Today we took the mock STAAR exam for first through fourth periods. Thank you all for your hard work and diligence – the other proctors were very impressed with how seriously you were working.

In sixth and seventh periods, we will be watching Morgan Freeman’s “Through the Wormhole” (the episode on Free Will).

Homework for tonight is the next reading guide – Reading Guide – Pages 159-189. Also – I told you I would reveal to you the purpose of the paper bags. They will be your Valentine’s mailboxes! So, please bring your paper bag back to school tomorrow with your name on it, and as much decoration as you would like (please have some decoration!).

It was way better seing you guys today than it was sitting at the DPS and the bank yesterday! And I really appreciated all of your suggestions for how I should have handled the criminals!

Okay, so a rundown of what happened today:

1. First, we talked about the scoliosis screening that is going to happen in class on February 24. I gave you a letter to take home to your parents. If they would like to apply for a waiver for you, they must contact the school by February 12.
2. Next, all of my English students will be taking a practice STAAR exam tomorrow. Please meet at 7:40 in the multi-purpose room (over by the auditorium). You will be excused from your periods 1 through 4 tomorrow, and will be released at the regular lunch time. You need to bring pencils, a sharpener (if your pencils are not mechanical), and a highlighter. You may bring a clean snack (nothing covered in cheese or wet) and a bottle of water (*water* – not Gatorade, or Coke, or anything else). This will count for a grade, so it’s important that you take it seriously.
3. For the first part of today, we took our vocabulary quiz over the ICB 1B words. If you missed it, you must come make it up on Friday during lunch, otherwise it will be a zero.
4. After you finished the quiz, you had two things to do, and I let you choose which was for in class and which was for homework. The first was the next ICB reading guide (Reading Guide – Pages 123-155 – and here’s an electronic copy of yesterday’s, since I was out – Reading Guide – Pages 100-123).
5. The second was making a sheet of valentines, which I will copy for you to distribute to your friends. You will create a single-page document that has six valentines on it (they can all be the same one). Your valentines must have an original (not something you found on the Internet!) pun or poem, a graphic, and your first and last name, so that when you hand them out people know who gave them.

So both your reading guide and the sheet of valentines are due to me tomorrow.

Remember – MPR at 7:40 tomorrow – don’t be late!

I’m going to be out unexpectedly tomorrow (my purse was stolen yesterday, and I need to take care of shutting down accounts and getting new IDs), so please make sure to bring your ICB book with you to class – you should have a lot of reading time. (Please also remind your classmates, if you can.)

As an optional extra credit assignment, watch the film Minority Report over the weekend and respond to the following question in a highlighted PIE paragraph (P, I, E, I, E, I, E):

How does Minority Report suggest that human beings have free will?

You must turn this assignment in via Turnitin.com by Monday at 12:30 PM. Make sure to write at the bottom of your assignment whether you want it to count for 15 extra points on your next vocabulary quiz or if you would like it to replace a zero on a daily grade/homework assignment.

You can rent this film from Amazon Instant or iTunes for $2.99.

For the first half of class today, we read an article about choice and responsibility as it relates to a recent crime – a wealthy teenage boy who killed four people while driving drunk. He received no jail time because his lawyers argued that he suffered from “affluenza” – he was unable to distinguish right from wrong because he had such a priviledged background. Here are those materials:

Affluenza Article

Affluenza Article Questions

For the rest of class, we worked on comics for vocabulary words. Your vocabulary homework assignment for this weekend is to use every word in some combination of comics and sentences. Your assignment must be turned in through Turnitin.com. To make comics, go to this website. Then, here are the next steps:

1. After you have finished your comic, click the “next” arrow.
2. Go the the blue Windows circle at the bottom of your computer. In the search bar, look up “snipping tool.” (You can “pin” the snipping tool to your dock by dragging it from the menu to the gray strip at the bottom of your screen.)
3. Use the cursor to select your comic. A new window will pop up with your selection. Choose “copy” from the toolbar, and then paste it into your Word document.

Today in class, students wrote their final drafts of their essays on choice and personal responsibility, and listened to the first half of a podcast on the same issue (the second half is for homework tonight). Here is the link to that podcast, and here are the questions:

Radiolab Choice Podcast

Today in class, we worked on revising the rough drafts of your essays on choice and personal responsibility. Here is the handout with the strategies that we discussed:

Revision Handout

Please make sure that you’ve marked up the changes that you are going to make on your final draft – I’ll give you a chance to write that tomorrow. (However, that should not be a time-intensive process – you should come to class with all of the changes you know you need to make on your paper. Basically, you should just take 15 or 20 minutes to write the final essay nicely on a new sheet.)

Homework for tonight is the next reading guide for ICB:

Reading Guide – Pages 77-100

As I have mentioned in class, I’ll be a doctor’s appointment in the morning, so I won’t see periods 1, 3, and 4 until Friday. Everyone, if you would like to bring headphones or earbuds, your assignment after you are finished with your final draft and your homework will be to listen to a podcast. (And I’ll also let you listen to music as you write your final draft.)

Today we took a reading check over the first 42 pages of In Cold Blood. If you missed this because you were absent, you must come make it up Friday during lunch. (That is English’s dedicated day – the work that you need to do for this class has priority over all others during Friday’s lunch.) If you don’t come make it up on that day, you will not receive credit!

With the rest of the period, students wrote their rough drafts of their essays on choice and personal responsibility. It’s important that those are complete by the time you come to class tomorrow because Wednesday’s lesson will be all about revision.

Homework for tonight is the reading guide for the next section of the book. Here’s an electronic copy:

Reading Guide – Pages 48-74

Is it possible that there could be another reading check over this material? It is entirely possible. Hint, hint, hint, hint, hint.

For the first three days of this week, we will be working on a STAAR/SAT-style expository essay on the question of to what extent individuals are responsible for the choices that they make. (This will tie in very nicely to our study of In Cold Blood, where we consider whether the killers are responsible for their actions.)

Today we focused on pre-writing. Here are electronic copies of both the prompt and the pre-writing packet:

Expository Essay Prompt – Responsibility and Choice

WITS responsibility essay prewriting

Your pre-writing packet needs to be complete by the time you come to class tomorrow – we will be spending most of Tuesday writing a first draft, and then Wednesday we will work on revision.

I also want to highly recommend that you make sure you have read through page 48 by tomorrow in ICB. (Hint, hint.)

We got laptops today! Hurray!

Getting them distributed and everyone connected to Sky Drive took most of the day, so we didn’t have a lesson.

As a reminder about homework for this weekend, first period needs to read pages 24-48 and complete the reading guide (see yesterday’s post). All other classes need to complete the “helicopter scene” writing assignment (see yesterday’s post). A few reminders about that:

• You need to be describing an actual place, not a made-up region.
• Your focus for this writing assignment is just description – don’t worry about telling a story.
• Try using the pre-writing suggestions to help you generate ideas.
• Remember to start out broad and zoom in.

Please bring me a typed copy on Monday.