My Name

Today, after we read the next few chapters in The House on Mango Street, we are going to get started on a new prompt for our memoir projects. You will be writing about your own name, and what it means to you.

To get you started, here are a few online databases of name meanings and origins. Browse these sites for your name and see what they have to say. What does your name stand for? Is it a direct translation of a word? What nationality is it? Use the information you find to give you a starting point for this writing piece.

This link goes to a list of baby names and their meanings, but clicking on "More info" will give you lots of specific facts about the origin of your name, its translation(s) and its use throughout history!

Behindthename.com is a more adult-oriented name origin website, with some pretty comprehensive histories of names.

This site is a database of the meanings and origins of last names.


Have fun with these! See you in class,

-Mr. Thomas

Beginning Our Rebel Research

After reading another chapter in The Hunger Games, we are going to introduce the next big project in this class, our Rebel Research Project.

For this project, you will choose people who, in the past, have rebelled against their governments, their societies, and their cultures. You will find information about one influential person that interests you, researching things like the country they come from, their lives, their accomplishments, and their struggles.

Rather than finding these facts and fitting them into a long essay, however, we are going to rebel against the normal assessment and create a graphical representation of the research we have done. To do this, we are going to use Comic Life.

The above "Rebel Research Project" link brings up a list of the people you will be able to research, along with a short blurb about who they were and what they did. The details of this assignment will be further outlined with a handout in class today. See you all then!

-Mr. Thomas

Dia de los Muertos and Concrete Calaveras

Hi everyone,

Though we are still about twenty pages from the part of Trash that goes into detail about the holiday celebration of Dia de los Muertos, (the Day of the Dead) I wanted to take advantage of the fact that today is Poetry Friday! We are going to have an activity related to this significant portion of the book (which we will most likely end up reading as we complete this activity today, so it will all work out!)

So our characters are about to find themselves in the middle of a Latino celebration that takes place on November 2. Though it is not made clear in which country the events of the story are taking place, there are many countries which celebrate the Day of the Dead. For the purposes of our assignment, we'll stick with a loose interpretation of the traditions that the characters in the book follow on this day. 

The Day of the Dead is a holiday season which is set aside to honor family members or other loved ones who have passed away. The celebrations often take place at the very graves of the honored dead, and there are traditionally all manner of offerings and poems/prayers laid down to honor their memories and spirits.

In keeping with our penchant for integrating artwork with our poetry, we are going to make calaveras (decorated skulls) and conjure poems that are either based on characters in our story, or written for loved ones we've lost. 

You see, one type of offering brought to the graves by the families of the deceased is any variation on a calavera, a decorated skull that can be made out of anything from paper to lumps of painted sugar. These can be accompanied by poems as well--poems that are meant to convince the spirit of the dead to come back to the world of the living! 

To make our own poems, we need to consider who we want them written to. An interesting part of writing a calavera is that it can be addressed both to someone who is still alive or someone who has died. If you want, you can write a poem for someone in your family or a character in the story. If you choose the latter, you may need to mention things about the life of that character that you either mourn or appreciate.

Once the poems are written (instructions & details to follow) we will turn them into concrete poems in the shape of skulls, and do our decorating in and around the poems. It will be interesting to see whether or not anyone tries to make their calavera look like the character their poem is addressed to!

-Mr. Thomas

The Hunger Games: How do you rank?

Today is an early-release day, so we are going to use the first part of class to play a little online game based on The Hunger Games. To play, you must answer a series of 8 multiple choice questions that show how you would react in arena-like scenarios. After you've answered, your likelihood of winning will be calculated. I'll warn you, though, the game is hard. If your chances are anything less than 100%, you LOSE!

Here is the link to the game: http://www.scholastic.com/thehungergames/games/play.htm

Once you get to the webpage, you will be playing the second game that appears--the one called "Tribute Trials"

Afterwards we'll do a little bit of reflection:

• What are the skills that you are required to have in order to make it out alive?
• Why would these skills be useful to you if you were a tribute? Name three in particular that you feel are your greatest strengths.
• Lastly, which skills does Katniss have? We know of a few by now, but we'll have to wait and see how she'll fare in different scenarios. Are there any skills that the online game refers to that Katniss doesn't have?

