Humanities with an Oreo?

Post your results on your blog and I will post links and share out the greatness.  

Show the Learning.
Blog. 3+ Posts.
Creative Blog Post: Create a 5 Card Flickr Story Related to One of Articles/Videos from the Selection Mr. Brackett posted on Google Classroom.
Due. Friday, 9.18.15
Study.  Roots List #1
Quiz. Thursday, 9.24.15

AP Lit 3G: True Grit, Blogging & Synthesis Thinking Introduced

True Grit.

Today, we discussed Mattie Ross and how Portis develops her voice in the opening chapters of True Grit.  We identified key lines and discussed them at length.  As a result, we got a little bit behind on our in-class work with Literary 3x3s.  (I will likely leave instructions on what to do while I'm gone as I think you can a) handle it and b) can easily share with me record of your experimenting on Wednesday.) 

Blogging.

Blogging Rubric 2015.
You will be keeping a blog throughout the year on Blogger using your school Gmail account. I've embedded and linked the rubric for blogging here.

What content should you include?  Each week you can expect a creative challenge related to our current focus.  The other two-plus entries may come from day to day work you are doing for class, from creative expression, from general reflections.  After the first week, you should be looking to connect to at least one other thinker in the AP Lit ranks, linking to an idea that inspires you to respond. There are several intentions to the blog:

• Demonstrate an understanding of the readings, viewings, and listenings from class
• Connect and reflect upon one another's ideas
• Reach beyond the walls of our classroom to share our thinking and benefit from other perspectives
• Create a record of learning, illustrating your growth over the space of your senior year

Synthesis Essay.

Writing a synthesis is unlike writing an analytical essay.  Rather than trying to break apart a piece of literature and explain how it works, you instead are trying to connect the dots between multiple works to use as evidence of your thinking -- proving that the big idea assertion you make in your thesis, your greater understanding/observation/truth about the world is held up and evident beyond your opinion.


When working on  your synthesis essays, keep these structural and contextual ideas in mind.

Also Mr. Ryder's feedback shorthand...

Synthesis Essay Rubric 2015 

Show the Learning.

Read & Annotate.  True Grit to Page 113

Due. Tues. 9.22.15

Blog. 3+ Posts.

Creative Blog Post of the Week. Create a 5 Card Flickr in the Voice of Mattie Ross. How might you employ the same techniques as Portis to develop her voice in your work?

Due. Friday. 9.18.15
Design.  Working Draft.  Synthesis Essay #1
Due for Workshopping.  Tuesday, 9.22.15

If you have time . . . 
Turn your Literary 3x3s into Index Card Decks. 

Eng 9: Inspiration Shelves, Personal Symbols, Blogs and Vocab

Inspiration Shelf & Personal Symbols.

We'll start the day by looking at the Inspiration Shelf.  Your goal?  To figure me out.  You'll complete a Notice/Wish/Wonder tool for three different items, in an effort to answer these two questions:

Why might these items be on this shelf and what might they tell us about Mr. Ryder?

Then you'll repeat the same with the artifacts you brought from home.  We will look at each others' collections and try to determine what they tell us about that person and why those items were
included.

Then we'll take pictures of items that interested us most and post them to our blogs as our first blog posts.

Vocab: Roots 1.

We will start our very first work with vocabulary.  We'll be learning Greek and Latin roots this year; this will help you learn so many more words than just learning a list of vocab words from a story we read.

Blogger.

We will set up our blogs and I will explain your first creative blog prompt: 5 Card Flickr.

Show the Learning.

Blog. 3+ Posts.

Creative Blog Prompt.  5 Card Flickr & Problem Story.

Create a 5 Card Flickr that tells the story of a problem being solved.

Post your images and write out the story on your blog.

Due. Friday. Sept. 18.

Study.  Roots Quiz 1.

Due. Thursday, Sept 24.

AP Lit 4B: Literary 3x3s

We committed our Friday to becoming comfortable with Literary 3x3, exploring the power of distillation and remix.

Our work centered on Tracy K. Smith's "I Don't Miss It."

Showing the Learning.

Read. True Grit (1 to 44).

Due. Tuesday. 9.15.

Create.  Literary 3x3s.

Summer books.

True Grit

How to Read Lit Like a Professor Intro.

Set Up. Blog.

Pop Culture: Taking Care of Business.

Today we took care of the business side of things.

Guidelines & Expectations.

We looked at the Guidelines & Expectations for the class.

Blogger.

Then we set up our blogs on Blogger.

Pinterest.

And finally we got started on Pinterest.  We'll be using the #flight307pc hashtag when we curate content on Pinterest for the class.
Follow Flight307's board Flight307 Pop Culture on Pinterest.

Essential Questions.

Finally, I shared the four essential questions for this course.

• To what extent does pop culture influence society?
• To what extent does pop culture influence you?
• To what extent do you influence pop culture?
• To what extent does society influence pop culture?

Show the Learning.

Find an article, listening, or viewing that speaks to one of the four essential questions for this class.
Check out Flight307's Pop Culture Board on Pinterest for inspriation.

Humanities 2BG: 9/11 and Caine's Arcade

9.11.2001.

On Friday, we started class by listening to this StoryCorps story of a husband and father talking about losing his wife on 9/11.

Isaac Feliciano via StoryCorps

Mr. Brackett and I both shared our experiences on 9/11 and answered some clarifying questions, cleared up a couple of misconceptions.  It was quite a serious discussion and I was impressed with the seriousness and respect with which the class handled it.

Global Cardboard Challenge.

Then we allowed ourselves to breathe a little joy into the room again as we introduced the Imagination Foundation's Global Cardboard Challenge by watching Caine's Arcade from Nirvan Mullick.

We will hold our cardboard challenge on either October 8th or October 13th.  (We are still trying to figure that out.)  In either case, you will have two weeks in class to design a cardboard product that either . . .

a) Solves a Problem
b) Brings Others Joy
c) Demonstrates a Passion

The other Humanities class is doing this project and perhaps other classes as well.

Show the Learning.

Get ready for next week.

Blogging starts.

Vocab starts.

LNG starts.

Lots of opportunities to show the learning.

Eng 9: Laptops, Suiting Up and Oreos.

Today was our first day with laptops.  We did a pretty good job staying on point.  We really need to to be careful about getting distracted with laptop issues when we don't need to be focused on them.  (VPP could have waited.)

That said, we did some great work with Suit Up, an opportunity to get to know one another a bit better, names, strengths, weakness, Oreos.

After getting to know five other people in class, you then tackled the mini-design challenge of "How might we demonstrate a super power or kryptonite with an Oreo?"  You were allowed to use any materials in the room and could get a additional Oreos if you pitched the idea to me.

Out of Class Work

Bring In to School. Over the weekend, find three items from home that represent you in a meaningful way and bring them in.  Please do not bring anything valuable or fragile.  And these items need to be transportable in a reasonable way.  Think about what might fit in a backpack or a pocket.

Due.  Monday, 9.14.15.

Complete.  Guidelines and Expectations signature sheet.  

Due. ASAP.

If Possible, Gather.  Design Kit.

Due. ASAP if Possible.