Hey kids! Have a great break and make sure to relax and rejuvenate your mind. Go to a movie, read a great book, hang out with friends and spend time with your family!
Speaking of family, take this advice from your older and wiser teacher - in a year and a half, most of you will be going off to college and for many of you, that will mark the end of living at home with your family.
Your college years will be full of fun and independence, followed by your first real jobs, first real apartments, and a myriad of amazing experiences before you settle down and have families of your own.
Which is why I want you to take a moment this holiday season to appreciate your family. Perhaps spend an evening at home over break watching a movie with your family or having lunch with your mom or coffee with your dad. Go visit your grandparents and listen to their stories or offer them a helping hand.
These are the moments you'll treasure when you're older and you'll be glad you took the time to slow down your last year and a half at home and spent time with the people who love you unconditionally.
My parents only live four hours away but in this busy world, those four hours seem like an eternity and as a result, I only see them four times a year. I wish I could see my mom and dad on a daily basis, so do me a favor and give your parents a hug daily since I can't hug mine!
Remember - you're only young once but you're old forever, so don't try to grow up too fast. Your friends may come and go but your family will always be there for you, so spend some quality time with them this season.
In the long run, you'll be glad you did.
Have an amazing holiday season - Happy Chanukah, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!
Weiss
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Monday is Independent Reading Day!!!
Hey kids -
Monday we are going to the Media Center to READ! That's right - we're not going there to work on a project, or write essays or do research, we're going there so you can escape your little classroom desks and instead find a comfortable place to sit and read.
So, bring your independent reading book - you know, the one purchased with the generous grant I received from the East Brunswick Education Foundation - and meet me in the Media Center on Monday, December 22nd!
Monday we are going to the Media Center to READ! That's right - we're not going there to work on a project, or write essays or do research, we're going there so you can escape your little classroom desks and instead find a comfortable place to sit and read.
So, bring your independent reading book - you know, the one purchased with the generous grant I received from the East Brunswick Education Foundation - and meet me in the Media Center on Monday, December 22nd!
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Homework - British Literature
Periods 2,4,8/9:
Consider the choices made by Polanski and the student directors of Star Wars Macbeth - what was important to each director when transferring ideas from page to screen? Did he focus on character? Visual effects? Dialogue? Plot?
Write a reaction that answers the above question. Your response should be at least one half page, typed and double spaced if possible. Please follow rules of grammar and mechanics and present your ideas in an organized fashion.
If you want to refresh your memory, check out this link:
http://www.dcfr.net/macbeth/mainpage.html
Period 12: Since you did not view Star Wars Macbeth, please apply the above question to the Polanski version you viewed on Friday. If you want to watch Star Wars Macbeth and focus your response on it, feel free to do so - just go to the above link.
Consider the choices made by Polanski and the student directors of Star Wars Macbeth - what was important to each director when transferring ideas from page to screen? Did he focus on character? Visual effects? Dialogue? Plot?
Write a reaction that answers the above question. Your response should be at least one half page, typed and double spaced if possible. Please follow rules of grammar and mechanics and present your ideas in an organized fashion.
If you want to refresh your memory, check out this link:
http://www.dcfr.net/macbeth/mainpage.html
Period 12: Since you did not view Star Wars Macbeth, please apply the above question to the Polanski version you viewed on Friday. If you want to watch Star Wars Macbeth and focus your response on it, feel free to do so - just go to the above link.
Monday, December 8, 2008
LOST?
Do you ever get lost when trying to find something on the blog? If so, check out the upper left hand corner - yes, there's a search box and you can search within the blog to find what you're looking forward, instead of scouring the archives!
Feel better? If you still can't find what you're looking for, such as the info on the SAT Prep Boot Camp, scroll down an entry or two and look on December 3rd.
Feel better? If you still can't find what you're looking for, such as the info on the SAT Prep Boot Camp, scroll down an entry or two and look on December 3rd.
Writer's Workshop Assignment - RD of Paragraphs 1-3 Due Wednesday!
Step #1:
In the intro paragraph, reflect on a past experience that taught you something about the world around you. Take a moment and brainstorm a few memories.
Step # 2:
In the first paragraph, reveal your INITIAL reaction to an event, conversation, experience, etc. through the use of an informal anecdote. Refer to the section of Hornby's essay below for further clarification.
