Well, it looks like we’re going to miss both the Good Friday and the Memorial Day holidays.

But here are some ways you could make the most of your time off!

1. Do the extra credit I offered by watching the State of the Union Address (see the post before this one). Again, for those of you reading this, would you please make a point of telling your friends about this, since we won’t have school tomorrow and I really want everyone to be able to take advantage of this opportunity?

2. Watch all of the “My Fair Lady” musical with Audrey Hepburn, which is in my opinion one of the best pieces of art from the 20th century:

3. Study for your vocabulary quiz on Wednesday, or finish your sentences if somehow you haven’t taken care of that already.

4. Get a good start on reading In Cold Blood – you’ll thank yourself later. **Here’s something I wanted to mention – that book starts off slowly. The second half is the better half. Don’t give up on it. The biggest thing to worry about in the beginning is keeping track of the different characters that are introduced.

See y’all Wednesday!

Here’s how you can get 15 (FIFTEEN! I’m offering a ton because I think this is important) points of extra credit on this week’s vocabulary quiz:

Tomorrow (Tuesday, January 28), watch the President’s State of the Union Address. If you don’t have cable, you should be able to do that here, or I would bet that YouTube will be streaming it live.

As you watch, take notes in the form of a sentence outline. You can see an example of how to do that here. Note – it needs to be a sentence outline, not a topic outline. I highly recommend that you type this, as making an outline from a live speech is the kind of thing where it’s helpful to be able to go back and make adjustments. Also, typing it as you watch would be helpful because the only way you can submit this is through turnitin.com (so, note – your outline needs to not look like your friend’s outline). The deadline to submit will be 12:30 PM on Wednesday.

Also, your outline needs to have a thesis – what is the one big message that you think the President is trying to get across? And just to reiterate, the point of this activity is not to critique the speech, but instead to practice accurate note-taking skills.

I really, really hope that you guys choose to do this. Those of you who are reading this, would you please do me a favor and share this with your compadres who might not check the website as frequently as you do, since I won’t be at school tomorrow to announce this to everyone?

And hey, just because we talked about this in most classes today, here’s that scene from “My Fair Lady”: