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.

AP Lit: Epic.

This week we dove into epics . . . and talked about all sorts of other stuff too including school climate, the WWE, dress codes and more.

I'm gonna leave this right here for you . . .

Tuesday's class was a great day of unexpected conversation about school climate and culture, making change happen, empathy between teacher and student, and seemed to not have much to do with AP Lit except for the fact that it most certainly did.  How might we use that conversation to inform our design challenge regarding poetry as a vehicle for solving problems on our campus?

Thursday we worked with the 1st Canto of The Inferno and all too briefly with the 1st book of Paradise Lost.  We will be returning to these texts regularly throughout the year because so much of what we read references these two works.  In other words, we ain't done wid 'em yet.

Here are some pics of our Literary 3x3 work.  We started with laying out our 3x3s for Inferno and then remixing and mashing them up into a united single 3x3 based on the collective ideas and language present.

From there I asked you to write two thesis statements based on that work -- one analytical in nature, one synthesis in nature.  We didn't get a chance to workshop those as a class so we will revisit them on Monday.  

Then we shared our 3x3s of Paradise Lost Book 1.

This week I didn't get this blog updated on time, so if you need the weekend to get your blog posts up, that's okay.  (I did tell you on Tuesday what the assignments were in class ANNNNNNND it's okay if you don't have it done until Monday.)

SHOW YOUR WORK.

WRITE.  1st Submission Draft.  Synthesis Essay #2.

DUE. Monday 12.12.16

BLOG.

CREATIVE BLOG POST.  Write the 1st 20 lines of a Mock Epic. Use the language and form and qualities of epic poetry to start an epic about one of the most mundane tasks in your life.

READ. How to Read Lit Like a Prof.  "One Story."

ANALYTICAL & DESIGN BLOG POST.   Unpack the "One Story" chapter in Foster by asking what are the implications for this idea of "One Story" on our poetry as school solution design challenge.

DUE. Monday 12.12.16

AP Lit: Bieber to Barbara Allen -- Exploring the Ballad

We opened today with a listen to the Beeb's masterpiece,  "Sorry."

We took a look at the lyrics as we listened to this cover  by Ben Rector.

This led to a discussion of tone, of voicing, of speaker, of aesthetics and presentation and its influence upon interpretation.  Rector's rendition lends an authenticity we felt missing from the original -- which we also discovered was written by The Beebs and a team of hundreds (or maybe like three or four other people.)

From here we shifted about a decade back to The Avett Brothers "Ballad of Love and Hate."

We started making a few connections here, seeing a couple of possible patterns, but it really didn't kick in until we dove a generation or two back.

We looked at Dylan's "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"

And we discovered it's an emotional song for many of us.  We also discovered a great deal interesting about its structure and form, about Dylan's use of internal rhyme and alliteration, and about the effect of the song being in two voices -- the father and the son.   We dove briefly into the biblical allusions evident in the text and then turned our attention to a female balladeer.

Dolly Parton has become synonymous with 1980s country-pop and become more known for her personal style  than anything else.  But here's the thing: for people in the know?  Dolly Parton is one of the greatest songwriters that has ever lived.  Period.   "Jolene" is one of her many masterpieces.  We had a brief discussion of this song and made some interesting points about whether or not Jolene actually exists or is just the manifestation of the speaker's insecurity.  I'm looking forward to returning to this song when we are talking about different lens through which to read and view literature -- a feminist lens on the poem I think could reveal some new insights.

We ran short on time though we did talk even more more about what we could uncover about the ballad form from these selections.  We noted that they tell stories, that they are often quite straight forward even if they make use of figurative language and metaphor, that there is often a dialogue or two characters at the very least.  The stories are usually sad and involve love or romance of some sort.

Before we ended the class we took a look at a few of the traditional ballads of Great Britain's past.

Barbara Allen was the first.  

Barbara Allen

Related Poem Content Details

BY ANONYMOUS

In Scarlet town, where I was born, 

   There was a fair maid dwellin’, 

Made every youth cry Well-a-way! 

   Her name was Barbara Allen. 

All in the merry month of May, 

   When green buds they were swellin’, 

Young Jemmy Grove on his death-bed lay, 

   For love of Barbara Allen. 

He sent his man in to her then, 

   To the town where she was dwellin’; 

“O haste and come to my master dear, 

   If your name be Barbara Allen.” 

So slowly, slowly rase she up, 

   And slowly she came nigh him, 

And when she drew the curtain by— 

   “Young man, I think you’re dyin’.” 

“O it’s I am sick and very very sick, 

   And it’s all for Barbara Allen.”— 

O the better for me ye’se never be, 

   Tho’ your heart’s blood were a-spillin’! 

“O dinna ye mind, young man,” says she, 

   “When the red wine ye were fillin’, 

That ye made the healths go round and round, 

   And slighted Barbara Allen?” 

He turned his face unto the wall, 

   And death was with him dealin’: 

“Adieu, adieu, my dear friends all, 

   And be kind to Barbara Allen!” 

As she was walking o’er the fields, 

   She heard the dead-bell knellin’; 

And every jow the dead-bell gave 

   Cried “Woe to Barbara Allen.” 

“O mother, mother, make my bed, 

   O make it saft and narrow: 

My love has died for me today, 

   I’ll die for him tomorrow.” 

“Farewell,” she said, “ye virgins all, 

   And shun the fault I fell in: 

Henceforth take warning by the fall 

   Of cruel Barbara Allen.” 

And "Lord Randall" the second.

We will be looking at more ballads in the week to come, but first we must take a look at epics and get our 2nd synthesis essays in good order.

SHOW YOUR WORK.

This weekend read these openings of ancient, classical,  medieval and English Renaissance epics.

READ the 1st 20 lines of The Odyssey by Homer.

READ  the 1st 20 lines of Beowulf, the ancient poem of northern European origins.

Those two above are to give you some context for the epic form in its origins.

READ, NOTE & CREATE. For the next two, take the time to annotate, take notes, and/or sketchnote.  Bring LITERARY  3x3s of these selections by Dante and Milton to class on Tuesday, 12.6.16

READ.  the 1st Canto I of Dante's Inferno, a medieval story of descending into the underworld.

And finally READ.  Book 1 of Milton's Paradise Lost, the opening scenes depicting the beginning of the world according to Milton's take on Christian dogma.

UPDATE the Q2 BLOG TRACKER with your best evidence from November, as well as anything current.

WRITE to TURN IT.  Be prepared with 1st SUBMISSION DRAFT of your 2nd Synthesis Essay for THURSDAY'S class, 12.8.16. I want these back to you with plenty of time BEFORE the break.

Eng 9: Of Mice & Tiny Houses & Narrative Reflections & Lots of Goings On . . .

I realized that I have not updated the blog for English 9 in far too long!  Ack! Oversight!  Not intentional at all!   (And we know how much I preach intention -- so this is NOT good.)

Since the week before Turkey Break, we have been focused on reading Of Mice and Men.  Two of the three classes have finished the novel, the other is nearly there.

We are reading with a bigger purpose in mind.  We have a design challenge: How might we design tiny houses for the characters of Of Mice and Men? 

So while we are going to take a look at the conflicts and plot and characters in the novel, we are doing so because need to know about these characters and their needs so we may design for them, just as we designed for our users in the Cardboard Challenge.

MONDAY and TUESDAY this week.

READING.  We started with me reading the end of the book aloud and brief discussions of what happens to Lennie, George and the rest of the crew.  

STATIONS.  Then we broke into a three station rotation.

1. No Red Ink/Quizlet for Roots 6.  Complete the No Red Ink assignment, get familiar with Roots 6.

2. Pre-Writing and Getting Started on Narrative Writing Assessment 2: Lesson of the Cardboard Challenge

3. DISCOVERY Phase for Of Mice & Tiny Houses Design Challenge.   Explore the tiny house resources provided and complete Notice/Wish/Wonder graphic organizers.

Each class ended up in a slightly different spot because, well, every class is different and has different needs.  What follows here is the timeline for when the various work is due so you can use this to manage your time and all of the goings on.

SHOW YOUR THINKING.

WRITE.  

NARRATIVE WRITING ASSESSMENT 2: Lesson of the Cardboard Challenge.

Tell the story of a lesson you learned from completing the Cardboard Challenge. 

See the rubric in Google Drive.

Period 4B/4G. WORKING DRAFT Due Wednesday/Thursday 11.30.16/12.1.16.

Period 2B.  WORKING DRAFT Due Monday 12.5.16

Period 4B/4G.  2nd WORKING DRAFT Due Friday/Monday 12.2.16/12.5.16.

Period 2B.  2nd WORKING DRAFT Due Wednesday 12.7.16.

Period 4B/4G.  1st SUBMISSION DRAFT.  TURN IT IN.  Due Tuesday/Wednesday 12.6.16/12.7.16

Period 2B.  1st SUBMISSION DRAFT.  TURN IT IN.  Due Friday 12.9.16

READ/WATCH/LISTEN RESPOND.   

DISCOVERY Phase Materials of Tiny House Design Challenge.  

COMPLETE.   3 Notice/Wish/Wonder Organizers.  Keep asking yourself: How might we use this knowledge to help design a tiny house for the characters in Of Mice and Men?  Investigate for a purpose.  When you are noticing, when you are wondering, when you are wishing, look for connections to the needs of these characters.

