Friday, 10/31/14

Students!  It’s time for a

…and by Halloween party, I mean SAT Vocabulary Quiz #2.  How spooky!

Our plan:

1. Review your Canva creations for each word
2. Take the quiz
3. Preview the plan for next week’s SAT Vocabulary Word #2 (hint: you will be a movie maker!)
4. Share some pumpkin bread and coffee cake and discuss our favorite Halloween memories (if celebrated)

Thursday, 10/30/14

Time to present your awesome Canva creations!

The plan:

1. Scrolling down through this post, each pair will present on the word, definition, sample sentence, and fun way to remember it.
2. Students take notes on each other’s words.
3. Study for tomorrow’s quiz!

Kendra and Gilian: abbreviate

Christian and Bryan: frugal

https://www.canva.com/design/DAA-gcT16NE/XFMf6y4zEiEhmcUnKjsmzw/view?utm_campaign=designshare&utm_content=DAA-gcT16NE&utm_medium=link&utm_source=v1&cc_from_uid=UAAtd5qZxdc

Alex and Briana: enhance

Jailene and Claudia: emulate

Adrian and Jason: rancorous

Erick and Gualter: sagacity

https://www.canva.com/design/DAA-gkzYOPE/vskBb6Rsi6LM4jDmoC4ThA/view?utm_campaign=designshare&utm_content=DAA-gkzYOPE&utm_medium=link&utm_source=v1&cc_from_uid=UAAtd5qZxdc

Yunior and Kris: congregation

Natalia and Ashlei: haughty

Johnny and Jose: opulent (Note: Claudia and Jailene, this means you need to pick a new word for next week; sorry!)

https://www.canva.com/design/DAA-gcDFoSk/mzr2SbNHkt8rJ8WGJVQWbQ/view?utm_campaign=designshare&utm_content=DAA-gcDFoSk&utm_medium=link&utm_source=v1&cc_from_uid=UAAtd5qZxdc

Maria and Lizmarie: fortuitous

Diamond and Jonathan: collaborate

Romy and Jaaron: hypothesis

Wednesday 10/29/14

Today it’s time to create images for your SAT Vocabulary Word #2 with your partner, using Canva, a graphic design tool.

Our schedule for the day is in short form here, with more details below:

1. Get your SAT Vocabulary Word #1 quizzes back. (Over half of the class got a 100, which is amazing!)
2. Review your SAT Vocabulary Word #2 Planning Sheet from Monday.
3. Watch an overview video of Canva (below).
4. Go to https://www.canva.com/
5. Create an account (write down your password!)
6. Using the “Presentation” layout, write your word and its definition, and design an image that represents your word.
7. Note: Play around with fonts, colors, layout and images.  Only choose “free” elements.
8. Hint: If you want a picture that is not available, use Creative Commons or Google Image to find a picture you want, download it, and then go to “Uploads” in the left margin of Canva and use “Upload your own image” to add the picture to Canva.
9. If you have not yet embedded your Flipgrid video into your website, post that first, with the title SAT Vocabulary Word #1.
10. Post your Canva creation to your website, using a link and the image itself, with the title SAT Vocabulary Word #2.
    1. Go to “Download or link” at the top right hand corner of the screen on Canva.
    2. Copy the link that shows.
    3. Paste that into your website post.
    4. Choose “Image” and download the image.
    5. Add that into your post.
11. Practice presenting your Canva creation; tomorrow you will show it to the whole class on the overhead projector, and you will also provide the sample sentence and the fun way to remember it, from your SAT Vocabulary Word Planning Sheet.  The second quiz is this Friday!

Words:

Your week 2 words are:

• Kendra and Gilian:
• Christian and Bryan: orator
• Alex and Briana: enhance
• Jailene and Claudia: emulate
• Adrian and Jason: rancorous
• Erick and Gualter: sagacity
• Yunior and Kris: congregation
• Natalia and Ashlei: haughty
• Johnny and Jose: [Choose a new one because camaraderie was actually already done!]
• Maria and Lizmarie: 
• Diamond and Jonathan: collaborate
• Romy and Jaaron: hypothesis

You can use your SAT Vocabulary Word Planning Sheet for the definition, or the index cards you made last week, or the document I printed out for you.  To see a full schedule of all partners’ words by week, scroll to the bottom.  The empty boxes need to be decided by the end of class.

Overview video:

Canva:

Don’t stress; Canva has been given a Webby award for being “the easiest to use design program in the world.”

