Learning is Change

Core 1:

1. Separate and Discuss-on: Split into your 4 categories of what you believe is the most important factor for determining success in life and discuss your answers to the question.
2. In your groups, fill out your first attempt at the Issue Analysis Form to determine just how well grounded your opinions are.
3. What else would you need in order to debate these topics?
4. Switching gears: How have the 30-minute-expert blogging sessions enabled you to understand new topics for debate? What more would you need in order to crystallize your opinions about censorship and copyright?
5. Extensions: Read your Multi-cultural novel.

Core 2:

1. Quiz-on: Why couldn’t Cassie understand Big Ma’s actions in Strawberry after Mr. Simms pushed her into the road? (Hint: Cassie’s mother had to explain them to her.)
2. Where is the line in the sand that no just person should cross?
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3. Read Chapter 7:
• What is a racial ally?
• How can you be a strong racial ally to others?
• How are the characters strong racial allies for one another?
4. Extension: Finish Chapter 7 for Friday.

Core 3:

1. Design-on: How would you need to set up the room in order for it to look like a court room? What objects would you need in the room for it to be more official?
2. Put one design into action.
3. Read through the trial as if a court case were actually being carried out.
• How is this case a farce? (What is it making fun of?)
• Is the court fair to Shylock?
• How do the words that the “lawyers” use trick Shylock or the rest of the court?
4. Extensions:
• Write out how you believe the trial would change in a more modern setting.

Core 4:

1. Reflect-on: How did using the picture book enhance your understanding of the pied piper and of the questions that went with it?
2. Share a few of your responses from the blogs.
3. Which of these questions are debatable?
   • How do you frame a question so that it is more debatable.
4. How is this more debatable: “Solved: The mayor should have paid the Piper.”
5. Extension:
   • Write out how you believe a debate should be organized and run.

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Core 1:

1. (We will be coming back to our discussion on Public Education tomorrow. Today will be the second of four 30-minute Expert blogging sessions.)
2. Write-on: Create the following diagram on a piece of paper (or computer if your prefer… Notebook or Word would probably be quickest) to show your
   opinions of what should and should not be allowed of the following
   remixing or mashup situations:

Isn’t Illegal Is Illegal
Should be Illegal
Shouldn’t be Illegal

1. Creating a collage using a famous piece of art and some of your own drawings.
2. Hacking someone’s computer game and making it better then selling it.
3. Taking someone’s direct quote from a book without citing it.
4. Taking someone’s ideas from a book and listing them as one of your biggest influences in the bio.
5. Using two pieces of different music to make a new one.
6. Creating a replica of a building in Google Sketch-up.
7. Creating a parody of the latest blockbuster film and putting it up on YouTube.
8. Typing out a chapter of someone’s book and putting links to pictures of all of the places it mentions.
9. Taking the beat or melody of a famous song and looping it to create
   something new to sing or rap over, without asking for permission to use
   the sample.
10. Using a well known movie clip, and dubbing you and your friends
    making up funny, rude comments over top of it so that it looks like
    they are saying what you want them to.

Discuss each situation with your neighbors when you are finished.

• Use the these definitions and real life situations and in order to complete your 30-minute-expert blogging session on the following debatable topic: Solved: Any idea or work that you create should be able to be remixed, modified, and repackaged for the purposes of another person.

Extension: Finish your 30-minute-Expert blogging session in the resources, facts, and opinions format.

Core 2:

1. Write-on: When should you take action against injustice, and when is it okay just to let it be?
2. Check out a finished Hierarchy Blog Post:
   • Swordman
3. If you haven’t finished your hierarchy piece, follow the instructions from last Friday:
   1. Choose two steps in one of your school hierarchy and display them visually (using http://www.morguefile.com or http://www.everystockphoto.com) in Smart Notebook. Then answer the question in my example: How can we change the hierarchies that exist at Cresthill.
   2. Post to your blog using your Academy of Discovery Docs.
      • If you don’t know how to do that, please follow this tutorial.
      • You can also ask Swordman for help.
4. As your next blog post I would like you to start getting into the idea of taking action on an issue of race or sex. So, I would like you to become familiar with the Taking it Global webpage.
   • Create a building comment (write about the idea presented by someone else on your own blog and link to the original post) on a Taking it Global blog or article.
   • You can search for racism, sexism, or another type of injustice in the search box in the upper right corner of the site. (Or, follow these links: Racism and Sexism)
5. Extensions: Finish your building comment.