Period 4G.  Due Friday 12.2.16

Period 2B/4B.  Due Monday 12.5.16

Of Mice & Tiny Houses DISCOVERY Resources

• Experience of Building a Tiny House
  • Couple's quest to settle down in mini-home encounters unexpected roadblock - The Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram
  • Tiny house in Richmond is home to bigger life - Central Maine 
    "Waterville"
  • National tiny house building code could make tiny living safer, easier in Maine — Homestead — Bangor Daily News — BDN Maine
  • Living Big In A Tiny House - YouTube
  • The Tiny Home Built By A Bad-Ass Single Mom - YouTube
  • Couple Builds Tiny House for Just $420! - YouTube
• Young Builders of Tiny Houses
  • The Scrap Shack
  • Video showcases Maine teenager living 'off grid' in tiny house - #Maine
• Tiny & Small House Architects & Builders
  • Meet the Maine Amish community making tiny houses, sheds by hand — Homestead — Bangor Daily News — BDN Maine
  • Builder of tiny homes predicts pint-sized housing trend - Central Maine
  • Maine's Original Tiny House Company
  • Jim Bahoosh has completed a small house on Vimeo
  • Small Planet Homes | Holland & Foley Architecture
• Designing a Tiny House
  • Moving on Up in Maine - to a Teeny Tiny House | Maine Public
  • 41 of the Most Impressive Tiny Houses You’ve Ever Seen
  • Sustainable House Sketch Book | WERU 89.9 FM Blue Hill, Maine Local News and Public Affairs Archives
  • Small — but not tiny — houses right size for many | WGME
  • Stylish designer houses made of cardboard - CNN.com
• Life in California for Migrant Workers in the 1930s
  • The Migrant Experience - Voices from the Dust Bowl: the Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940-1941 | Digital Collections | Library of Congress
  • Depression Era: 1930s: Depression | Picture This
  • The Migrant Experience - Voices from the Dust Bowl: the Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940-1941 | Digital Collections | Library of Congress 
    "The Recording of Folk Music in Northern California"
  • About this Collection - Voices from the Dust Bowl: the Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940-1941 | Digital Collections | Library of Congress

STUDY.  VOCAB.

Roots 6 Quiz. 

Thursday/Friday 12.8.16/12.9.16

STUDY. MUGS.

No Red Ink Quiz.

Commonly Confused Words I

Take by Thursday 12.8.16  (Already available.  Take when you are ready.)

AP Lit: Writing Workshop, Haiku & Blog Posts for This Week

Today we workshopped intros and thesis statements.  I got a ton out of it.  I hoped you did as well.

I don't have any pics of the work though, because I forgot my phone at home.  I'm doing ok.  Thanks for asking.

Here's the work for Wednesday and most of what's due on Friday.  Be prepared to read a ton of ballads for Friday.  Those are coming soon.  (And prepare this weekend to read some epic poetry of the epics.)

WRITE.  Revised.  Introduction and thesis statement for 2nd Synthesis.  (This is a change up from today's assignment.  I'm soft and crumpled like a wet newspaper in a hurricane.)

READ.  Haiku.

Overview of Haiku from Poets.org.

READ.

Haiku of Issa as translated by Robert Haas

Haiku of Basho from a variety of sources.

Haiku of Buson from a variety of sources.


READ.  The haiku inspired works of Matthew Rohrer available at PoetryFoundation.org.  Read the notes he has provided for his methodology and mindset behind these works.

READ.  Some of the other haiku available at PoetryFoundation.org or a Poets.org.  Go hunting.  See what goodness you find.

READ.  What this writer learned by writing haiku.  Think about our work with Meg Willing and what resonates here.

On Wednesday night, expect a collection of ballads to compose.

CRITICAL CREATIVITY BLOG POST.  Compose an original a haiku or ballad.  Consider the three different lenses we learned from Meg Willing:  poet, editor, designer.   Then design the cover for a volume of your poetry based on this one haiku or ballad you created.  

DESIGN THINKING BLOG POST.   EXPERIMENT Phase.  8 Box.  Poetry as Problem Solver Design Challenge.  Put yourself on a 4 minute timer.  Generate 8 ideas for addressing a problem in the school in 4 minutes.  Select one of your ideas.   Get three sticky notes/scraps of paper/index cards.   Storyboard that idea in action.  Put those three panels on a blank piece of paper.  Add context and explanation.  Mark it up.   Take no more than 30 minutes total from start to finish on this entire exercise.

Take a picture of your work.  Post on your blog along with any written or audio/video recording explanations we may need to understand your current ideas.

Pop Culture: Movie Trailer by Design Production Week!

This is it folks!  Trailers are due on Thursday and Friday!  We'll be having screenings in a location TBD.  (Hopefully it won't be Room F215 . . . )

Here's the rubric that is also in your Pop Culture OUT Google Drive folder in the Movie Trailers by Design subfolder.

