Change in Plans

Due to some technical difficulties in getting tests printed out, the grammar skills assessment I informed the class of yesterday will be postponed until tomorrow.

In place of the test, what I would like you to do is look at the Supplemental English section of this blog and pick 2 of the 3 posted activities to do. Take a look at all three and then decide which 2 you would like to do.

These are activities designed to highlight specific interesting tools or concepts within the English Language that may prove useful for developing your skills in the language.

In each case I have provided instructions, but feel free to ask me questions of clarification if you need to.

As with the blog posts related to our rights study, these posts count towards your term 2 mark; the more detailed your posts are, the better you are likely to do. As always I expect your name to be a part of the post, and in this case also please indicate your group #:

               Example: Bob Smith
                               Group 02
                               A Review of Grammar Sites:

Remember I am asking you to do two out of the three options during today's class, so use your time well!

Oral Presentation Instructions (Rights Final)

Groups are already underway making PowerPoint presentations for the final assignment in our study of rights. The progress and brainstorming I have seen from most groups has been pretty good so far.

As per the instructions, you are expected to give an oral presentation along with your PowerPoint.

Since there are 8 slides to the PowerPoint, in a 4-member group each group member gets 2 slides.

The Oral will be a part of your Talk mark for term 2, but the written transcript will be a part of your written mark.

By doing well on this one assignment you can get 2 good marks for your term!

I have asked that each member of the group speak for about 2 minutes, which works out to about 250 - 300 words in your written transcript.

That's only 125-150 per slide.

Remember when writing:

1. You are presenting as a group, so make sure each person presenting transitions to the next smoothly to make your presentation flow together.
2. Write to engage your audience and get them interested, also write to inform: your speech is where your information and project planning should come through
3. Your speech is a major factor in whether your project will succeed in convincing judges to pick your project.

Rights Assignment steps 3 & 4

Final Rights Assignment

Group Project

Having completed steps 1 and 2 of the project by submitting your individual ideas for how to make a community in your life better, it is now time to proceed to the group project.

Step Three:

In the real Aviva Community Fund all ideas are posted online for the public to vote on.

In our competition we will be doing the same thing, except inside of  our classroom.

1) Every submitted idea will be posted in the classroom for students to read and look at.

2) You will have three votes to indicate what projects you think are worth working on.

Even if you really want to work on one project, you must still cast your other two for projects that you think are also worth looking at.

            Please indicate vote 1, vote 2 and vote 3 next to your name.

3) Once everyone has cast their three votes (or once time dictates that we must move on) the votes will be tabulated and the top six/seven projects in the class will be named.

4) These six projects will now become group projects. Groups will be decided based on who voted on the projects. People who wrote an idea get priority on their own project.

Step Four:

With Projects picked and groups made, your job is to turn your project into a winner. Each of the groups will create a PowerPoint and oral presentation illustrating why their idea is the one most deserving of winning the top prize.

The more visual, informative and interesting your presentations, the better you are likely to do. Remember that there's an organization in our competition that wants to see organized ideas before it gives away any money.

 I will show examples of good and bad PowerPoint projects in class to help in the creation of your presentation.

All group members are expected to participate in the Oral presentation, so make sure the work is being spread evenly. Conflicts between group members should be brought to the attention of the teacher.

Writing Webquest

For today's post, follow the link below to a creative writing/creation webquest.

Start by clicking on the "Task" tab at the top of the screen and follow the instructions from there through the 2 processes to the conclusion at the end.

This is a creative writing exercise, so be expressive and use your imagination.
When your Powerpoint presentation is ready at the end of class let me know and I will come to collect it. Feel free to speak to me with any questions or concerns.

Webquest:
http://drb.lifestreamcenter.net/Lessons/ocean/index.htm

-Mr. Lambie

Rights Final Assignment

We've looked at rights very broadly the last few weeks, briefly exploring issues of refugees, child soldiers and poverty in general as seen in other parts of the world. Most recently we compared the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with Canada's Charter of Rights and freedoms to start thinking about rights closer to home. Through our responses we discussed the idea of how people in troubled situations share stories to build hope for a better world.

The idea of Human Rights was created to try and encourage people to actively make the world better than it is for all people.

In the spirit of all of those ideas, our final project in this exploration of rights and freedoms will ask you to look at your own communities.

As we saw early on, there are lots of bad things happening in the world all the time. It also became clear that a lot of people in our classes feel bad about those things, but don't really know what to do to help, and don't really feel all that connected to the issues.

The best problems/issues/ideas to work on are the ones that mean the most to you, and those are usually the ones that you see or are somehow a part of every day.

People in Canada have a lot of freedoms and privileges, but that does not mean that our lives feel magical and perfect, and it is hard to feel like helping someone we don't even know when there are things happening at home that take up more of your attention.

Your Final Assignment:

Inspired by the Aviva Community Fund, I want you to imagine that a charitable organization is offering to give money to community projects in our area. They want to give the money to specific projects, however, projects that support a community and its people. They will not support any projects that are illegal, or that remove rights from certain groups of people to give them to others

Building a better world doesn't just mean working in Africa or Haiti. There are things about our own communities that could be better. This is your chance to share your story and your ideas: start thinking about how a difference could be made.

Step one: Outline

1) What community do you feel most attached to? In this case I'm talking about a group of people, but also a place. Which out of your school, city, town, other, do you feel the strongest attachment to?

2) What do people in that community need to make their lives better? (What are you entitled to? What is your right?)

3) What do the people in that community want? (What privileges do you have? What privileges do you deserve?)

4) What project could help fill these needs and wants? (be specific, where do you think the money could do the most good?)

5) What are the most important details of this project if you want to get other people to support it?

Step Two:

Once this outline is complete, You will be asked to write a very brief (100 word) introduction to what your project plans to do for your chosen community. Try to use as much detail as possible in that 100 words.

Steps 1&2 will be due: Monday November 28, 2011

Step Three:

The Real Aviva Community fund is a competition; once all introductions and outlines have been submitted, they will be put on display in the classroom and the top six ideas will be chosen.

Step Four:

Each of those six top ideas will then create a powerpoint and oral presentation Illustrating why their idea is the one most deserving of winning the top prize.

Clearer instructions on steps three and four will be given at the start of next week

Comparing Rights Documents

For your post-response reading assignment, please consult the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms:

http://laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/Charter/page-1.html
(Note that there are 2 pages)

and the UDHR:
http://www.un.org/cyberschoolbus/humanrights/resources/plain.asp

The instructions on contrasting the two documents are on your handout.

Whereas the UDHR is a set of guidelines put together for the whole world by the UN, the CCRF is a measure of how those freedoms are granted in Canada. The two documents are different, and it is worth taking the time to examine how those difference effect our lives.

Wordplay

People have been playing with words and meaning for almost as long as there have been languages.
In any language you look at, you can find examples of wordplay taking place in various different ways.

At  http://www.fun-with-words.com/index.html all sorts of different kinds of wordplay have been collected together and explained, with examples.

For this blog post, look down the left side of the page and pick two kinds of wordplay you have never heard of, read about them, and write your own explanation of how each one works. Then write two examples for each (write your own, don't just steal an example from the site).

Video link: Invisible Children

The Following is a link to Invisible Children: Rough Cut, one of the video resources we looked at in class, and which you can use for your response.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3166797753930210643

Writer's Toolbox

On the following website is a magazine article full of resources to improve writing skills.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/06/28/50-free-resources-that-will-improve-your-writing-skills/

The article is broken up into 7 sections 

1. Grammar, Punctuation & co.
2. Common Mistakes and Problems
3. General Writing Skills
4. Practical Guides to Better Writing Skills
5. Copywriting Blogs
6. Tools
7. Further Resources

What I would like you to do is visit three sites/resources and look at what is available. Once you have looked at what the site has to offer, I would like you to post a comment below reviewing the site:

Tell me (and your fellow students)

1) What is the point of the site (what is it trying to help people with)?
2) How well does it do this job?
3) What sort of assignment or project might it be useful for?
4) Would you recommend it to others? (refer to your other points to say why)

PLEASE REMEMBER TO INCLUDE YOUR NAME IN YOUR POST

What to do?

While talking about rights in class, some students have turned to me and said things like "This is so depressing," or, "What is the point of this?"

I understand those perspectives. Sitting in our classroom looking at, reading about, and hearing about terrible things happening in other places can make a person feel sad and upset. Part of the point of this is to look at why you get those feelings from learning about world events.

Once you know something bad is going on, either close to home or far away,  you have two options. You can help, or you can hide.

As we've talked about, there are a lot of different bad things happening all over the world, all the time. It is hard not to want to hide from some of them; to pretend they don't exist. But hiding doesn't make them go away.

At the same time as all of the terrible events we've been hearing about, there are people out there in the world doing great and wonderful things to help every day. Take a look at some of the websites below and post a comment that gives an example of something that organization is doing to help people who are being denied their rights or freedoms. Some of the projects involve money, but many don't. Take the time to explore.

me to we

the love alliance
war child

save the children

postsecret

invisible children

free the children

http://can-you-solve-this.org/

The Free Child Project

http://feliciafollum.blogspot.com/2011/08/inspirational-social-justiceartist.html
**or name one you already know, which is not on this list**

Your comment should say: 

1. Which site you visited (try to pick ones you see others have not gone to yet). Make sure there is a link.
2. What project caught your eye (or what that organization does in general)
3. How you think this group is helping to empower people, and give them back their rights.

