The Bigger Picture

Congratulations, graduates!

Just remember...everything starts when this ends.

People have been wondering about their grades, so I decided to leave a "beacon" signalling when I finish each class. I will update this each time I have something to report.

Again, thank you for a wonderful year! (Words are inadequate - but they're what I work with!)

Period 2 Grades: Completed - June 13th, 2008
Period 3 Grades: Completed - June 14th, 2008
Period 5 Grades: Completed - June 17th, 2008
Period 6 Grades: Completed - June 17th, 2008

NOTE: SFHPers, you're bringing your A-game in the "Future Freaks Me Out" thread; whether they're optimistic or pessimistic, almost every post has been excellent, and many have been revealing and/or moving. I've never had a better time reading a thread.

NOTE 2: I need essays from the following people who have not discussed extensions with me:
Ruby C., Kevin K., Amanda M., Maansi R., Racha H., David A., Jessica T.
If you know any of them, please make sure they send them in tonight. Thank you.

The MLK selections can be downloaded in the American Lit section of my Classlink; you can find the file as "Letter from Birmingham Jail" here.

The Creative Project prompt can be downloaded here.

The Notebook Checklist is available in this thread's comment section.

Due Dates:

Monday: Print out MLK, bring to class; turn in resume and cover letter
Final Day: Creative Project presentation (3-5 minutes) and Notebook Check

To everything there is a season,
a time for every purpose under the sun.
A time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
a time to kill and a time to heal ...
a time to weep and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn and a time to dance ...
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to lose and a time to seek;
a time to rend and a time to sew;
a time to keep silent and a time to speak;
a time to love and a time to hate;
a time for war and a time for peace.
- Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

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What time is it now?

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We’ll be saying goodbye when I see you next week.

In nine days, you’ll leave class after a bell for the last time. You’ll walk out the door into a sunny afternoon. Thirty-six hours later, the Arcadia High School campus will be a relic of your past – an immediate past, but a relic all the same.

Since there’s no moving backward through time, we might as well look forward to the rapidly approaching future. (After all, it’s not like anyone tells you when it’s OK to start making a difference – you just start making one.)

1984 represents a very dark view of the future. I assume that each of you see our likely future differently…but I have no idea what you see when I ask you to think about what the world will look like in a decade. (Did you think the world would look this way when you were nine?)

That’s the subject of the final (official) blog post: What will the future look like?

While our class looks to the past (via our literature) in order to grapple with important questions, I’m interested to learn what each of you thinks about the future. Our class is about searching for human potential; do you think humanity will reach it within your lifetime?

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The formal questions:

+How do you see the next few years playing out for yourself? What do you expect or hope will happen from a personal standpoint?

+ What will the country look like in five or ten years? What will you be talking about when you come back for your reunions? What about when your children finish studying SFHP and graduate from high school?

+Are we moving in a positive direction as human beings – getting closer to fulfilling our potential, whatever that may mean – or sliding backwards? Do you feel hopeful about the future? Worried? Conflicted? Pessimistic?

+What do you think the future holds for us – and how will you be part of it?

Since this is the last official blog you’ll write for the class, I hope you’ll put a lot of thought into what you choose to write. Some of the questions are similar to ones I posed on the extra-credit Ditch Day prompt, so I’d appreciate it if those of you working on both make sure your responses are distinctly different from one another. Please conduct all discussions as respectfully as you usually do.

The usual guidelines regarding how many questions to respond to, post length, feedback, etc. apply. This response is due by Friday, June 6th at 11:59pm. No late blogs will be read.

There will be another post next week…and after that, we’ll let the Bigger Picture sleep for a while. (It’s worked hard this semester, and deserves a break.)

Good luck!

THIS IS THE STUDY SESSION THREAD. Rules, extra credit guidelines, and more after the jump!

Thanks to everyone who participated. I hope it was useful! Back to grading essays...