1. PC: To take a screen shot and save it as a picture. Click the window you want to capture. Press Alt+Print Screen by holding down the Alt key and then pressing the Print Screen key. The Print Screen key is near the upper-right corner of your keyboard.
2. Mac: To get a picture of just a portion of your screen, hit Command-Shift-4 on your keyboard. Your mouse cursor will change to crosshairs, and then just click and drag across any portion of the screen you want to capture. Again, the screenshot will be saved to your Desktop in the default file format.

 

Partners	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4
Erick and Gualter	novice	sagacity	diligent	intrepid
Claudia and Jailene	conformist	emulate	opulent	superfluous
Kendra and Gilian	divergent
Lizmarie and Maria	camaraderie
Briana and ALex	compromise	enhance	procrastinate	restrained
Ashlei and Natalia	benevolent	haughty	querulous	vindicate
Jose and Johnny	amicable		deleterious	demagogue
Romy and Jaaron	discredit	hypothesis	surreptitious	spurious
Adrian and Jason	asylum	rancorous	submissive	prosperity
Bryan and Christian	anachronistic	orator		frugal
Kris and Yunior	antagonist	congregation	fortuitous	jubilation
Diamond and Jonathan	anonymous	collaborate	arid	empathy

Tuesday, 10/28/14

It’s Movie Day!

I’m very excited about our field trip to Providence Place Mall to see Dear White People today!  The brilliant and wonderful Ms. Thoma has designed a Discussion and Activity Guide that all groups will be using today.  The schedule is:

1. Identity: who are you?  How does the world see you?
2. How to have a courageous conversation
3. Movie
4. Lunch
5. Writing
6. “Me Too” Activity
7. Discussion
8. Artifacts

In the Activity Guide, Ms. Thoma wrote:

This movie has a lot of funny and serious moments.  It has a lot of moments that will be relatable, but it also has a lot of moments that are uncomfortable.  When we come back and have our discussions, they will also be filled with humor, seriousness, personal connection, and maybe even discomfort. The goal of the morning session is to introduce you to some of the major themes for the movie and to prepare you with guidelines to help in your viewing and discussion of the movie.

The internet is abuzz with feedback about Dear White People.  Feel free to read up on some of what’s out there…

Salon published an article TODAY called 5 Reasons Everyone Needs to See Dear White People.

Think Progress offers some criticisms in The Kind of Racism That Dear White People Overlooks.

And you all have intelligent, informed things to say too, so feel free to post about it on your own websites, in response to one of these articles or just based on your own takeaways from the movie.

Monday, 10/27/14

Big Test Day.

This test should take 15-30 minutes to complete.  If you finish early, you must remain silent until everyone is finished.  We have one other task today, which is to embed your Flipgrid SAT Vocabulary Word video into your website.  Worry about that when you’re done.

Follow these instructions to take the test:

1. Listen to me read the instructions
2. Go to this website: hosted303.renlearn.com/3468502
3. Click “I’m a student.”
4. Use this login information to log in:
   username: <same as MSstudent or HSstudent username>
   password: ABC (all are set the same)
5. Select “start” to take the test.
6. Write “admin” as the password to take the test.
7. Don’t forget about the part where you must be silent when you finish until everyone is done.

Friday, 10/24/14

It’s Quiz Day!

It’s a short period today, but your to-do list is:

1. Do some last minute studying by watching the Flipgrid videos one more time and looking over the definitions in your handout.
2. Take the quiz.
3. Ace the quiz.
4. Turn the quiz in.
5. Go over the next two class days: STAR testing and a field trip!  Talk about highs and lows!

Review:

Before the quiz is passed out and you totally ace it, first take a moment to do some last minute studying.  Watch the Flipgrid videos one more time.  You all did an awesome job on them!

The words you will be quizzed on are all in your handout.  By partners, this week’s words are:

Kendra and Gilian: divergent

Christian and Bryan: anachronistic

Alex and Briana: compromise

Jailene and Claudia: conformist

Adrian and Jason: asylum

Erick and Gualter: novice

Yunior and Kris: antagonist

Natalia and Ashlei: benevolent

Johnny and Jose: amicable

Maria and Lizmarie: camaraderie

Diamond and Jonathan: anonymous

Romy and Jaaron: discredit

Quiz:

Take it, ace it, turn it in.

Preview: 

Remember that our next class on Monday will be spent taking the STAR reading test, so please get plenty of sleep Sunday night and eat a hearty, healthy breakfast on Monday morning!

Then, the field trip to see Dear White People is on Tuesday!  Here’s the trailer if you haven’t seen it:

Thursday, 10/23/14

Q: Are you guys ready to use Flipgrid?!