See you all in class for a little while, 

-Mr. Thomas

Enter: The Arena

Hi Everyone,

Welcome back from the long weekend. I doubt we'll see another snow cancellation anytime soon, so I hope you made the most of it!

Last class we read the first part of chapter 11 in The Hunger Games, in which the games kick off with a violent, bloody start.

We're going to read some more today, but I'm going to graciously take an idea from Ms. Audy (last year's student teacher) and do a little activity where we start asking questions about our reading.

We will loosely break into groups of 2 (depending on attendance) and each group or person will be assigned a category in which to ask questions about the reading:

This business of the "Death Recap"
Survival/fighting strategies of the tributes
The Love Triangle: Katniss, Peeta, Gale
The Cornucopia and the Bloodbath
Alliances and how they're made

After reading through a bit more or Katniss's adventures in the arena, we are going to take a break and get into groups for these categories. Each group or person will collaborate and come up with two questions pertaining to something in the area of their category. Once the questions have been written down, the sheet gets passed to the left and one of those questions will be answered by the next group. The papers will be passed to the left once more, and when all questions have been answered we will review them in class with a discussion.

A few good examples from Ms. Audy's class were:

Should Katniss have taken more at the Cornucopia?

What are some strengths and weaknesses of Katniss's strategy?

-Mr. Thomas

Personal Belief Activity

Hi Everybody,

As we near the end of the third quarter, we're going to take a step back and take a look at some human rights issues we've discussed while reading Trash. 

Today we are going to have an in-class activity which will let us voice some of the opinions that I know all of you have. As we've read this book, we've encountered and discussed a variety of humanitarian disasters that are taking place all around the world: Corrupt law enforcement, child imprisonment, dumpsite children, shattered family structures, etc. During each discussion, it was easy to see that you all feel very strongly about each of these issues.

So in class we are going to each consider one of these issues by writing beliefs up on posters labeled:
     Corrupt Law Enforcement
     Child Imprisonment
     Dumpsite Children/Shattered Families

We are then going to write a personal belief statement which explains how we feel about one of these issues. After this part of the activity, we will visit a separate poster labeled, Why? where we will consider the reasons these things are happening. After we've had a discussion about the many different elements that build up to these situations, we will revisit our statement. Has it changed since you've considered some of the reasons we've come up with?

-Mr. Thomas

Child Imprisonment (continued)

Hello Sophomores,

Today we are going to learn some more about child imprisonment.

As we've read Andy Mulligan's Trash, we've gradually seen more of the country that exists beyond Behala and the Smoky Mountain dump site. Now we will get up-close and personal with the nation's prison system. In our reading, a few of the characters are brought into the heart of a prison that is overcrowded with children and adults alike. We have already focused on the corruption of law enforcement in this book, but it is important that we become more informed about the extent of the problems of the judicial system.

The following is a slideshow of photos that a journalist took while visiting Cambodia. The journalist was working with a volunteer organization that provides help for children whose families have been destroyed by imprisonment or who have been imprisoned themselves:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/audioslideshow/2010/feb/03/child-prisoners-cambodia

We are going to watch this slideshow in class and have some discussion about the living conditions and the failings of the judicial system in Cambodia. The video will serve as a way to move the discussion in the right place, so that we can look at this testimonial from an imprisoned Cambodian woman who was forced to bring her child into prison with her, during much of her 16 year sentence. 

http://www.worldwideopen.org/uploads/resources/files/827/PRIS011_LICADHO_Report_Prison_2008.pdf

The link accesses a PDF of this woman's testimony, which we will look at in some detail in class. We will be linking the information we have learned with an activity as well. 

-Mr. Thomas

Shakespeare Scavenger Hunt Quiz

Hi, class!

aw yeah

Below you will find all of the categories for the Shakespeare research webquest that we've been assembling for the last few class periods. They are listed in the same order as on the last blog post, only now, each topic is hyperlinked to one of your classmate's blogs! You're going to have to search through the facts that they have in their posts in order to answer the questions they've come up with.

All of the questions are in quiz form, conveniently in one word document which Mrs. DeRaps has sent to you via Email. Look through the list of questions and start searching these blogs for the answers.

