Springing towards summer

We're enjoying our Spring break for Easter, and I hope you have had time to rest, and be with both family and friends. We've been grateful for the rest. Also puzzled by the rapid temperature shifts, by the way. Not long ago it felt like summer and we had need for air conditioning, but now it has turned cold again like there are still remembrances of winter. Rain or shine, summer vacation will be here sooner than you think.

Let's accomplish clearly a few goals - here is what remains to be done in the fourth quarter, the last of Spring 2015:

1) Informational Speaking - speak on the contents of your article, and whether you agree with it. Use a digital help like a photo or graph, projected on the overhead.

2) Informational Writing - inform of the contents of the article, and write about your opinions on the article without getting too persuasive.

3) Narrative Writing - see link to right of blog where you can see Narrative Prompts - which have been recently adjusted and are based on next year's Common App. Choose one, not the first!

4) Narrative Speaking - speak on what you are writing about in number 3 above.

5) Favorite Author Prezi - each student presents individually on an author we have read this year: about 20 slides with link to video and bibliography. Speak for 5 minutes; bonus for using Prezi instead of PowerPoint.

Slide distribution: 1 - Intro (like top left of writing assignment) 2-7 author biography, 8-13 giving examples of the writing of this author, showing why the sentences are beautiful or effective, showing other people's opinion about or interpretation of the writing, or comparing 2 works using same theme being discussed, 14-19 interesting points that made this person noteworthy, eccentricities or habits of the person, how the person trained to become excellent or made the work excellent. 20 works cited.


Besides the above, we have readings, however homework assignments have been carefully reduced or targeted, and you only need to submit 5. Assignments can be submitted up to 3 days late - endeavor to do everything on time! If you don't have enough time to submit one, skip it and do the next, perhaps:

Q4 Assignments from Collection 6 Modern World

HW41 The Destructors – G. Greene – p. 1092: 5,8,9,10,11 TEST

HW42 Shakespeare’s Sister from A Room of One’s Own – V. Woolf – p. 1113: 3,4,5,6

HW45 The Lake Isle of Innisfree – W.B. Yeats – p. 1168: 2,3,6,7

HW51 Digging – S. Heaney – p. 1248: 4,5,7

HW53 Do Not Go Gentle – D. Thomas – p. 1274: 4,5,6,7,8

HW43 Marriage is a Private Affair – C. Achebe – p. 1153: 5,9,10

HW50 B. Wordsworth – V.S. Naipul – p. 1239: 5,7,9

HW46 Araby – J. Joyce – p. 1182: 1,3,4,6

HW57 Saboteur – Ha Jin – p. 1317: 5,6,9,10

HW56 Towards a True Refuge – H.S. Suu Kyi

HW56 The Question of South Africa – D. Tutu

HW56 Universal Declaration of Human Rights –p. 1328: 1,4

Students must submit 5 of these homework assignments. Everyone takes 4 selection Tests.

Q4 blog reflection:

A) write about something interesting you learned this year during a club or class activity or while volunteering or working at a job 

B) advice to other students - if you are a senior tell students how to choose & apply for college and have a smooth senior year; non-seniors advise underclassmen on how to be better student or language learners

C) write something about your home country or culture that others from outside your country don't know, or write about plans for the future, such as college or summer..


Start working on your Q4 blog reflection, Author Prezi, and Q4 classroom notes (due 5/15). We are all looking forward to a great summer!

Extras:

HW47 Rocking Horse Winner – D.H. Lawrence – p. 1199: 6,7,8,9,10

HW59 The Horses – T. Hughes – p. 1336 3,4,5,6

HW58 Sailing to Byzantium – W.B. Yeats – p. 1333: 3,4,5,6


While on vacation, be sure to remain in a festive frame of mind!

Out with the Old and In with the...Next Step

Before our thoughts can turn to greener pastures like spring break or even graduation, we need to wrap up Q3. There will be a lot of things to accomplish before the end of this third quarter and academic year.

For now, I'd just like to post some information on the upcoming final exams next week. After that, this post will be updated to include plans for the fourth quarter.

There are questions on the Q3 Final from these stories and poems – including vocab for short stories:

HW25 The Poison Tree – p. 732: 4,5,6 TEST 1  3 questions

HW30 Quiet Night Thoughts – p. 823: 1,5,8 TEST 2  4 questions

HW34 Mark of the Beast – R. Kipling – p. 944: 4,8,9,10,11 TEST 3  3 questions

HW36 How Much Land Does a Man Need? – p. 963: 1,7,10 TEST 4  4 questions

HW38 The Jewels – p. 5,7,8 TEST 5  5 questions   also Vocab 

HW37 The Bet – A. Chekhov – p. 973: 5,9,11   4 questions also Vocab also Essay


There are no grammar questions this time, nor are there Wordly Wise questions on the final.

Q3 Midpoint

Five-minute Feud Debates
We will have one day of debates before break, and we are changing the time controls. We need to fit in two debates within one class period, so this should work:

Each of three speakers gets 2.5 minutes to speak
Thirty seconds between speakers
Each team gets 3 minutes of research time at class computer before debate
Total time per debate = 23 minutes

Topic 1: Should individuals be forced to receive vaccinations (e.g., against the measles), even if unwilling?