Core 3:

1. Write-on: If you were going to create a how-to guide for writing like Shakespeare or reading/understanding Shakespeare what would it include?
2. If you are not finished with your metaphor blog post, please follow the instructions from last Friday:
   • Choose one of your metaphors for love (yours or Portia and Bassanio’s) and display it visually (using http://www.morguefile.com or http://www.everystockphoto.com) in Smart Notebook. State your metaphor in a poetic way and explain from the point of view of one of the participants (you or a character of the play).
   • Post to your blog using your Academy of Discovery Docs.
     • If you don’t know how to do that, please follow this tutorial.
3. To prepare us for the end of the play and your final on MOV (which will consist of either writing one paragraph/stanza in the style of shakespeare or analyzing one paragraph/stanza of another Shakespearean play), you will be constructing a how-to blog post.
   • Option 1: Creating a how-to for reading shakespeare with all of your tips and tricks and all of the things you find online from resources like this.
   • Option 2: Creating a how-to for writing like shakespeare with all of the things that you would have to include to impersonate the bard from your own knowledge and online resources like this.
4. Extension: Finish your how-to for Friday.

Core 4:

1. Listen/Blog-On: Listen to the different types of music and write out what you believe it has the power to persuade you to do.
   • Sounds Familiar
   • Punk Rawk Show
   • Get me away from here, I’m dying
2. Why do you believe that the Pied Piper is dressed as he is?
3. Read from page twenty of the eText. Select one of the pictures that best helps to illustrate the following questions, put it into a blog post, and answer the question:
   • What assumptions did the Mayor make about the Piper?
   • What was the Piper’s point of view about how he was treated? Were his actions justified? Why or why not?
   • What is the lesson of the poem?
   • Why do you think the Piper chose music to charm the rats and the children?
   • What did the Piper mean by the words, “And folks who put me in a passion/ May find me pipe after another fashion”?
   • Why was no one able to stop the children?
   • How did the Piper persuade the Mayor to allow him to get rid of the
     rats? What evidence did the Piper use to support his argument?
   • How does this version of the story of the Pied Piper (or a portion of it) compare to the other versions found here, or to the songs found here.
4. Which of these questions are debatable?
   • How do you frame a question so that it is more debatable.
5. How is this more debatable: “Solved: The mayor should have paid the Piper.”
6. Extension:
   • Write out how you believe a debate should be organized and run.

Core 1:

1. Write-on: Is public education a privilege or a right?
2. Read “The Case for Public Schools” by Horace Mann
   • What key points does he raise about public education?
   • What evidence does he use to prove them?
   • How is his vision different from the reality of public education?
3. Extensions: Answer the following question in the image:

Core 2:

1. Write-on: What is the difference between respect and fear?
2. Read Chapter 6 of Roll of Thunder.
   • In graphic organizer form (of your choosing) write down who is respected and who is feared.
   • Which characters are neither respected or feared?
     • How does this affect them?
3. Who is respected or feared out the pictures we looked at from the 1930s?
   • Tinkerbell762237
   • Withacherryontop
   • YellowRavenClawGirl
4. Extension: Finish Graphic Organizer and Chapter 6 for Tomorrow.

Core 3:

1. Write-on: What is the difference between stubbornness and spite?
2. Review metaphors:
   • 4 Ways
   • Babyblankie43
   • Ilthswas
     • Why should we look at love and marriage metaphorically?
3. Finish Act III:
   • Why is Shylock so obsessed with “his bond?”
   • What deal have Lorenzo and Portia struck?
   • How does Jessica’s conversion affect others’ actions (Shylock’s, Portia’s, Lorenzo’s)?
4. Extensions:
   • Prepare for Act IV: What do you expect to see at a trial?

Core 4:

1. Reflect-on: On the back of your essay, write down a reflection of how your essay writing has changed as a result of our in-depth look at it? (You can also reflect on how well you think you did on the essay itself.)
2. Read Pied Piper of Hamelin:
   • How can music create changes in the ways people feel and act? Are
     these changes always positive? What are some examples of ways in which
     music may have affected events in history?
   • What assumptions did the Mayor make about the Piper?
   • What was the Piper’s point of view about how he was treated? Were his actions justified? Why or why not?
   • What is the lesson of the poem?
   • Why do you think the Piper chose music to charm the rats and the children?
   • What did the Piper mean by the words, “And folks who put me in a passion/ May find me pipe after another fashion”?
   • Why was no one able to stop the children?
   • How did the Piper persuade the Mayor to allow him to get rid of the
     rats? What evidence did the Piper use to support his argument?
3. Extensions:
   • Answer the following question in a paragraph: Should the mayor have paid the Piper? Why or Why not?

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Core 1:

1. Discuss-on: Why would something be worth debating?
   • Throw out ideas for debate.
2. A 30-minute-expert blogging session on global censorship:
   • Mr Mayo’s Delicious Account on Free Press
     • Resources
     • Facts
     • Opinions
3. Extension:
   • Post your findings to your blog in the correct format.

