Christmas Eve Eve

Hello everybody. Resting up? Staying up late and sleeping in? Yes, you know you are.

Just a reminder about the Extra Credit Assignment. Here it is...

Extra Credit Assignment

Mr. Lackey’s classes

December 2014

1. Watch the movie It’s a Wonderful Life (1947) starring James Stewart and Donna Reed. Bonus points if your parent(s) watch it with you. Watch it all the way thru. No cheating. Even more bonus points if it’s in black and white.

2. Have your parent sign a paper saying you watched it. They can add whether or not they watched it with you and whether or not it was in black and white.

3. Do any ONE of the following:

A)    Write a paper comparing and contrasting this movie with the movie The Family Man starring Nicolas Cage. (The Family Man is rated PG-13.) The paper must be hand-written and must be one to two pages long.

B)    Make a Christmas card with a drawing of Bedford Falls or some other image from the movie. Have a message/greeting on the front and on the inside. I will not accept one done on notebook paper. Put some effort into it and make it look like a real Christmas card.

C)    Write another chapter for the movie. What happens next? Your chapter can focus on any of the main characters (including Clarence). It can be humorous or serious, but must be well-written. The paper must be hand-written and must be one to two pages long.

D)    Write a composition about the costs and rewards of sacrifice. Include personal examples of times you made a sacrifice. The paper must be hand-written and must be one to two pages long.

Due date: No later than Tuesday, January 6, 2015. Partial credit will NOT be given. You must watch the movie, bring the parent signature STATING that you watched the movie, and do ONE of the choices above.

 

A word of warning: Cheating, including forging your parent’s signature, will do more than deny you the extra credit. There will be other consequences as well.

Stave One

We will have a quiz over Stave 1 tomorrow (Tuesday). Be sure you have read and understood what happens. As a reward for checking this blog, here are 3 questions you will find on the quiz. Please don't share the questions with others who have not read the blog. Don't reward them for YOUR effort.

What month and year was this book first published?

Two portly gentlemen come to Scrooge and Marley's after the nephew leaves. What do they want?

What does it mean to be "fettered"?

Marley was dead: to begin with.

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you ate well today. Despite all the good food, I have one word for you... pie. Mmmm... pie.

Have you done anything constructive this week? I finished reading The Maze Runner, and then I read its sequel: The Scorch Trials. The dystopian novels (The Giver, Hunger Games, Divergent, etc) are all the rage lately, and the Maze Runner series is that same genre, but I am really enjoying the story. It hasn't turned into a "love story" just yet. I'll start book 3 (The Death Cure) tomorrow. I need to finish it before Monday. I don't like juggling two books at once.

I also went to see the Maze Runner movie yesterday. It was good - just not as good as the book (of course). The girl taking tickets was a former student of mine. It's always fun to run into old students. Most of the time, it's hard for me to remember names - after all, this is my 30th year to teach - but I didn't have that problem with this particular student. Some of you are hard to forget. lol. A word of advice, though: when you run into your old teachers years later, offer your hand in greeting while reminding the teacher of your name. Don't put them on the spot by saying things like, "Do you remember me?"

Bad day on the gridiron with both the Cowboys and Aggies getting whupped. Oh well, I'm not going to let that bother me. At least the Aggies made it close. And the Cowboys have been bad at home all year. Maybe the next couple of weeks on the road will help (but I won't be holding my breath).

We start the Charles Dickens novella A Christmas Carol on Monday. Have your books! You'll be learning about one of the most iconic characters in literature: Ebenezer Scrooge. I love Dickens. He's one of my favorite writers. Did you know he used to do public readings of A Christmas Carol? People would show up to listen to him read the book aloud. That would have been an amazing event.

By the way, the title of this post is the first line of A Christmas Carol. What standard sentence structure rule did Dickens ignore when constructing this opening line?

We're also going to revise and re-write our expository essays. In addition, we will continue examining the parts of the sentence. We're almost through with Step 4: Complements, but having all the DOs/IOs (w/ action verbs) and PNs/PAs (w/ linking verbs) mixed together will be challenging. The more you understand how a sentence works, the better your own writing will be.

Next up after that will be Step 5: Modifiers (adjectives and adverbs). In the not too distant future, we will be learning all about the AAAWWUBBIS and complex sentences.

So gear up and get ready for a fun three weeks leading into the Winter Break.

More soon. Continue to enjoy your break. Read something!

Yeah, yeah, yeah...

I know, I have ignored the blog for almost a month. So let's catch up...

The 1st Quarter ended and we started anew with the 2nd Quarter.

We have all checked out library books and MUST HAVE ONE EVERY DAY until Thanksgiving. It is imperative.

When we return from the Thanksgiving break, you will need a copy of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

We did fine on our Quarter 1 Summative Test, but we can do better. Like before, we will have a Q2 3 Week test (which will be an expository essay), a Q2 6 Week test (right before Christmas), and a Q2 Summative in January.

I'll post an outline for the 2nd Quarter soon.

A Monday with no school

Don't you love three day weekends? I do.

My family spent yesterday at the State Fair. We had a great time, but I was (and still am) tired. I not only reached 100% on my Bowflex Boost (which tells me how much walking I do during the day), but I ended the day at 223%.

And the Cowboys won! Woohoo! The St. Louis Cardinals won their game last night as well, so it was a perfect day.

Remember to have A Separate Peace finished. Have your annotations completed and ready to turn in tomorrow.

You took home your IRWINs so you could share what you've been doing with your parents. Be sure to get their signature on the table of contents AND BRING THE IRWIN BACK TOMORROW!!! Remind your friends to do the same.

This will be week 8 of the school year. We're closing in on the end of the first quarter. That means the first report cards of the year. Are your grades where you want them to be?

I hope you're having a great weekend. See you tomorrow.

A Separate Peace

Here's a schedule for your reading responsibilities:

By the time you get to class on...

• Tuesday, October 7 - You should have read to the end of chapter 9 (w/annotations).
• Wednesday, October 8 - You should have read to the end of chapter 10 (w/annotations).
• Tuesday, October 14 - You should have finished the book (w/annotations).

On Wednesday (tomorrow), I will tell you to finish the book, but you will have until after the weekend before you are held accountable.

There still may be a quiz over chapters 1-10, so be prepared.

6-week Assessment

Tomorrow (Friday) we will take our 6-week assessment for the 1st Quarter. Rumor has it that it will be a couple of poems with maybe 10 questions. I doubt they will use poems we have already read, but that's not a problem for us. Use your TPCASTT process to analyze the poems. That will help you understand it. Whatever you do, don't rush through it and assume you have figured it out. You'll need to study the poems closely.

In the meantime, I am not assigning additional reading for tonight. You should be through chapter 7 of A Separate Peace by now. You will be assigned to read and annotate chapter 8 over the weekend.