A: It doesn’t matter; that’s what we’re doing!  🙂

Today you are recording a 90-second video with your partner to teach your Week 1 SAT Vocabulary Word to the rest of the class.  The link with all videos will be on the website, so you can watch the 12 review videos at home and study for tomorrow’s quiz.  Please go to the following link to add your video: flipgrid.com/#c23c58f0

When you get there, click on the big green plus sign, fill out your information, take a picture or yourselves, and then begin recording.  Now, I know that many of you are not shy because you take 10,000 selfies a day and post them all over the world.  However, if you are feeling camera shy today for some reason, remember that I wrote on yesterday’s post that you could design or print out an image to hold up and point the camera at while you speak.  The videos will only be available to those who have the link; they are not publicly searchable.

You will need to use an iPad or your phone to do this.  If you’re going to use an iPad, you and your partner first need to do a quick demo for me to show me that you know what you’re saying and you’re ready to record.

Please note: On Monday, we will be taking the STAR test in the library.

Wednesday, 10/22/14

Class, I have some good news and some bad news.

Bad news first: I can’t be in class today because the RI Department of Education is holding an ELL Directors’ Meeting that I have to go to.  BUT the good news is that YOU are here!

More good news: You have several fun and exciting tasks to take care of today!

• Record your working emails on the sheet that will be passed around.
• Watch a video about Flipgrid, the tool we will be using tomorrow to record your SAT vocabulary words and definitions.
• Fill out a planning sheet for your Week 1 SAT vocabulary word with your partner so you can record tomorrow.  (If you forgot your word, look below.)
• Plan how you’re going to do your hair tomorrow, because you’ll be on video.  (If you’re having a bad hair day or you’d rather not appear in the video, you may create or print out an image to show while you record your voice.)

Flipgrid video:

Partners and Words:

Tuesday, 10/21/14

Do you know who this guy is?

It’s Socrates!  Doesn’t he look like he’s thinking hard?  He is!  Do you know what he did all the time?  Talked to people!  Just talked to ’em and asked ’em questions and listened to ’em and then asked ’em more questions!  Do you know what a Socratic Seminar is?  Talking and listening and questioning!  That’s why it’s named after him!  Can you tell how excited I am about this?  I can’t stop ending sentences in exclamation points!  It’s a problem!

Anyway, Diamond said I talk too much yesterday and at first I felt sad because I was like, “Hey, I thought Diamond and I had mutual love for each other.”  But then I realized, “Diamond’s just doing Diamond, and maybe I do talk too much.”  But not today, party people.  Today, you talk.

Here’s the plan: You will start by reading or watching texts about digital literacy in groups of 4.  You will take notes on what you read or watch, and then you will participate in two consecutive Socratic Seminars.

Groups:

Briana, Alex, Ashlei and Natalia are watching this remake of Mary Poppins trailer and taking notes on how editing and media production can change an audience’s views and emotions about content and message:

Jose, Johnny, Romy and Jaaron are reading  this list of 17 topics to teach K-8 about Digital Literacy and taking notes on the five that they think are most important, and how they would teach them to K-8 students.

Erick, Gualter, Claudia and Jailene are reading this article from Jezebel arguing that texting won’t make you a bad writer and summarizing the main points in their notes.

Kendra, Gilian, Lizmarie and Maria are reading this article from CNN about social media and the perils of looking for likes and summarizing the main points in their notes.

Adrian, Jason, Bryan and Christian are watching this video that most of you have already seen at All School Meeting last year (and Jason has actually seen twice because I think I showed it in advisory too) and taking notes on what it suggests about our behaviors with social media:

Kris, Yunior, Diamond and Jonathan are looking at this infographic and taking notes on what digital citizenship, technology literacy, and information literacy are:

Socratic Seminar:

• Everybody speaks and everybody listens!
• Take notes on the topic on your index card.
• Use one or more of your SAT Vocabulary words to earn a 4 for this Socratic Seminar!

Monday, 10/20/14

Happy 1st Day of Our Vocabulary + Digital Literacy Unit!

Our two main goals for this unit are:

1. Understand how to navigate and produce digital and media texts using a variety of digital tools.
2. Understand and be able to comfortably use the most common SAT vocabulary words.

We will be using the College Board’s Top 100 Common SAT Vocabulary Words List to do this work.  You will have a printed out copy but you can also access the list online here.

Your first task is to pick a partner.  Choose someone who you work well with, because you will be doing this work together for the next four weeks.

Your second task, with your partner, is to choose four words from the top 100 list.  You will be doing one word per week.  You will write these words on index cards with the definitions on the back.

Now, to bridge the humor unit with the digital literacy unit, we will discuss what we think “digital literacy” means, using a video that one of you provided as a comment on the class website as a jumping off point: