Blog Crazy!

Our Odyssey blogs look awesome! Check out some more of your classmates' work.

Melanie and Jill
Brittany and Hannah
Joe and Brandon
Eric, Jon and Brendan
Sean and Cameron
Mary and Haley
Luke and Christian
Katey and Chrissy

A blogging we go!

The day before break marks the midpoint of our blog project. SO EXCITING! Here are the blogs of your classmates and from the other class. If the links don't work, it's because I was given the wrong address. Give them a try!

Madeliene and Missy
Thora and Rae
Brooke and Nicole
Kaeleen, Molly and Olivia
Elizabeth and Abby
Samantha
Sarah and Abbie
Dan and Bryce
Britta and Mary-Cate
Chris and Chris
Natalia and Mat

Have a great break! Great job!

Miss Holmes's Mom

Well, this has been a hard week, but my Mom is doing great in her recovery. She has the same spark and determination that I would like to think that I also have and is already talking about being home and doing everything herself. She has sat up for meals and today she walked down the hall for a short stint. She is doing just great and is amazing me every day. I will be back in school on Monday and my brother will be nursing her as she comes home. I will check on her on weekends, but I expect with her strong will, she will be ready to have things back to normal soon enough.

Thanks to all you kids for your kind wishes. Trust me, I miss all of you just as much as you might miss me. Hope Mrs. Kivi is an good stand-in for me. She's got the same laid back personality, that's why we get along so well.

See you Monday or Tuesday!

The Odyssey Blog

Here you go. These directions are also published on Edline. Pay attention to important details. This assignment can be really FUN and EASY!


You already have an assignment sheet describing the blog assignment. These are more specific directions and eventually, there will be a rubric published on Edline as well.
Some steps to follow in the planning phases of your blog:



1. Come up with a creative title RELEVANT to The Odyssey
2. Come up with "nicknames" for yourself and your partner that are relevant, even funny and of course, appropriate. (ex. Aphrodite Jones and Hercules Smith)
3. Choose your blog layout, color schemes, etc.
4. Check out the features on how to add images to your blog (I will go over this in more detail as we continue with this project, this is something you can always ADD ON later) You can create surveys, text boxes, etc that will compiment your blog.
5. Once you have figured out the basics, plan out your first "post." This will be a recollection of all of the events from Book 9. This is the creative aspect of the unit. In addition to reading about the events and answering pretty simple questions for your take home tests, you will then also get to APPLY that knowledge.



A blog post might start out something like this:


"On our long journey today, we met many enemies. I was exhausted at day's end mostly by Odysseus' determination to get home. I really enjoyed the land of the Lotus eaters because the fruit they gave us made me feel happy and sleepy. I would have liked to lay in the grass all day until we could eat again, but Odysseus was in one of his bossy moods again and tied us to the ships to get us out of there. Some of the men didn't even get to taste the lotus, what a bummer. I am getting pretty sick of listening to Captain Odysseus all the time with his know it all attitude. He thought he was so smart when we arrived on the island of the Cyclopes....."



You get the idea. Be funny, be eccentric, be specific, be ACCURATE. Make sure you are not just making up hilarious fictional stories about things that we never read about. Take a bit of the text, mixed with a bit of ninth grade humor and make a wonderful harmony of ancient text and FUN!
Your book can be a great reference and inspiration, I am sure!



Get to work!
Miss Holmes :)



One thing to remember:
IF YOU ALREADY HAVE A GOOLE USER NAME, please use that, if not, only ONE of you in the partnership has to create a name, not both.
Follow the link to start blogging.
http://www.blogger.com/tour_pub.g

The Odyssey Blog Project:

As we read The Odyssey, you are going to work with a partner to develop your own "Live From Ithaca" project. This is where you will pretend you are one of Odysseus's men and are writing home about your mission. This will be something to encourage us to be creativ and have fun with The Odyssey.

One teacher that I saw first use the blog in the classroom was this one that I stumbled upon a long time ago. www.millersenglish10.blogspot.com Look on his page for the examples of student blogs.

I can't wait to start using our creativity!