Response Assignment Instructions

Why Tyrants fear storytelling

“Stories are one way of sharing the belief that justice is imminent. And for such a belief, children, women and men will fight at a given moment with outstanding ferocity. This is why tyrants fear storytelling; all stories somehow refer to the story of their fall.”

Berger, John. “Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance”. Briar Patch, March/April 2010, page 39.

Using the ideas we've looked at with regard to rights and freedom so far in class, we are going to be practicing our skill at writing responses. Your task is to respond to the quote above by making connections between the quote, the two videos watched in class, and the world.

As a guide, try to answer the question: Which video more clearly shows people telling stories to make the world a better place?

This response will be a work in progress as we continue our study of rights in English class, and you will be expected to show connections you see between class material and the issues discussed in today's videos.

Steps:

1)    Watch the two videos and record what you observe in column one of your "thinking about what I've read" sheet in note form

a.     Remember that an observation is leading you towards a theme, it can be something you hear, as well as something you see (as both videos are mainly men talking, it will be more important to look at what they are saying)

2)    Start to look for meaning in the ideas you observed; what is linking the ideas together? Record your meanings in note form in column two.

a.     Re-watching the videos might help with this step

3)    In the "so what" Column, look at the meanings you see and come up with a theme for your response which links the quote and the two videos

4)    In column four, make connections to the world and to other stories/articles/games/experiences you may see links to

5)    Write a first draft of your response.

An initial Draft of your response will be due at the start of class on November 11, 2011.

Links:

Peter Gabriel fights injustice with video

http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_gabriel_fights_injustice_with_video.html#.Tq_1n9MLKRk.email

Wadah Khanfar: A historic moment in the Arab world

http://www.ted.com/talks/wadah_khanfar_a_historic_moment_in_the_arab_world.html#.Tq__kHaMhl0.email

Reflections

On Thursday we looked at and played the game "Against all Odds" put together by the UN.

Looking over the comments left by people who have finished there were a variety of reactions, both positive and negative.

One point which pops up more than once is the suggestion that the game was hard because,

a) It wasn't clear what you were supposed to do or, 

b) That you knew what to do but didn't see the point.

If, as the title screen of the game suggests, the point of the game is to make players feel like they are living the lives of refugees, do you feel like it did a good job?

Take a look at the webfacts section of the game. This section is designed to give players extra information to help them know more about the conflicts and problems they face in "Against all odds".

Today's task is to look at the webfacts pages for a few of the games that you played on Thursday. In a paragraph comment response, please tell me whether you think the game did a good job of representing the information it claims to. If yes, why do you think it is well presented (use examples), if no then tell me how you would re-design it so that the information was better presented.

The most important way to defend people's rights is to inform them of what they are. My question for you today is, how does "Against all Odds" help people, and how could it do its job better?

Life as a Refugee

Today's class will continue our new focus on rights and freedoms.


To begin, please follow this link to the website for "Against All Odds"

"Against All Odds" is a flash-based internet game developed by the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHCR) which comes in 12 chapters, broken up into 3 sections. It puts you in the role of a person living in a country under an oppressive government, who must leave in order to stay alive.

The 3 sections of the game are "War and Conflict", "Borderlands" and "A New Life".

Take the time to explore the world of the game, make observations, and then post a comment to this post with the following information.

Escapism Assignment

ESCAPISM:

Based on our questions of "Why do we read?" and "What makes something worth reading?" Today I want to talk about the concept of escapism.

Your tasks:

1. On your own, in a word document, craft your best guess as to what a definition of the word escapism might be.
2. Share your definition with a partner, and see if there's anything you can add to your definition.
3. Check out the actual definition of escapism here, and paste it beneath your own in your word document
4. Beneath the two definitions (yours and the one from the internet), take note of whether your definition fits with the real one. Does your definition have something you think the internet definition is missing (or visa versa?)
5. Given these definitions, conduct a search for some kind of media (picture, video, short story, article, etc.) that you think fits with either definition of escapism. Copy the link to it, paste it into your word document and write up a paragraph that explains why you think your example could be a good demonstration of escapism.
6. Post the link and your paragraph as a comment to this post (make sure you put your name on your comment).
7. Find two posts your classmates have made and state whether you agree or disagree with their paragraph (and why, obviously) in your word document.
8. Email and/or save the word document with me.