Writing Contest #2- James Franco

Round 2- Can Sasha, Steph, & Elysia remain champs? Let's capture the descriptions again with clever use of our sentence variety and (noun + participle) modifiers. Is this character guilty of narcissism or is he just a trying out some sweet talk before a date?

Explore the Edge questions

  2013-What Should We Be Worried About? (Scary ideas here.  You have been warned)

2012- What is your Favorite, Deep, Elegant, or Beautiful Explanation?
2009- What Will Change Everything?
2008- What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?
2007-What Are You Optimistic About?
2006- What Is Your Dangerous Idea?
or find other questions from other years... 

Tonight- Pick a question....Write your own 1-2 page response. Get the idea out and we may decide to polish it later.

Cool Reads for 9-22

Nice lesson in linguistics today...
 And add another log on the fire in the debate about texting and "proper" speech 4
  Big philosophy questions
For my football fans- What does the inside of a draft war room look like...
Step away from the iPhone
Minecraft as educational tool?
Tomato Can Blues
You think you know what decadence is until you read this
  Transitions

Cool Reads of the Week-9/15

Can metal make you mellow?
How did Chris McCandless die?
Prep School Gangsters
Illustrated guide to Logical Fallacies
I may teach this class grammar through the brilliant food reviews of Pete Wells:

Someone who used to prowl around CBGB and other clubs when punk and new wave were breaking their first guitar strings told me he had seen one particularly untutored band at least 30 times.

“Really?” I asked. “Yeah,” he said. “The first 15 times, they were just awful.”

I didn’t need to ask why he had stuck it out because the band was Television, and they went on to harness their early chaos into two obliquely beautiful records.

Some restaurants are like that. Even if they don’t have the mechanics down yet, their glimmers of originality can keep drawing you back.

None of my five meals at the Pines since its opening late last summer in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn has been in the “just awful” category, but two were so frustrating I swore I’d never return. The opening line of my notes on one dinner reads, “I am done with giving this place a chance.”

Three months later, I was back. That night, the Pines and its chef, Angelo Romano, were in control of their chords and the tempo from start to finish.

Adverbial C

TED Speech- Jane McGonigal

As we watch- comment on the following:

• How does she establish her ethos?
• How does she counter what must be a controversial thesis?
• What is the logos?
• Where do we see pathos?

Chrome Books and AP Grammies

 I may not give extra-credit but I do grant the wish of extra time.  Late Pass!  On way to grab it is through our weekly participation/ grammar exercise.  You will watch one vignette and write a brief description (1 to 4 sentences) that captures the tone.  The catch is that you must blend in at least one form of selected sentence structure while reflected pitch perfect connotation of the tone of the film.  How do you win?  You vote of course...After I tally all all the entries, I post them so you can review them and vote for the best one.  Let's be clear...you write, vote and gobble up class participation credit while honing your syntax. 

This week's syntax move: participial phrase: 

1. Pursing his lips, he struggled not to call out his professor's obvious error.
2. A lazy student, always looking for a corner to cut with his assignments, ironically, may do more work to get out of doing work. 

Remember to flex with strong verbs!

Vote Period 1
Vote Period 2
Vote Period 9

Chekhov's Gun and...Essay #2

Essay #2- Click Here...

The 17 tribes of Nagaland are united, historically, by an enthusiasm for heads. The Nagas: Hill Peoples of Northeast India—my reading matter on the two-hour drive from Dimapur to Kohima, in the state of Nagaland —contains dozens of references to head-taking but only one mention of the item that has brought me here: the Naga King Chili (a.k.a. Bhut Jolokia), often ranked the world’s hottest. “In the Chang village of Hakchang,” the anthropologist J. H. Hutton is quoted as saying in 1922, “...women whose blood relations on the male side have taken a head may cook the head, with chilies, to get the flesh off.” Hutton’s use of “cook” would seem to be a reference to Chang culinary practice. Only on rereading did I realize the Chang weren’t eating the chilies—or the flesh, for that matter—but using them to clean the skull.

From Smithsonianmag.com 

Horace Prompt in my absence and Cool Reads for week of 9-1-2013

• Cool cartoon rendering of Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot
• What is it like working on a shipping container?
• Brilliant breakdown of a terrible argument
• Illustrated chart of Bradbury's predictions