Research Paper Madness

Well, we have taken a break fro creativity for a while to research topics related to the environment with the help of the library. You have done the following to develop your research and thesis:

1. Read a non-fiction book related to your topic

2. Consulted reference and database sources about your topic

3. Looked on the Internet (not google and not wikipedia) for information

Now we are working on finishing our notecards, working on our Works Cited pages and soon we will be writing our outlines....

Next unit, The Odyssey. We'll get to some blood and guts before we start the tragic love story of Romeo and Juliet.

You won't believe this!

I just found something that will absolutely change the face of the way I teach poetry and writing poetry.

This is the best thing I have found online since freerice.com

The best things ever. Click on "play with words"

Give it a try, I will create a poem and hopefull post it later!

Poetry and You

I love poetry. I have been published a tad in online journals and I find it to be the best outlet for me as a writer and creative person. It is the one genre that seems to be really quick, to the point and exudes a euphoric sense of accomplishment once you have completed a poem. I also enjoy teaching poetry because there is so much there for the student to discover and sometimes it is almost accidental, coincidental and serendipitous.

Here is a poem for you to contemplate. It's by one of the greats, Billy Collins. It's sure to make you laugh.

We are going to start the film Dead Poets Society and read some poems and listen to some songs. One thing to start thinking about is your own metaphor for life, as that is the capstone of our poetry unit.

Happy Poetry Reading!

Dr. King and his dream

I am sitting here, very fortunate for the day off, but thinking about what lies beneath it. I am wondering about the dream that Dr. King had and if he would be happy with where we are today if he was still alive. There have been news tributes and things that have made me think and, since it is a part of the curriculum, let's think about it together.

If you think about your own dreams for ytour future, is anything alike to Dr. King? Do you find that there are things missing in our world today you would like to change? What would your dream be?

Watch the video of Dr. King's speech for inspiration on the video bar.

Our Favorite New Classmate: The Document Camera!

Well, the past couple days in class have been very exciting with the addition of a document camera to our classroom.


It is very state of the art and makes notetaking and reading aloud in class very interesting!





I am trying to come up with some assignments that suit the document camera specfically and hope that we can continue to experiment with it in class to make the most fun and interactive classes possible!


If you guys have any ideas of how to better use it in class, let me know!


Miss Holmes :)

Pride

The title of this post is for good reason. Check out info on a song by U2 that is particularly significant. You can also click here to view the lyrics.


We have not had any class time to go over possible blog posts or follow up on past blog posts, but I want to make sure I keep up with it. We will be having a good amount of work in the coming weeks with wrapping up To Kill a Mockingbird and starting our poetry unit. One thing we will examine at the end of the month is Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

We will watch the speech in class and will discuss not only its historical relevance, but the important anniversary of the assasination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in April of this year.

Some important things to think about with the three day weekend approaching is:

How does Martin Luther King's message and goal in his speech relate to the speech Atticus gives in the closing arguement of the trial?

What was particulary effective about King's speaking techniques? Some people are saying the same things about Barak Obama's motivating speeches on the campagin trail.

Martin Luther King stood for something that organizations like the Black Panthers did not. What do you think was different about his leadership compared to other social leaders?

If you post something that is thoughtful, concise and reflective, it may be worth one point on your second quarter average!

Post away!

To Kill a Mockingbird the movie

Today we will be taking a quiz and moving through the book a little more. Additionally, we will start the film and get a feel for Maycomb and the characters. To Kill a Mockingbird is an Academy Award winning film. Once we view even a part of it, I would like you to make a connection to why you think it may have won awards. The acting? The filming? The set? The costumes? The screenplay? What makes it a great book-made-movie.

Also, take a book that you have read that has been made into a movie that you have seen. Compare the two. I just saw The Kite Runner over break and was astounded at how close it stayed to the text. This was because the author was directly involved in the filming. What do you think are the difficulties in putting a known story into a motion picture? What can be improved? What is lost? What have you found is better?


Hope this gets your brain back in gear for the New Year. Mine is still a little mushy, but once we dig deeper into Mockingbird, I will be back in the swing!

Miss Holmes :)