OH, MY SWEET CAROLINA by Ryan Adams: AN ESSAY BY NICK HORNBY
“A long time ago, when I was still teaching English to foreign students in a London language school, I gave private conversation lessons to an unhappy man who called himself Edward, even though that wasn't his name. Edward was an African living in Rome, where he was a foreign correspondent for his home-town newspaper, and he was unhappy because he was going through a divorce. But he was lucid in his unhappiness: he talked with regret, of course, but also with insight, and enormous intelligence, and his melancholy took him off to all sorts of interesting conversational places — places I never normally got to visit in the normal run of things. I remember the concentration our talks required, and the stillness and intensity they engendered; I knew that he was in pain, but when our fifty minutes were over I felt invigorated and inspired. When it was time for him to return to Rome, he asked me to go and stay with him, and I accepted the invitation.”
Step #3:
In the next section of your essay, continue by making either a contradiction to your initial observation OR further explaining your initial reaction on a deeper level. In this section, it's important to finish reporting your personal response to your experience, but do not offer analysis of the situation. Refer to the section of Hornby's essay below for further clarification:
“But when I got there, a few weeks later, he wasn't unhappy any more. He was revelling in his status as a single man, a status that, apparently, required very little self-reflection or intelligence: on the night I arrived, I found that he'd fixed us up with a couple of call-girls. I copped out, in my prissy English way, but he disappeared for forty-eight hours (leaving me with sole use of a beautiful apartment in the centre of Rome); when he came back, he told me he was engaged
Step #4:
Ok, the third section of the essay is crucial. The first sentence of your third section is the thesis statement – when you look back at the experience described in the first two paragraphs, what is your epiphany? In Hornby's essay, he reflects on his time with Edward and how Edward changes but what he truly realizes is larger than his experience with Edward - he realizes that "some people are at their best when they're miserable". Model this section of the essay by first producing a strong, active statement, like Hornby did - remember, less is more. Keep it simple - a statement - DO NOT USE "I think"!! BE STRONG!
Step #5:
To continue the 3rd paragraph, use an outside source to support your thesis – this could be a song, a scene from a film, a poem, a memory, a personal experience, a moment in a book, a quote, etc. Remember DON’T retell the story of the outside source, just use it to support your thesis statement like Hornby does below:
“Some people are at their best when they're miserable. Ryan Adams's beautiful Heartbreaker album is, I suspect, the product of a great deal of pain, and "Oh My Sweet Carolina" is its perfect, still centre, its faint heartbeat, a song so quiet that you don't want to breathe throughout its duration. (It helps that Adams got Emmylou Harris, the best harmony vocalist in the history of pop music, to sing with him on it.) On Adams's next album, Gold, he seems to have cheered up, and though that's good news for him, it's bad news for me, just as it was when Edward stopped being miserable. His upbeat songs are fine, but they sound a lot like other people's upbeat songs (you can hear the cheeriest incarnations of the Stones, Dylan and Van Morrison all over Gold); his blues gave him distinction.
Step 6:
Finally, you need to come to a conclusion about what it all means to you - this is your "Jerry Springer Final Thought". Tell the reader what you think about not revealing what could potentially be useful information, what harboring guilt can do to a person’s life, how you think excessive pride and ambition is actually a worthy quality, how bitterness toward others is actually the worst form of subjectivity. Do that and then wrap up the section with your “final thought”. See Hornby’s conclusion below:
“What rights do we have here? Are we entitled to ask other people to be unhappy for our benefit? After all, there are loads of us, and only one of them. And how can you be happy, really, if you are only ordinary in your happiness, but extraordinary in your grief? Is it really worth it? It sounds harsh, I know, but if you are currently romantically involved with someone with a real talent — especially a talent for songwriting — then do us all a favour and dump them. There might be a Heartbreaker — or a Blood On The Tracks or a Layla — in it for all of us. Thanks.”
In the intro paragraph, reflect on a past experience that taught you something about the world around you. Take a moment and brainstorm a few memories.
Step # 2:
In the first paragraph, reveal your INITIAL reaction to an event, conversation, experience, etc. through the use of an informal anecdote. Refer to the section of Hornby's essay below for further clarification.