All you need to do is copy and paste those answers into the word document. 

Yes, this quiz will be graded, so you will need to work individually and quietly until you are all finished. Happy hunting!


Shakespeare's Biography

Shakespeare's Biography (2)

Queen Elizabeth I and the Elizabethan Period

Renaissance Italy

The Plague

Elizabethan Sports

The Globe Theater

The Globe Theater (2)

Elizabethan Women/Hairstyles

Fashion/Color of Clothing

Food

Torture and Punishment

Marriage

Love


When you're all done, print your completed word doc or email it to me and check in with me.
-Mr. Thomas

Renaissance Italy

there are 3 major areas of the renaissance. early, high renaissance late renaissance.

members of the early renaissance
donatello in sculptur
brunelleeschi in architecure
masaccio in panting

the high renaissance
from 1495 to 1520
leonardo de vici
micholangalo
raphial
titian

late renaissance
bologna

-14tg

Poetry Friday: Incident On the Road To the Capital

Today we are going to get started on a Poetry Friday assignment. I am borrowing this assignment from Mrs. DeRaps from a previous post, so if you would like to see the original for comparison purposes, feel free to visit the link!

We are going to read and take a good look at Dara Wier's unique poem Incident On the Road To the Capital. What do you notice about this poem that is much different from the others we've read in this class? This happens to be a "prose poem," a type of prose characterized by having poetic imagery and concentrated lines. The lines sound more like sentences, and we get a much clearer sense of story in this poem than we usually do. Though, in this poem, a lot of the guesswork has been taken out of deciphering the action, there's still much more to examine in this peculiar scene Wier has crafted.

The Poetry Friday assignment will be to adapt this poem to fit the plight of a tribute in The Hunger Games. It can be any of our main characters, but it can also involve tributes from other districts. Study the poem line by line and tell the story of the tribute, explaining his or her story. If you decide to write about another district, use your map of Panem to include some details about that district in your poem.

I will re-visit this post after we've finished this assignment and update with the approach we decide to take. Until then, have fun with this!

-Mr. Thomas

Child Imprisonment

Hello Sophomores,

Today, though we only have you for the first 30 minutes of class, we are going to get familiar with the problem of the imprisonment and abuse of children in other countries. We touched base on this during our early release class by reading through a summarized report by Human Rights Watch and highlighted and discussed some important facts.

Now we are going to look at some first-hand testimonies from children imprisoned in Cambodia, not in words, but in pictures. These pictures were collected as part of an art exhibit called "Children in Prison--No Place to Grow Up."

http://www.noedhjaelp.dk/extra/flash/slideshow/2008-cambodia-childreninprison/

Your assignment will be to make one of these pictures, from the point of view of any of the characters you have read about this year. Here is a list of things you have read in case you need to be reminded:

Night
Amnesty International Short Stories:
     "Prisoner of Conscience"
     "Forced Arranged Marriage"
     "Child Slave Labor"
Sold
Trash


In addition to this picture, you are going to write a list poem (I will give you the format in class) that takes into account the rights that these characters have lost. In four stanzas, you will be arguing for these characters and their rights, explaining what they should be allowed to do as children, and what should not be happening to them as children.


-Mr. Thomas

Getting To Know The Bard

Hello everyone!
I hope you all had a relaxing and enjoyable weekend! Once we're finished with Of Mice and Men, we're going to get started on Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. 

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1883770,00.html

To get our feet wet, we're going to spend class today completing a webquest that will help us get more acquainted with Shakespeare and the world in which he lived. Each of you will be working on certain aspects of Shakespeare's life, using your blogs to report out what you've learned from these resources. Here are the basic instructions:

1. Click on your link

2. Choose 4 to 6 of the most important facts or ideas related to your topic

3. Rephrase and retype those facts into a blog post

4. Find a photo, drawing, or art piece related to your topic and upload it into your blog post

5. Make the title of your post the same as your topic

6. Write a sentence or two about one or two of the facts you've located (is this similar to today or different from today?)

