Book Evaluation

Here are some things to help you get started on your evaluation of the book we just finished, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

Here are a few questions to think about to get you started with the evaluation. DON'T answer all these questions in your essay. Think about them to get you started and try to incorporate the answers into your writing:

• What did you like or dislike about it?
• Was it well written?
• Were the characters interesting?
• Could the story be set in another time or place? Would that change the story?
• Why do you think the author wrote this?

And here is a checklist to help with book reviews, but you might find it helpful to get you started with your evaluation.

• Name the book and the author
• Give a short summary of what happened in the book (don't give it all away though!)
• Give your opinion of the book (Examples: exciting, interesting, boring, educational)
• Support your opinion with examples from the book
• Tell your readers whether you would recommend the book and why or why not

You may also focus on a particular aspect of the book (like the characters, the setting, racial issues, how it made you think differently, or something else you want to focus on).

Please do a good job and take your time with this essay. This should be a full essay, not just a paragraph.

Some Days You Just Don't Feel Like Writing...

Some days are difficult. You wake up in a bad mood, or something happens in life that just sets you off on the wrong foot for the day (or the week sometimes!). Even on days like that, it doesn't hurt to get a little something down on your blog. It can be cathartic to write it down, like it helps to get it on the page and let it out. You feel better when you're done and you've gotten a little writing practice in for the day.

Another way to write if you're having a bad day is to use the anger or sadness or whatever emotion you're feeling to help you write something really deep and emotional. Poetry is always good for that. Use your feelings to help you write, rather than getting stuck in them and letting them overrun your life.

Fun Websites

Here are some fun websites that have information and educational stuff on them. Play around with them and enjoy!

Multimedia and Interactive Websites

American Presidency
http://americanhistory.si.edu/presidency/5a_frame.html

Artists’ Toolkit
http://www.artsconnected.org/toolkit/

Bio Medical Lab – the Walker
http://www.biomotionlab.ca/Demos/BMLwalker.html

Cells Alive!
http://www.cellsalive.com

Coolmath
http://coolmath.com

Create-A-Graph
http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/

Discovery Games
http://dsc.discovery.com/games/games.html

Educational Web Adventures
http://www.eduweb.com/portfolio/adventure.php

Smithsonian Education
http://smithsonianeducation.org/students/

DNA from the Beginning
http://www.dnaftb.org/dnaftb/

World Wildlife Fund Fun Stuff
http://www.worldwildlife.org/fun

British History: Battlefield Academy
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/launch_gms_bfacademy.shtml

Visualisation

San Francisco Crimespotting
http://sanfrancisco.crimespotting.org/

Worldmapper
http://www.worldmapper.org/

Gesture-based computing
(this one is a little farther on the horizon and the technology is not built into your own computers right now, so you'll have to simply look at some of the possibilities)

Aukland Museum: The Hybridiser
http://vimeo.com/6580702

Mgestyk
http://www.mgestyk.com/videos.html

mt Multitouch Table
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCpzZk0JNOw

From Emerging Technologies class at WOU, Prof. Mary Bucy.

Welcome to Family Reading Night

Welcome family and friends to our Annual Family Reading Night.

Please feel free to look around, talk to teachers, and eat pizza. In addition, please have your student and any children under 18 pick a book to take home off the table in the back.

We also have some reading and writing info on the front table next to the sign in sheet.

Thank you for being here! You are the best!

Downtown Learning Center Staff

What is the Message of This Poem?

Read over this poem and use the poetry plan to figure out what the author's message is. What is the author trying to say? Think especially about the last couple of lines.

Halloween

Mac Hammond

The butcher knife goes in, first, at the top
And carves out the round stemmed lid,
The hole of which allows the hand to go
In to pull the gooey mess inside, out -
The walls scooped clean with a spoon.
A grim design decided on, that afternoon,
The eyes are the first to go,
Isosceles or trapezoid, the square nose,
The down-turned mouth with three
Hideous teeth and, sometimes,
Round ears. At dusk it's
Lighted, the room behind it dark.
Outside, looking in, it looks like a
Pumpkin, it looks like ripeness
Is all. Kids come, beckoned by
Fingers of shadows on leaf-strewn lawns
To trick or treat. Standing at the open
Door, the sculptor, a warlock, drops
Penny candies into their bags, knowing
The message of winter: only the children,
Pretending to be ghosts, are real.

The poem is from this site: http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/108.html

Here is a link to the poetry plan

Fun Stuff to do Around Town

Just in case you haven't heard about some of the fun stuff going on around town, here is a link to a bunch of Halloween events. Click on a day on the calendar to see what the events on that day are all about.

Culture Shock's "13 Nights of Halloween" Calendar

2010-2011 School Year

We're back at it again this year, blogging our way to better writing. Students are doing a great job of logging into their blogs every day, coming up with things to write about, and practicing their editing skills. I'm so impressed with how well they do at this, even if they've never blogged before in their life. What great students I have! How did I get so lucky??

One of the things that I've noticed about student blogs is that each one is very different. Everyone has their own idea of how to create their daily paragraph. Each student has their own voice that comes through in their writing and makes it their own. Writers talk about it all the time: finding your voice. On their blogs, students are able to find their own voice, while still learning basic writing and editing skills.

I think learning how to express yourself in writing is one of the things that makes education so crucial. By writing down our experiences and thoughts on things, we not only leave our mark in the world, but we learn to think through our own experiences and elaborate on our opinions. Writing makes us better thinkers, and the world can always use better thinkers!

Some Books You Just Might LOVE!

It's important to find books that you will enjoy reading. If you don't enjoy it, you probably won't do it, so read something interesting! Something that makes you want to keep turning pages.

Here are a few selections of authors, books, and links that might lead you to books you will love.

Fantasy

Authors:

Joe Abercrombie

Brandon Sanderson

J.R.R. Tolkein (Lord of the Rings)

Robert Jordan

Lists:

Here is one person's top ten list of fantasy authors.

And here is a top 25 fantasy list

Vampire

Yes, I'm making this it's own section because it has gotten so big lately

Authors:

Stephanie Meyer (Twilight)

Kristin Cast

Mari Mancusi (Blood Coven Series)

Anne Rice (not new, but classic vampire stuff)

Here is a list of Vampire books and series for young adults. It's on the Monster Librarian site which also has a lot of other good lists.

Romance

Young Adult:

Meg Cabot

Rachel Hawthorne

Catherine Clark

Loiuse Rennison

Jodie Lynn Anderson

Sarah Dessen

Adult:

Nora Roberts

Jayne Anne Krentz

Catherine Anderson

Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Susan Anderson

Karen Robards

Elizabeth Lowell

Historical Romance:

Amanda Quick

Diana Gabaldon (time travel/historical)

Julie Garwood

Christina Dodd

Teresa Medeiros

Here is a site with a good list of favorites for all styles of adult romance.

Chick Lit

I know this sounds a lot like romance, but it really focuses on women's issues in general. Its fun stuff to read. A lot of the heroines enjoy fashion or shopping or other girly stuff!

Here is a link that will give you more info on chick literature than I ever could.

And here are some of my favorite chick lit authors:

Jane Green

Jennifer Weiner

Sophie Kinsella

Mystery

Sue Grafton

Mary Higgins Clark

Agatha Christie (old, but classic mystery)

Patricia Cornwall

Carl Hiaasen (humor/mystery)

John Grisham

Janet Evanovich (humor, not scary, but a great read!)

Tom Clancy (military thriller/mystery)

And here is a list of some other types and styles of mysteries.

Enjoy your reading!!

More Anne Frank/Holocaust Resources

This is the link I showed you in class yesterday:

http://www.annefrankguide.net/en-GB/bronnenbank.asp

Here are a few more places to find good information:

The 8 Stages of Genocide

Info about Concentration Camps

Holocaust Survivor Stories

Interview with Anne's Father:

Field Trip to the Capitol

Shandi did a great job of getting right up close and taking some great pictures for us!

Love is...

...when your sister sends over a care package of soup and salad when you're sick.