OH, MY SWEET CAROLINA by Ryan Adams: AN ESSAY BY NICK HORNBY
“A long time ago, when I was still teaching English to foreign students in a London language school, I gave private conversation lessons to an unhappy man who called himself Edward, even though that wasn't his name. Edward was an African living in Rome, where he was a foreign correspondent for his home-town newspaper, and he was unhappy because he was going through a divorce. But he was lucid in his unhappiness: he talked with regret, of course, but also with insight, and enormous intelligence, and his melancholy took him off to all sorts of interesting conversational places — places I never normally got to visit in the normal run of things. I remember the concentration our talks required, and the stillness and intensity they engendered; I knew that he was in pain, but when our fifty minutes were over I felt invigorated and inspired. When it was time for him to return to Rome, he asked me to go and stay with him, and I accepted the invitation.”
Step #3:
In the next section of your essay, continue by making either a contradiction to your initial observation OR further explaining your initial reaction on a deeper level. In this section, it's important to finish reporting your personal response to your experience, but do not offer analysis of the situation. Refer to the section of Hornby's essay below for further clarification:
“But when I got there, a few weeks later, he wasn't unhappy any more. He was revelling in his status as a single man, a status that, apparently, required very little self-reflection or intelligence: on the night I arrived, I found that he'd fixed us up with a couple of call-girls. I copped out, in my prissy English way, but he disappeared for forty-eight hours (leaving me with sole use of a beautiful apartment in the centre of Rome); when he came back, he told me he was engaged
Step #4:
Ok, the third section of the essay is crucial. The first sentence of your third section is the thesis statement – when you look back at the experience described in the first two paragraphs, what is your epiphany? In Hornby's essay, he reflects on his time with Edward and how Edward changes but what he truly realizes is larger than his experience with Edward - he realizes that "some people are at their best when they're miserable". Model this section of the essay by first producing a strong, active statement, like Hornby did - remember, less is more. Keep it simple - a statement - DO NOT USE "I think"!! BE STRONG!
Step #5:
To continue the 3rd paragraph, use an outside source to support your thesis – this could be a song, a scene from a film, a poem, a memory, a personal experience, a moment in a book, a quote, etc. Remember DON’T retell the story of the outside source, just use it to support your thesis statement like Hornby does below:
“Some people are at their best when they're miserable. Ryan Adams's beautiful Heartbreaker album is, I suspect, the product of a great deal of pain, and "Oh My Sweet Carolina" is its perfect, still centre, its faint heartbeat, a song so quiet that you don't want to breathe throughout its duration. (It helps that Adams got Emmylou Harris, the best harmony vocalist in the history of pop music, to sing with him on it.) On Adams's next album, Gold, he seems to have cheered up, and though that's good news for him, it's bad news for me, just as it was when Edward stopped being miserable. His upbeat songs are fine, but they sound a lot like other people's upbeat songs (you can hear the cheeriest incarnations of the Stones, Dylan and Van Morrison all over Gold); his blues gave him distinction.
Step 6:
Finally, you need to come to a conclusion about what it all means to you - this is your "Jerry Springer Final Thought". Tell the reader what you think about not revealing what could potentially be useful information, what harboring guilt can do to a person’s life, how you think excessive pride and ambition is actually a worthy quality, how bitterness toward others is actually the worst form of subjectivity. Do that and then wrap up the section with your “final thought”. See Hornby’s conclusion below:
“What rights do we have here? Are we entitled to ask other people to be unhappy for our benefit? After all, there are loads of us, and only one of them. And how can you be happy, really, if you are only ordinary in your happiness, but extraordinary in your grief? Is it really worth it? It sounds harsh, I know, but if you are currently romantically involved with someone with a real talent — especially a talent for songwriting — then do us all a favour and dump them. There might be a Heartbreaker — or a Blood On The Tracks or a Layla — in it for all of us. Thanks.”
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
SAT Weekend Workshops
If you're interested in attending an SAT Weekend Boot Camp Workshop in January, check out the link below:
http://web.me.com/lapointe23/Site/About_Me.html
or email:
ArtemisEducation@gmail.com for more information
http://web.me.com/lapointe23/Site/About_Me.html
or email:
ArtemisEducation@gmail.com for more information
Monday, November 24, 2008
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