Shakespeare's Biography

Shakespeare's Biography (2)

Queen Elizabeth I and the Elizabethan Period

Renaissance Italy

The Plague

The Plague (2)

Elizabethan Sports

The Globe Theater

The Globe Theater (2)

Elizabethan Women

Fashion

Color of Clothing

Food

Torture and Punishment

Marriage

Love

Hairstyles


And for extra credit:
Shakespeare's Portrait
The Shakespearean Insult
Insult Generator
Happy researching!


-Mr. Thomas

Poetry Friday: Heather McHugh's "U-District Incident Report"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brucerobertson/268063523/in/set-72157600024188903/

Today we are going to read a satisfyingly dystopian poem by Heather McHugh.

The poem really embodies much of what we've been discussing while we read, in particular the abuse of technology, and the latest issue we will raise: the absence of individual freedom. We are going to keep these connections in mind while we each work on our own versions of this poem, which we will narrate from the perspective of someone from The Hunger Games.

One more day until winter break, everyone! 

Let's finish strong!

-Mr. Thomas

Hunger Games Recap

via

So there have been some absences lately, and I wanted to make a blog post that could be a place for anyone to catch up on the work we've been doing in class for the past week or so, in case you've missed anything. 

• As of 2/16 we've read up to page 61(Chapter 5) in The Hunger Games
• There is a list of attributes of dystopian literature that we are steadily working through, finding quotes that give examples of the elements as we read. The first attribute is: a Totalitarian Government. We have found at least 1 quote on this attribute so far.  
• We have found 2 quotes in the text that show evidence of Mass Poverty
• We have completed a survey about the ways we use technology in our daily lives. Over the next three days, we discussed the use and abuse of technology in the story. We found examples of technology as they came up in the text, taking a total of 3 quotes.  
• We made a GIST, or a guided summary, of one of two articles on the revolution in Egypt. Please follow the instructions on the GIST blog post if you are going to get it finished. During this class, we discussed some different representations of "hunger" in the story. This is not necessarily an indicator of a dystopian novel, but it is a story element that we need to bring attention to. In total, we found 2 quotes on "hunger."
• The latest thing we've read in class was an article called "Injustice on Our Plates," which shed some light on the food industry's unethical use of illegal immigrant laborers. We highlighted connections in the article to some portrayals of food in The Hunger Games. I will give you the article the next time I see you, since I don't have a digital copy to link here. 
• Lastly, we filled out a chart to see how many quotes we've found so far. Judging by this summary, everyone should have at least 8 total quotes:
  
  Totalitarian: (at least) 1
  Poverty: 2
  Abuse of Technology: 3
  Hunger: 2
  
  If you are missing quotes you need to find them. You can keep the charts in your folders to help you keep track of the quotes you have. I would like us to have 3 quotes for every word by the time we're all finished. 

On Friday we're going to introduce a new dystopian attribute: The Absence of Individual Freedom. It's also Poetry Friday so we'll do some work with a poem that deals with this issue! 

see you there, 

-Mr. Thomas

Valentine's Day, Mathematical Style

As a little surprise for our beloved math teachers, we're going to spend some time this morning creating little math valentines! I know that this is a bit of a stretch, but one fearless freshman lady and I have been working to create some love-ly options for you for your valentines. Here are some of your choices for your very own math-inspired valentines:

"The Meaning of Zero" by Amy Uyematsu

Some interesting math expressions from a variety of people

Select a line from a math love poem

Math N Love poem

Hopefully, these links will give you some inspiration for your valentines. If not, you're welcome to create your very own! We'll march over to the math room later today to drop off our valentines.

Hunger Games Technology (cont.)

During our last class, we took a survey about our technology usage and had a pretty lively discussion afterwards. We found some quotes from the latest read which related to the abuse of technology by the capitol, and along the way we got to talk a lot about some other ways that technology is represented in the book. You all gave 100%, and I can't thank you enough! Mrs. Miles (who was visiting our class) was also very impressed with your ideas and your enthusiasm for the book. Great job!

So today we are going to continue talking about technology, only now we are bringing in some bigger real-world connections.

We've had a little bit of discussion about the revolution in Egypt, and you might have recently heard that the revolution was successful in ending the 30-year reign of the country's president, Hosni Mubarak. To get  a better picture of the unraveling of the revolution (specifically the way technology factored into the uprising) we're going to do some guided summaries! (otherwise known as GISTs, I guess!)

We will be doing GISTs on these two articles:

Beginnings: internet shut-down

Mid-revolt

This is the first GIST I'm going to see in action, so bear with me for just a bit during class.

Basically, the goal is to find 8 important words in these articles that are the most important. Through group work and discussion, we will pare it down to five total words, and with that list of five words we will write a short summary of the entire article, incorporating those words in the summary. My hope is that we can finish in time to discuss these current events and connect them to the reading we will do at the end of class.

Until then, here is a map of the districts of Panem, the setting for our book. You'll each get a copy in class so we can follow along as we read.

And of course, happy Valentine's Day!

-Mr. Thomas

Introduction to "Trash" by Andy Mulligan

Hello Sophomores!

It's time to start our next book, and what better way to celebrate than to start with a new teacher? Mrs. Deraps is going to let me take the lead as we start reading Trash by Andy Mulligan, and with your help, I hope to make it a memorable (and, of course, educational) experience for all of us!

Trash is the story of a group of children in a third-world country who live on an extremely large dumpsite,  sifting through heaps of trash every day of their lives, searching for valuable materials that they can sell or trade to help their families. Places like the dumpsite in the story are all too real, however, and as this short documentary about a garbage dump in Cambodia shows us, there are untold numbers of sick and injured children who are abandoned or orphaned at a young age, forced to live amid the filth of city dumps for their entire lives.


Small Steps: Cambodia, Phnom Penh from Amy Hanson on Vimeo.


As we are watching this video, be thinking about some of the things you are learning and what can be done to help people in this situation. Part of the viewing guide requires that you ask two questions. You will be given a viewing guide to help you organize your thoughts, but be prepared to have a discussion over this video in class.

Also feel free to draw connections between Sold and Trash, including the danger of the character's lifestyles and their ability(or inability) to leave their locations. After the introductory video and a little discussion, we'll dig in and start reading!

Have a happy Valentine's day!
-Mr. Thomas

ENG 11 Technology Survey

Today we are going to take this survey on our day-to-day technology usage. It should only take us about 10-15 minutes.  Once we're all finished, we'll take a look at the data and have a few discussions about what our technology usage says about us. Of course, we'll also tie it in to our readings in The Hunger Games, so keep in mind some of the technology we've been introduced to so far!

thanks,
-Mr. Thomas

The Hunger Games: Poetry Friday!

Happy Poetry Friday!


Today we will be finishing up the first chapter of The Hunger Games, and we will wash it down with a reading of a thought-provoking (albeit short) poem by Pitika Ntuli.


In My Country

In my country they jail you
For what they think you think.
My uncle once said to me:
They’ll implant a microchip
In our minds
To flash our thoughts and dreams
Onto a screen at John Vorster Square.
I was scared
By day I guard my tongue,
By night my dreams.

some discussion research:

Apartheid
http://www.africanaencyclopedia.com/apartheid/apartheid.html


John Vorster Square
http://heritage.thetimes.co.za/memorials/GP/DeathInDetention/


I will go over the details a bit more in class, but just make sure you bring your laptops...and your chargers! 

-Mr. Thomas

Lost in Translation: A Poem in Nepali

 In Patricia McCormick's Sold, the main character, Lakshmi, learns to speak and understand a few key phrases in English.  It is this knowledge that helps her to escape from her life as a sex slave in India. For today's poem, we are going to incorporate some phrases in Lakshmi's native Nepali with those in English.

Basically, the vision of this poem is that it could serve as a little message from Lakshmi to someone who could help her. Using basic Nepali language, write an 11 line poem where Lakshmi tells the reader that she's in danger and that she needs help.

Format:

Line #1: Nepali phrase
Line #2: English translation of the Nepali phrase

Line #3: Nepali phrase
Line #4: English translation of the Nepali phrase

Line #5: Nepali phrase
Line #6: English translation of the Nepali phrase

Line #7: Nepali phrase
Line #8: English translation of the Nepali phrase

Line #9: Nepali phrase
Line #10: English translation of the Nepali phrase

Line #11: Line in English (What she really wants to say but can't with her limited understanding of English)

Please type your poem in a Pages document and send it to me this period. I will be conferencing with you over your Words, Words, Words common assessment papers during this time.