Too Long for Twitter

To Kill A Mockingbird - Students' Opinions

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 19:04:00 -0500

These are some of my favorite student thoughts I’ve ever read about TKAM.

——————————————————————————————————————-

TKAM “shines a light onto what is right in life.” Sheldon B.
“As long as one race hates another, Harper Lee’s novel will never be outdated.” Austin O.
“Anyone with a heart would be touched by the story of the Finch family.” Emily S.
“Boo is just like anybody else except with a bigger heart.” Morgan G.
“How someone cannot love this book and fall in love with the characters is mind blowing.” Morgan G.
“If anyone reads this book, they would have a hard time not getting wrapped up in it.” Morgan S.
“TKAM is relatable to any time period & any age.” Danielle L.
“This book should go down as one of the best books ever.” Kyle D.
“The morals and lessons that Atticus teaches still need to be learned in today’s society.” Gabe B.

schoollibraryjournal: “New Year’s Resolutions From YA...

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 20:06:27 -0500

schoollibraryjournal:

“New Year’s Resolutions From YA Characters” (via YALSA’s The Hub)

Check out these sites...

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 22:28:06 -0500

I am so proud of my seniors’ Lord of the Flies’ projects! Please check out these fantastic websites - and don’t worry, you won’t have a LotF overdose - the topics really vary.

http://jchenso9.wix.com/bullying

http://mackenziemartin2013.wix.com/mentaldisorderskids

http://scruffysorah.wix.com/personality-traits

http://english17.wix.com/worthy-of-65-points

http://vaj423.wix.com/industry-of-outrage

fishingboatproceeds: projectforawesome: In which John Green...

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 22:17:26 -0500

fishingboatproceeds:

projectforawesome:

In which John Green introduces the (sixth annual!) Project for Awesome, discusses privilege and the importance of expanding opportunity, the decreasing of world suck, and some ridiculously good news.

Go to http://www.projectforawesome.com to sign up now.

And follow the p4a tumblr from which this was reblogged.

Lord of the Flies & WWII/Holocaust Connections

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 21:12:05 -0400

For Golding, who served as a naval officer during the war, “Belsen and Hiroshima and all the rest of it” provided proof of the depths to which humans could sink.

The boys land on the island in the first place because they are being evacuated from a war zone. In keeping with 1950s anxiety about atomic weapons, Golding makes it a nuclear war… However, it is Britain’s most recent war, WWII, that is uppermost in Golding’s mind.
After the defeat of the Nazis and the revelation of atrocities, the question everyone - not only Golding - was asking was, “How could this have happened?” How could people have permitted someone like Hitler to come to power, and how could they have gone along with him once they saw what he was doing with his powers.

Character parallels:

Jack as Hitler - he implies he will only rule those he deems worthy… you should count the other numerous ways.
Ralph as Britain’s prewar prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, who let Hitler invade the Sudetenland in the hope that it would stop there.
Or - Ralph as Germany’s pre-Nazi government which failed to understand the danger represented by giving the Nazis any sort of power at all.
Piggy as the Jews & other “undesirables” persecuted by Hitler’s regime. (**Follow his treatment & compare it to the Jews’.)
Roger as the Gestapo (Hitler’s secret police) or SS (who ran the concentration camps) - because he revels in violence.
Samneric as the decent Germans cowed by fear and torture.
The littleuns and unnamed older boys are the great mass of people, the ones influenced by a mixture of fear, desire for glory, greed, and sheer unwillingness to stand up for anything.

**directly quoted (and slightly paraphrased, with a few additional comments) from a chapter called “War and Postwar” in the book Literature in Context: Lord of the Flies by Kirstin Olsen.

amandaonwriting: Zelda Fitzgerald quote: “Nobody has ever...

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 22:28:11 -0400

amandaonwriting:

Zelda Fitzgerald quote: “Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.”

11 Wonderful Words With No English Equivalent

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 20:32:08 -0400

11 Wonderful Words With No English Equivalent :

amandaonwriting:

1. Seigneur-terraces (French)
Coffee shop dwellers who sit at tables a long time but spend little money.

2. Ya’arburnee (Arabic)
This word is the hopeful declaration that you will die before someone you love deeply, because you cannot stand to live without them. Literally, may you bury me.

3. Schlimazel (Yiddish)
Someone prone to bad luck. Yiddish distinguishes between the schlemiel and schlimazel, whose fates would probably be grouped under those of the klutz in other languages. The schlemiel is the traditional maladroit, who spills his coffee; the schlimazel is the one on whom it’s spilled.

4. Packesel (German)
The packesel is the person who’s stuck carrying everyone else’s bags on a trip. Literally, a burro.

5. L’esprit de l’escalier (French)
Literally, stairwell wit—a too-late retort thought of only after departure.

6. Hygge (Danish)
Denmark’s mantra, hygge is the pleasant, genial, and intimate feeling associated with sitting around a fire in the winter with close friends.

7. Spesenritter (German)
Literally, an expense knight. You’ve probably dined with a spesenritter before, the type who shows off by paying the bill on the company’s expense account.

8. Cavoli Riscaldati (Italian)
The result of attempting to revive an unworkable relationship. Literally, reheated cabbage.

9. Bilita Mpash (Bantu)
An amazing, pleasant dream. Not just a “good” dream; the opposite of a nightmare.

10. Litost (Czech)
Milan Kundera described the emotion as “a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery.”

11. Murr-ma (Waigman, language of Australia)
To walk alongside the water while searching for something with your feet.

by Romy Oltuski

discoverynews: 20 Everyday Things We Have Because Of...

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 20:26:10 -0400

discoverynews:

20 Everyday Things We Have Because Of NASA

Landing MSL Curiosity on Mars has caused controversy about NASA’s budget. Many people are upset that NASA’s mandate serves no practical purpose, and the money could be put to better use. Every year, NASA publishes a list of items developed because of NASA’s work. Here’s a short list from Business Insider:

Artificial limbs
    Baby formula
    Cell-phone cameras
    Computer mouse
    Cordless tools
    Ear thermometer
    Firefighter gear
    Freeze-dried food
    Golf clubs
    Long-distance communication
    Invisible braces
    MRI and CAT scans
    Memory foam
    Safer highways
    Solar panels
    Shoe insoles
    Ski boots
    Adjustable smoke detector
    Water filters
    UV-blocking sunglasses

NASA did not invent:
    Tang
    Velcro
    Teflon

(h/t alexob)

Photo

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 18:10:43 -0400

Heat

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 18:07:36 -0400

wwnorton:

O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.

Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air—
fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.

Cut the heat—
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.

-H.D.

A Perfect Summer Poem

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 12:29:13 -0400

The Poet Visits the Museum of Fine Arts

by Mary Oliver

For a long time
     I was not even
        in this world, yet
           every summer

every rose
     opened in perfect sweetness
        and lived
           in gracious repose,

in its own exotic fragrance,
     in its huge willingness to give
        something, from its small self,
           to the entirety of the world.

I think of them, thousands upon thousands,
     in many lands,
        whenever summer came to them,
           rising

out of the patience of patience,
     to leaf and bud and look up
        into the blue sky
           or, with thanks,

into the rain
     that would feed
        their thirsty roots
           latched into the earth—

sandy or hard, Vermont or Arabia,
     what did it matter,
        the answer was simply to rise
           in joyfulness, all their days.

Have I found any better teaching?
     Not ever, not yet.
        Last week I saw my first Botticelli
           and almost fainted,

and if I could I would paint like that
     but am shelved somewhere below, with a few songs
        about roses: teachers, also, of the ways
           toward thanks, and praise.

Photo

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 12:27:30 -0400

Hunger Games Hangover

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 12:26:00 -0400

Hunger Games Hangover:

amandaonwriting:

15 Books To Read After You’ve Read The Hunger Games

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Legend by Marie Lu

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

The Maze Runner (Maze Runner Trilogy, Book 1) by James Dashner

Unwind by Neal Shusterman

Goneby Michael Grant

Blood Red Road (Dustlands, Book 1) by Moira Young

The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer

Life As We Knew Itby Susan Beth Pfeffer

Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi

Matched by Ally Condie

Enclave by Ann Aguirre

Incarnate by Jodi Meadows

Suggestions from The Perpetual Page-Turner

Shakespeare: You should know #2

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 21:08:08 -0400

Today (June 18) is the birthday of philanthropist and oil tycoon Henry Clay Folger, born in New York City (1857). After he graduated from college, he took a job as a clerk at an oil company. He learned the oil business, worked his way up, and became president of Standard Oil in 1911. Folger loved Shakespeare, and studied the Bard in college. He married Emily Jordan, an intelligent woman who shared her husband’s enthusiasm for the poet. She wrote to a noted Shakespeare expert of the day, Horace Howard Furness, and asked him how she could go about educating herself. His advice to her was this: “[R]ead a play every day consecutively. At the end of the thirty-seven days you will be in a Shakespearian atmosphere that will astonish you with its novelty and its pleasure, and its profit. Don’t read a single note during the month.” She followed his advice and eventually earned a master’s degree from Vassar. The Folgers began collecting Shakespeareana; over the years they amassed the largest collection of First Folio editions in the world. After World War I, Henry Clay Folger and his wife began looking for a location to build a Shakespeare library. They planned the project for nine years, and found the spot they were looking for in Washington, D.C., on Capitol Hill. Congress approved the purchase of the land in 1928, and the library’s cornerstone was laid in 1930. Unfortunately, Folger died soon afterward and never saw his plans come to fruition. The library opened on April 23 — Shakespeare’s birthday — in 1932. Emily Folger remained active in funding and administering the library until her death in 1936. It’s now run by trustees of Amherst College.