Topic 2: Homeschooling & non-traditional education should be encouraged.

Topic 5: The U.S. federal government should substantially increase its non-military exploration and/or development of the Earth's oceans.

Topic 6: The U.S. federal government should substantially curtail its domestic surveillance.


Go to the National Speech and Debate Association Web Site for more info on the above topics.

Five Beautiful Sentences assignment
Please find five sentences within your Book Group book, and email the following information:
1) The entire sentence and its page number
2) Underline the word for phrase that is "interesting" (see below)
3) Include a brief explanation about why you underlined it. Also helpful is explaining the context of the sentence within the story, or the importance of the sentence.

Underline words that are effectively, or well-written, but look for use of slang, idioms, vernacular (local language), difficult, or fresh.

Informational Speaking
Speak for at least two minutes about An Good Place to Visit in Taiwan. You may use your blog post as a source of ideas, but you may not read the speech from the blog or paper. It is recommended that a photo from online be prepared for the speech, perhaps attached to your blog post.
Keep in mind this is informational speaking, so include some facts and figures - things like describing the geography or location, population, economics, or some details. Avoid "selling," or persuading, and also avoid too many personal stories, or narratives.

Grammar Quiz
Our grammar quiz has been moved to Tuesday, March 10th. We will use the materials from "The Only Grammar Book You'll Ever Need" to explain the same topics below a bit better before the quiz.

Information includes the following three major points:
A) Verb Tenses - know form and use:
     1) Simple Present: "Alvyn is a man." "If you heat ice it melts." "The sun rises in the East and sets in the West." "I brush my teeth every morning." "I usually/sometimes/always play piano at night.
     2) Present Continuous: "I am writing now."
     3) Future: a) "will" for willingness: "I will go with you to Paris." or determination: "Yes I will go see a movie with Arielle." b) "am going to V" for plans: "We are going to visit Italy next summer." c) using present tense to show future with schedules: "I fly tomorrow at 9 AM." d) using present continuous tense for future (probably for plans too): "I am visiting Italy next summer."
     4) Present Perfect: a) for recently completed actions that still affect the present: "I have eaten lunch." b) for experience: "I have visited England before." c) for repeated actions happening from a point in the past, to now, and going into the future, using "for" or "since": "Book has studied Chinese for three years." or "Book has studied Chinese since 2012."
B) Verbals - words that look like verbs but are used as other parts of speech
     1) gerunds - words that look like verbs but are used as nouns: "Wakeboarding is really my favorite sport. Swimming is boring."
     2) participles - they look like verbs (ending in "-ing" or "-ed") but are used as adjectives: The girl sitting over there is my friend.
     3) infinitives - the basic form of the verb with "to" in front of it, usually used as a noun, but may be used as adjective or adverb. We will come back to this later, but for more immediate info, try this link on infinitive use. For now you need to know that we use infinitives to explain why we do something: "Stephen attends university to learn about physical therapy." "Brandon came to Taiwan to study Chinese."
C) An understanding that English is changing and that a lot of what is "right" is that way because a lot of people have decided to speak that way: "I don't recommend having 2 beers with lunch." or "Hey, you are looking good today." Instead, a more formal or traditional way to say these would be: "I'd recommend drinking two bottles of beer on the first Saturday night after graduation." or "You look good today."

For more review, use this link to see the web site we used in class for those verb tenses.

Q3 Romantics & Victorians

We'll be going over readings from the 1800's in England and Europe, which covers their Romantic and Victorian periods. To make our literature assignments more achievable for most students this year, we have reduced the number of required assignments to ten, and the number of questions in each assignment is three questions. 

Q3 Required Literature Homework

HW25 The Poison Tree – W. Blake – p. 732: 4,5,6 TEST

HW26 Composed Upon Westminster Bridge – W. Wordsworth – p. 744: 2,5,6

HW27 She Walks in Beauty – Byron – p. 795: 1,2,3

HW28 Ode to the West Wind – P. Shelley – p. 810: 1,7,8  

HW30 Quiet Night Thoughts – Li Po – p. 823: 1,5,8  TEST

HW33 Sonnet 43 – E.B. Browning – p. 915: 2,3,4

HW34 Mark of the Beast – R. Kipling – p. 944: 7,8,9  TEST

HW36 How Much Land Does a Man Need? – L. Tolstoy – p. 963: 1,7,10 TEST

HW37 The Bet – A. Chekhov – p. 973: 5,9,11 TEST

HW38 The Jewels – G. Maupassant – p. 982: 5,7,8 TEST

Students need to complete five tests in total, and may choose to take either one of the last two that are already scheduled.

We will have a variety of speaking and writing tasks, and more will be posted here later on those. For now, focus on Speech Meet. Homework for each student's chapter for their speech must be done by Wednesday after break - exercises C & E. The first 200 words of your speech must be recited in class by Friday of the week after break.