4:52pm: Added information on the "Star Point" themes.
5:21pm: Added information on the "Humanity" theme to the "Themes: General" section.
5:25pm: Added "Characters" section, along with information on Winston and Julia.
6:00pm: Added O'Brien and Parson to the "Characters" section.
6:20pm: Added Syme and Ampleforth to the "Characters" section.
6:35pm: Added "Oppression" and "Loss" to the "Themes: General" section.
6:51pm: Added "Corruption" to the "Themes: General" section and Charrington to the "Characters" section.
7:44pm: Added "Fear" and "Memory" to the "Themes: General" section.
7:57pm: Added "Conflict" and "Freedom" to the "Themes: General" section.

That's it! I worked very hard on this - I hope you find it to be useful on your essays and creative projects as well as for your tests.

The questions from the Peace Days and Battleship are included after the jump. More material will be posted on Friday. I will also host a study session after school tomorrow for about an hour in L8, and will host an online study session from 5-8pm on Sunday. As I will explain in class tomorrow, the study session will be the last opportunity for you to earn extra credit this semester, so it will behoove you to show up and participate.

The copiers are down, and I won't be back on Tuesday. I retyped this 6-Trait rubric after school today, and it took literally two-and-a-half hours to write and format the thing in Word. (I'm clearly not as computer-savvy as I'd like to be, as I'm sure there had to be an easier way to do this than what I did.) Anyway, please help justify the endeavor by printing two copies of the rubric and bringing them to class on Tuesday; you must edit and evaluate your groupmates' papers (unless you're in a group of four, in which case you will grade two of the three possible papers) in order to receive credit for your rough draft. If you do not have a rough draft, you are required to edit and evaluate all of your groupmates' papers; those who finish editing early may finish reading the novel if they feel the need to do so.

You may download the rubric from my Classlink site here. I can't edit my SFHP Classlink for some weird reason, so I had to stash it away in my American Literature page.

Speaking of American Literature, my junior students are about to write personal narratives for the first time! They could really use some excellent models - and even models with flaws we can dissect (and avoid) can be useful! If you would like to offer one of your personal narratives from first semester as a model, please e-mail it to me over the weekend. I will award five points of extra credit to any student whose paper can be (and is) used to help my other students succeed.

Thanks, and have a wonderful weekend!

The usual rules apply - at least two seven-sentence, interesting, well-written paragraphs per response, complete with feedback. Your writings are expected by 11:59pm on Monday, May 26th.

The following was sent to me yesterday. [Interested students should attach their tickets to their versions of a three-paragraph reflective response (although they shouldn't simply reflect on what they saw - I'm most interested in how they related to the show, what they "took away" from the performance, and how it relates to our current novel) and submit the whole thing by Tuesday, May 13th.]

OK, time to take a break from tallying points for the Winning the World teams. Here's the blog!

Guidelines: You are required to write a response (to any or all of the questions that follow) that is at least two seven-sentence paragraphs long. Posts will be graded based on mechanics and content; well-written posts containing empty thoughts will not receive full credit, nor will terribly-written posts that contain absolutely brilliant material.

You are also required to leave three “feedback” tags by the Thursday night deadline. Rather than say “This is mine!” before moving on, write a couple of sentences of honest feedback to the author of posts you like, dislike, or inspire you to think.

A couple of notes on the tags: a) I do not expect to see a single “This is mine!” (or variation) in the thread; b) remain civil while offering feedback, but write honestly; c) you do not need to respond to the feedback on your post, although it is encouraged; and d) posts will earn extra credit AND extra game resources – so you may not tag your teammates, and you should probably avoid tagging your opponents!

Now, for the post itself:

Please remember to submit your essay to turnitin.com (the same way you did for the research paper) by 1:56pm tomorrow.

I will not be collecting a hard copy of your final draft, and I do not need to see your rough draft (unless you were absent and never sent me a copy).

If you lose your packet, you can download it here.

If you have questions or concerns regarding the way the rough draft was scored today, please read my response to Stanley Y's comment in the "1984 Reading Schedule" thread. If you still have questions after reading it, please e-mail me or speak with me tomorrow!