Pop Culture Fall 2016: Trailers by Design Single Point Rubric

How might we design movie trailers that make audiences want to see the whole movie?

Creative Constraints:  

• Your prototype trailer must be for a film that has not been made
• Your prototype trailer may be an adaptation of an intellectual property that exists, but it cannot be an IP that has been made into a film before
• Your prototype trailer must have a run length of :30 to 2:00.  
• You must submit a written or recorded explanation of the intentions behind your prototype trailer.
• You must submit an Intention Map for your prototype trailer

Criteria	Evidence of Exceeding the Standard (clever, insightful, unique, powerful, creative, meaningful, professional)	What Meeting the Standard Looks Like	Evidence of Needs for Improvement (gaps, missing pieces or evidence, incomplete thoughts)
Movie Trailer Prototype (MEDIA)		I like how your trailer presents an effective solution to the identified problem.  I like how every aspect of your trailer seems purposeful. I like how your trailer seems to appeal to your users. I like how I only have to ask minimal questions to understand your solutions.
Design Process Documentation (MEDIA)		I like how your design documentation shows that you have identified a problem, considered the users needs, explored several solutions, and worked up a prototype. I like how you organized your photos/video/notes/sketches in a way that it is easy to see your thinking.
Written Explanations (WRITING) (OPTION A)		I like how your details are specific and make it clear to me what you intended with your prototype.  I like how well organized your writing appears and how it seems to show your voice.  I like how I get a strong sense of how your prototype will solve the problem.
Vocal Explanations (SPEAKING) (OPTION B)		I like how articulate your explanations come across because your details are specific and you make it clear to me what you intended with your prototype.  I like clearly you speak with a deliberate pace. I like how I get a strong sense of how your prototype will solve the problem.
Mechanics, Usage, Grammar, Spelling (MUGS)		I like how your work is nearly error free in terms of MUGS.  There may be one or two minor errors but you generally show control of your writing.
Timeliness (HABITS of WORK)		The final product is turned in within 24 hours of the agreed upon due date.

In addition to the written/recorded explanation of design and intention, you must complete this Intention map -- also in your Google Drive Pop Culture OUT folder.  This connects the dots between all of the empathy work you've done and the prototype trailer you create.

INTENTION MAP

Identify Three Key Pieces of Empathy Evidence that Helped You to Meet Your Users’ Needs

Empathy Evidence (Survey/ Interview Data screenshot, pic, or text)	Design Feature (pic, vid or description)	How did your empathy evidence inform your design feature and help you meet your users’ needs?	What changes might you make to this feature in a future iteration?

Your blog post for this week asks you to document your trailer design process.   Photos, screenshots, drawings, doodles, maps, plans, anything and everything.  Consider it a behind-the-scenes DVD/Blu-Ray extra feature.

SHOW YOUR WORK.

BLOG.  Document Your Movie Trailer by Design Process.  Photos, screenshots, drawings, doodles, maps, plans, anything and everything that shows the story of creating your trailer.  Explain your process as you document. You may prefer to post an audio or video recording of your explanation.

DUE. Friday. 12.2.16

DESIGN. MOVIE TRAILER BY DESIGN.  Complete your movie trailer.  Remember to check the rubric for expectations and creative constraints.  Remember to complete the written/recorded explanation of intentions as well as the intention map.  (See above in this post.  Graphic organizers and rubrics in your Pop Culture OUT folder on Google Drive.)

DUE. Thursday.12.1.16/Friday.12.2.16

 

Pop Culture: Film Trailer Design Challenge: Empathy & Experiment Phases

We're getting right into our film trailer design challenge and the ideas are coming fast and furiously . . .

Friday and Monday, empathy interview we conducted empathy interviews for our users: other English classes & Digital Media

From there we jumped into our production teams (Groups of 1, 2, 3 or 4 -- 4?! I know, right?) and unpacked our empathy interviews AND started in on experimenting.

The trailers are due for screening the Thursday and Friday immediately following the Thanksgiving break.

Here's the blog post due THIS WEEK.

Film Trailer Production Post.
What is the working title of the film you are producing the trailer for?
What is the name of your production company (the name of your group or your solo effort)?
What is the WHOLE story of your film?  Not just the trailer but the whole story of the film.
Post a storyboard of your trailer AND/OR a rough rapid fire prototype of your trailer.

The ideas I'm hearing sound great. REMEMBER the EMPATHY!  As you are working up your ideas, are you keeping your audience in mind?  Film studios and producers are constantly working to find a balance between artistic visions and audience tastes.  They want to make money and they want to create new ideas.  That's a challenge.  Here's an interview with Sheri Candler, a marketing strategist who makes her living dealing with that balance.