Core 2:

1. Discuss-on: Why do we establish hierarchies?
2. Choose two steps in one of your school hierarchy and display them visually (using http://www.morguefile.com or http://www.everystockphoto.com) in Smart Notebook. Then answer the question in my example: How can we change the hierarchies that exist at Cresthill.
3. Post to your blog using your Academy of Discovery Docs.
   • If you don’t know how to do that, please follow this tutorial.

Core 3:

1. Discuss-on: How does your outlook upon love affect your ability to love?
2. Choose one of your metaphors for love (yours or Portia and Bassanio’s) and display it visually (using http://www.morguefile.com or http://www.everystockphoto.com) in Smart Notebook. State your metaphor in a poetic way and explain from the point of view of one of the participants (you or a character of the play).
3. Post to your blog using your Academy of Discovery Docs.
   • If you don’t know how to do that, please follow this tutorial.

Core 4:

1. If you are “finished” or “stuck” in your essay writing:
   • Get a couple of people to read it and comment.
   • Comment on other students’ essays.
   • Look for revisions to make your piece more persuasive
   • Edit using one of the following checklists if you like:
     • Checklist #1
     • Checklist #2
   • For added flavor, record your essay as a podcast (on garageband with music if you like).
2. If and when you finish working on your essay, you can start/continue your Academy Authentic work.

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Core 1:

1. Draw-on: Draw a diagram of how you believe a debate should be run that will go along with what you wrote last night.
2. Share out your diagrams on the document camera.
3. Test the most popular form out with “Solved: They mayor should have paid the Piper.”
4. What can we do differently/better next time?
5. Extensions:
   • Write out what kind of debate you believe are worth having.

Core 2:

1. Debate-on: “Solved: Paul Dawson should be fired.”
2. Making the N-word History.
3. What is the Heirarchy of names
   • In our school?
   • In our book (Roll of Thunder)?
4. Extension:
   1. Finish Chapter 6 for tomorrow.

Core 3:

1.  Write-on: What is marriage?
2. Read through Act III, Scene II
   • Answer the following question in metaphor/simile:
     • How does your vision of love and marriage differ from Portia and Bassanio’s? (What is your vision of love like and what is their vision of love like?)
3. Extension: Finish Act III for Friday.

Core 4:

1. Perform-on: Perform your Continental Congress pieces for the class (in your best founding father voice).
   • Does this revision seem important/valuable?
2. What makes a conclusion a good one?
3. Read what the Pen Commandments has to say about conclusions as leading guests to the door.
4. Extensions:
   • Be ready to finish your first draft of your essay tomorrow.

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Core 1:

1. Write-on: Does music have the power to persuade?
2. Discuss the Pied Piper of Hamelin questions:
   • How can music create changes in the ways people feel and act? Are
     these changes always positive? What are some examples of ways in which
     music may have affected events in history?
   • What assumptions did the Mayor make about the Piper?
   • What was the Piper’s point of view about how he was treated? Were his actions justified? Why or why not?
   • What is the lesson of the poem?
   • Why do you think the Piper chose music to charm the rats and the children?
   • What did the Piper mean by the words, “And folks who put me in a passion/ May find me pipe after another fashion”?
   • Why was no one able to stop the children?
   • How did the Piper persuade the Mayor to allow him to get rid of the
     rats? What evidence did the Piper use to support his argument?
3. Which of these questions are debatable?
   • How do you frame a question so that it is more debatable.
4. How is this more debatable: “Solved: The may should have paid the Piper.”
5. Extension:
   • Write out how you believe a debate should be organized and run.

Core 2:

1. Quiz-on: Why did Mrs. Logan warn her children before taking them to the Barry’s.
2. Read Chapter 5:
   • What does it take in order to create change in society?
   • Do you have the kind of courage that it takes to change others or yourself?
3. Extensions:
   • Start to think about what part of racism or sexism you would want to tackle (change for the better).

Core 3:

1. Write-on: How can you make it so each student in this class is heard, and so that Austin isn’t forced to shush us every few minutes?
2. Read to Shylock’s Speech
   • Why is this speech so important to the story?
   • How does it add complexity to his character?
   • What is flawed about his logic?
   • Is Shylock a sympathetic character?
   • Do you believe that Shakespeare’s viewpoint of Jews at the time The Merchant of Venice was written was progressive or just nuanced.
3. Perform the speech.
4. Extensions:
   • Read you AR book.

Core 4:

1. What is revision in persuasion?
   • Why did the founding fathers make the changes that they did?
   • How has their persuasion benefited society?
   • How do you give that kind of importance to your own writing about a book.
2. Choose two revisions made in the Declaration of Independence and
   write out your theory on why these particular revisions were made from
   the viewpoint of one of the founding fathers.
   • Speak as if in the continental congress and try to convince the
     assembly to revise the document before sending it out into the world.
3. Extension:
   • Continue working on your body paragraphs for your persuasive essay.

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I was out at the NACOL VSS 2007 today.

Here are my sub plans.