**This was taken directly from The Writer’s Almanac webpage.

amandaonwriting: One of the golden rules of writing fiction...

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 20:30:55 -0400

amandaonwriting:

One of the golden rules of writing fiction is: Show! Don’t tell.

Here are some verbs that make you tell:

appeared

decided

felt

heard

knew

mused

realized

seemed

thought

wondered

Try not to use them!

How do you fix this?

Show how your character feels by her actions. Use strong verbs to describe her state of mind.

Don’t say: Sarah appeared to be angry as she put her books on the table.
Do say: Sarah slapped her books on the table.

Don’t say: Angus seemed distracted as he walked along the road.
Do say: Angus paused in the road. A car’s brakes screamed. ‘Hey, watch out!’ He jumped at the sound of the angry driver’s voice. ‘Why don’t you look where you’re going?’

Don’t say: Harry decided to visit the more appealing of the two countries.
Do say: Harry grabbed a pen. He drew up two columns. New Zealand or Germany. Which of the countries was more appealing? This would help him decide.

a poem that makes me think of graduates...

Mon, 28 May 2012 00:34:44 -0400

When I Think

by Robert Creeley

When I think of where I’ve come from
or even try to measure as any kind of
distance these places, all the various
people, and all the ways in which I re-
member them, so that even the skin I
touched or was myself fact of, inside,
could see through like a hole in the wall
or listen to, it must have been, to what
was going on in there, even if I was still
too dumb to know anything—When I think
of the miles and miles of roads, or meals,
of telephone wires even, or even of water
poured out in endless streams down streaks
of black sky or the dirt roads washed clean,
or myriad, salty tears and suddenly it’s spring
again, or it was—Even when I think about
all those I treated so poorly, names, places,
their waiting uselessly for me in the rain and
I never came, was never really there at all,
was moving so confusedly, so fast, so driven
like a car along some empty highway passing,
passing other cars—When I try to think of
things, of what’s happened, of what a life is
and was, my life, when I wonder what it meant,
the sad days passing, the continuing, echoing deaths,
all the painful, belligerent news, and the dog still
waiting to be fed, the closeness of you sleeping, voices,
presences, of children, of our own grown children,
the shining, bright sun, the smell of the air just now,
each physical moment, passing, passing, it’s what
it always is or ever was, just then, just there.

Jane Austen, quote, books, boat, cameras. I love everything...

Mon, 28 May 2012 00:22:26 -0400

Jane Austen, quote, books, boat, cameras. I love everything about this.

The Book Thief Background...

Fri, 11 May 2012 22:53:00 -0400

The Book Thief Background...:

mzfaq:

I grew up in Sydney and had a pretty normal childhood with my brother and two sisters. We lived most of our lives in the backyard, doing typical Australian things, but once in a while, it wasn’t Sydney anymore – because our parents told us their stories. That was when a piece of Europe entered…

My "REAL" 1000th Tweet... Why I "LOVE" Twitter...

Wed, 02 May 2012 21:09:42 -0400

I’ve been waiting and waiting and WAITING for my 1000th Tweet and then I go and sloppily miss it by such a tiny bit! Boo! So please consider this my 1000th Tweet.

The Top 7 Reasons I “LOVE” Twitter

1. I use it as a school tool…. post bonus options, HW reminders, possible test questions, etc. I love it.

2. RTs, MTs, and Favorites are a tiny taste of the last step of the writing process: Publishing. And that would tickle any tweeter!

3. I tell students if they follow me and want me to follow them back, I will. And all of them have a clear voice, which I love to read and not grade or critique. Some of them are so funny and some are so insightful and they are all so real. I love it.

4. I can do it from my non-smart phone. With pictures. From my phone. Thanks to a student (@Sterry00). Looovvvve it.

5. It’s the best, consistent, any time of the year professional development I’ve ever encountered. #Engchat is a weekly lifesaver. Why every English teacher doesn’t have a Twitter, I will never understand. I LOVE it.

6. I follow the rock stars of the teaching world & YA Lit world. (@englishcomp, @KellyGToGo, @ChrisCrutcher, @realjohngreen, @alansitomer… I could go on and on!) AND send them Tweets. AND sometimes they read them! There is nothing better on the www.

7. I can keep in just enough touch with former students (who are now full-fledged adults) and learn from and be entertained by them. (Started with @Nils_Root and @layzrr and expanded a bit from there.) I love it!

amandaonwriting: Vintage Typewriter Lantern By night, a secret...

Tue, 01 May 2012 22:18:59 -0400

amandaonwriting:

Vintage Typewriter Lantern

By night, a secret message is revealed on the typewriter paper. This can be customised with your favourite literary quote or any other secret message