Thursday, February 24, 2011

Drafting day... part 2.

Good morning,

Today you will continue drafting on your Nature Writing Assignment. (Yes that link goes to the assignment.)

Remember this is the last day you get in class before the draft is due Monday. Tomorrow we meet in the PAC for a counseling assembly.

At the end of the period write an entry in your English Journal. Answer the questions below.
  1. What are you writing about for your paper?
  2. How is it going?
  3. What do you still need to do?

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Drafting Day

Yesterday we went over your Nature Writing Assignment. If you were absent please look at it and ask me questions.

Before you get started on your draft please answer the questions on this form about your progress.

Start your draft and share it with me today. Name it correctly please. (Period #, your name or initials, Nature Writing.)

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Ready, set, go...

Good morning,

This is going to be a busy week.
Tuesday (today)
  • We will briefly review your quiz from Friday.
  • You will present your dialogs with John Muir.
  • We will go over the requirements for your Nature Writing Assignment.The draft is due Monday!
Wednesday (tomorrow)
I will give you time to work on gathering your ideas and drafting.
We might have visitors.

Thursday I will be on campus, but I need to go visit 10th grade classes. Another teacher will cover our class. You will have an English Journal assignment and time for drafting.

Friday we must attend an assembly in the PAC about your classes for next year. Start thinking about what classes you'd like to take and what questions you have for counselors.

Friday, February 18, 2011

Dialogs from John Muir

Good morning,

This week we have been reading John Muir, specifically an excerpt from chapter 10 of The Mountains of California. You can view the excerpt here, but it is shared with you in your writing group folder for annotation. You can also see my sample dialog here.

Today I'd like you to do a quick assessment before you continue working on your dialog.
Assessment on Muir

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Walden

No examination of American writings about nature would be complete without looking at Thoreau's most famous work Walden. Today we will read and listen to some excerpts.  You will need your English Journal open as well as a tab for the text. Between sections of the text I will give you two minutes to quick write as much as you can about your impressions of what we just read.

If you are waiting for others to be ready to begin visit the map at the bottom of the blog and find the marker for Walden Pond. Zoom in and switch to satilite view to see the place Thoreau was writing about.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Looking for Nature in American Literature

Good morning,
   This week you have been looking for evidence about what various groups believed about nature. If you haven't been here check your "View Only" folder in Google Docs and look for a new document called Nature in American Lit. Make a copy of it. Share the copy with me and work on getting the answers. You're most likely to find the answers by looking again at the things we've read by people from those groups and "reading between the lines" to see what they thought about nature. Make sure you have a quotation to support your finding and that you cite the source of the quote. You can also use the wider internet, but you are unlikely to find exact answers that way. This is not easy. You have to work at it.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Crossing the Plains, 1865

Good morning,
   Lots of fun last week with Lewis and Clark. You got to practice finding assumptions and statements about nature. Let's try it again and take it a step further.
   About 60 years after Lewis and Clark a teenage girl named Sarah crossed the plains with her family in a wagon train headed for Montana.  She kept a diary. 
  1. As you read keep looking for ASSUMPTIONS and evidence of NATURE.
  2. When you are done highlighting paste the URL in your English Journal.
  3. Then copy one of your assumptions into your EJ also.
  4. EXPLAIN why you think the part you copied is an assumption.
Awesome Highlighter
Sarah Raymond's Diary (Note the first three paragraphs are an introduction before her actual diary entries start.)






Friday, February 4, 2011

Moving West With Lewis and Clark

Good morning,
   In 1803 the United States bought the Louisiana Territory from France.  In 1804  Lewis and Clark set out to explore this new territory overland. They were supposed to determine what resources the United States had acquired through this purchase.

Today we will look at some of the entries in the journals of Lewis and Clark. As you read through these look for two things:
1. Any statements they make that relate to the natural space they were in.
2. Any statements that reflect their assumptions or beliefs.

We will use Awesome Highlighter for this today.
  1. Go to The Journals of Lewis and Clark. 
  2. Paste the URL for the journals into Awesome Highlighter.
  3. Highlight statements about NATURE in GREEN 
  4. Highlight ASSUMPTIONS or BELIEFS in YELLOW 
  5. When you are DONE put the URL for your work today in to your English Journal. 
  6. Example from Mrs. R.
Standard RC 2.5 Analyze an author's implicit and explicit philosophical assumptions and beliefs about a subject.


Thursday, February 3, 2011

Red Jacket 1805

Good morning,


With your group finish annotating Red Jacket's Lecture to a Missionary.
Write an entry in your English Journal about his speech. Answer the questions below.
  1. Briefly summarize his speech.
  2. What do you think is his strongest argument? Why?
  3. Do you think he is right?
  4. How does Red Jacket feel about white settlers?
  5. What assumptions or beliefs did you see in his speech?

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Assumptions and Beliefs

Don't forget the differences between assumptions and beliefs.