...your parents bringing you medicine when you aren't feeling well

...friends calling up just to say hi

...a little niece's eyes lighting up and yelling your name when you come in a room.

New Literature Unit: Diary of Anne Frank

We will be starting a new literature book this week. We are going to be reading The Diary of a Young Girl about Anne Frank. During this unit we will be studying some background information about the Holocaust as well.

Here are some good online resources for finding out more about the Holocaust and Anne Frank:

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Anne Frank Educational Trust

Holocausthistory.net

List of other resources from Anne Frank Educational Trust

There are lots of other online resources out there, but these are a few good ones from trustworthy sources.

Rebekah's Books for Break

One of the things I look forward to most on vacations is staying up late reading. I love that I don't have to worry about getting up in the morning, so I can stay up really late reading a good book that has grabbed my attention. A couple of the books I plan to read this break are:

Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner
Finger Lickin' Fifteen by Janet Evanovich

Other than that, I'll just see what books catch my eye at the Book Bin or the library and I'll read what I feel like at the moment.

Think About Books for Break

Okay, we are coming up on a 2 week vacation and I don't think any of you want to lose the progress you have made in class so far. I know it's busy and it's easy to forget about reading and school, but I would like to help you make a plan for the break.

In your blog today:

1. Read other student's blogs about books they have read and make at least one comment.

2. Write down which books you think you might like to try reading over break. It can be one that you are currently reading, one that you borrow from me, or anything else you have at home or can borrow.

3. Also, tell me when you plan to do your reading. You should try to read 15 minutes to 1 hour per day.

Fix My Paragraph

The following paragraph has 10 mistakes. Copy the paragraph, paste it into your blog, and fix all 10 mistakes.

Indian reservations are areas of land given to Native American tribes by the united states government. In the 1850-60s the government decided to move indians to land that were unwanted by settlers many of the tribes did not want to move to new lands and refused. Soon the government sent in the U.s. Army force them to move to the new reservation lands. this caused many bloody wars between the Indians and the U.S. Army. Eventually, most Indians did move to the reservations. Today, reservations are run by their own tribal council, and less than half of Indians live on the reservations. Many of the Indians who live off the reservations live in large western cities. Like Phoenix and Los angeles.

Welcome to Our Open House!

Thanks so much for coming and making education a priority. Please feel free to look around the site, have some pizza, and ask any questions you might have. If you want to know about your student's progress or have questions about the program, just ask any of the staff members here tonight.

New Book

We started a new book recently called The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian. It is a really fun book. The students love it and are asking to borrow it so they can take it home to read it.

This book is definitely for more mature young adults. I find that my late high-school age students from 16-20 are just the right age to be able to absorb it and also enjoy it.

Poetry

We've started our poetry unit for this term and it is going very well. We work off something I like to call "The Poetry Plan".

The Poetry Plan

Most people are scared of poetry, but you don’t need to be. Poetry can be hard to understand unless you know HOW to read it.

You will need to read the poem all the way through about 5 times. Yes, I said 5 times. The more you read it the easier it will be to understand.

The 1st time: Read for SOUND
Just read the poem to hear how it sounds the first time.
Listen to the rhythm
What's your first impression?

The 2nd time: Read for WORDS
Look for any words you don’t understand.
Try to figure out what the word means by looking at the words around it, breaking the word into pieces, or saying it different ways to see if it sounds familiar.

The 3rd time: Read LINE BY LINE
Stop at the end of every line and figure out what the line means.
Try to relate it to the lines before or after it.
Decide what you think the author is trying to say in each line.

The 4th time: Read for THEME (the author’s message)
Try to figure out what the author is trying to tell the reader through this poem.
Why did the author take the time to write this down?
What important thing did he/she want you to understand after reading it?

The 5th time: Put it all TOGETHER
How do you feel about the poem now compared to the first time you read it? Do you understand it better?
You should be so familiar with the poem now that it will be easy to answer questions about it.

1. Look over this chart.
2. Find at least 3 things you can learn from this chart.
3. Make a list of the three things you learned about obesity.

Back to School Speech

This Back-To-School speech by President Obama has been very controversial. What do you think about it?