11.26 - Poetry Out Loud

The first half of today's class was focused on exploring some ideas that will be important in reading Anthem by Ayn Rand. We will start this book after the break.

Today we did an activity in which everyone had a name and a job assigned to them as part of constructing a perfect new society. After having this name and job assigned, everyone reflected on whether or not they thought the plan would work and why/why not.

Next, we looked at how language can be used to separate people and single them out and make them feel like they aren't a part of the group. To prevent this, we made the rule that no one could use the words I, me, mine, you, your, yours, he, she, her, him, his, hers. Instead we spoke only using "we, us, our, and ours." With these rules, everyone talked to a couple of people in which they discussed the following questions:

What is going to be happening this weekend for the holidays?

Which holiday is the best holiday?

Following these discussions, we discussed what it was like to restrict language in this way. These are all ideas we will look at more in this unit.

Next, we started working with Poetry Out Loud. I read the poem I am going to memorize ("To a Mouse") to the class. We then reviewed the guidelines and practice tips for Poetry Out Loud.

Everyone then had the rest of the period to read poems and identify poems they may be interested in reading. The approach for reading poetry today was to be a lot like looking at a restaurant at a menu where you review a lot of the items and keep in mind what sounds best before making a final decision.

The Poetry Out Loud poem finder page is a great resource in looking for poems.


Homework:

Read through a variety of poems for Poetry Out Loud and find a poem that you would like to memorize and recite (choose a poem you want to explore and would like to work more with).

Complete missing work and revise any assignment that scored below a 92.

 

Keep up to date on your grades through Pinnacle:
In school: 192.168.8.7/Pinnacle/PIV
Outside of school: http://pinweb.lisbonschoolsme.org/pinnacle/piv

11.25 - Roots and Prefixes Set 7 / Revisions

At the beginning of class today, everyone had a few minutes to review their roots and prefixes from set 7. We then played language ninja for ten minutes as a means of review. After the game, we had the set 7 quiz which we corrected together when everyone was done.

In the remaining half of the period, we reviewed class performance on recent assignments and talked about what worked well and what needed improvement on these assignments generally (slides below).

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Several students then helped me to return work and I handed out grade report sheets. Everyone had the remaining time in period to complete any missing work and revise any assignments scoring below a 92. During this time, I met individually with students to answer questions and talk about assignments.

Homework:

Complete or revise assignments as needed.

11.22 - The Yeah, Yeah, Yeah Song and Ayn Rand

Today in class, we returned to our work with "The Yeah, Yeah, Yeah Song." We listened to the song again and then discussed everyone's reactions to and interpretations of the song. We used the following set of lyrics to guide our discussion and in the next part of the activity:

The Yeah, Yeah, Yeah Song

In our discussion, we focused specifically on the lines:

It's a very dangerous thing to do
Exactly what you want?

Because you cannot know yourself
Or what you'd really do 

With all your power

Everyone analyzed these lines in their writer's journal. We then reviewed the main idea of Ayn Rand's theory of Objectivism and then everyone had the rest of the period to respond to the prompt analyzing how she would respond to this song.

Homework:

Finish responding to the prompt analyzing how Ayn Rand would feel about The Yeah, Yeah, Yeah Song.

Complete missing work and revise any assignment that scored below a 92.

 

Keep up to date on your grades through Pinnacle:
In school: 192.168.8.7/Pinnacle/PIV
Outside of school: http://pinweb.lisbonschoolsme.org/pinnacle/piv

11.21 - Ayn Rand Research Wrap-Up

Today in class, everyone was working independently to finish their two paragraphs on what Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism is and what in her life lead to the creation of this philosophy.

People were wrapping-up their work according to where they were at in the process. The steps in order were:

Complete Research (finding seven relevant facts from three sources)
Outline (establishing a thesis and using facts to help prove it)
Writing (use the outline to write two paragraphs answering our research questions)

In class, we went over what each portion of the outline would do and talked about possible responses to these different sections of the outline. Our notes on what each portion of the outline would do were as follows:

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Materials used today included:

Ayn Rand Research sheet
Ayn Rand Research documents

Research outline and response

At the end of class, we listened to "The Yeah, Yeah, Yeah Song" by the Flaming Lips and everyone responded to the questions below. We will be working with this song more next class.

 

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Homework:

Finish all steps of the Ayn Rand research if you did not do so in class.

Complete missing work and revise any assignment that scored below a 92.

 

Keep up to date on your grades through Pinnacle:
In school: 192.168.8.7/Pinnacle/PIV
Outside of school: http://pinweb.lisbonschoolsme.org/pinnacle/piv

11.20 - Ayn Rand Research Outline and Response

We started today's class with the following writing prompt:

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After everyone had a chance to respond to this prompt, we discussed students answers looking at who agreed, who disagreed, and who felt conflicted about her perspective. This lead us into discussion of the terms, "objective" and "subjective" which we defined as follows:

Subjective - a perspective based on personal feelings or opinions

Objective - a perspective that is universal, not based on personal feelings or opinions

We discussed how Rand's perspective on love is that it should be an objective decision in which we decide to love people who are worthy of our love. Some people in class argued that love is an entirely subjective experience and no one can say what it is like for someone else. 

This lead us back to what objectivism means and how Ayn Rand came to this idea. 

In getting back into this, everyone finished their Ayn Rand research and then organized their responses to the questions through the provided outline:

What was Ayn Rand's social/political philosophy?
How did she come to this philosophy?

After everyone finished the outline, there was time to turn the outline into a formally written response.

Materials used today included:

Ayn Rand Research sheet
Ayn Rand Research documents

Research outline and response

Homework:

If you did not do so in class today, finish your research, outline, and response on Ayn Rand's political/social philosophy of Objectivism and how she came to this philosophy.

Complete missing work and revise any assignment that scored below a 92.

 

Keep up to date on your grades through Pinnacle:
In school: 192.168.8.7/Pinnacle/PIV
Outside of school: http://pinweb.lisbonschoolsme.org/pinnacle/piv

11.19 - Ayn Rand Research

We started today's class with the following writing prompt:

In your opinion, what is the most important thing in life?
How does someone achieve, find, or hold on to this?

After everyone had a chance to respond to this prompt, we discussed students' responses. The range of responses from class was:

Love
True Love
Love, Happiness, Peace, Food
Happiness
Food
Food and Water
Success (Power/Money)
Non-ignorance
Knowledge

We then watched Mike Wallace interview Ayn Rand (video below).

While watching this video, everyone considered the following question:

What would Ayn Rand say the most important thing in life is?
According to Rand, how would someone achieve this?


After we watched the video and everyone had a chance to respond to the prompt, we discussed students' responses.

We then discussed how Rand's response helps to give us some perspective on her philosophy, Objectivism. This lead us back to our research on Ayn Rand where everyone is gathering information on what Objectivism, her social/political philosophy, is and how she came to develop this philosophy.

In class, everyone use the Ayn Rand Research sheet to record their facts. I also had a number of research documents available for people to use in gathering this specific information about Rand.

Ayn Rand Research sheet
Ayn Rand Research documents

Homework:

If you did not do so in class, finish finding seven facts that provide information on Rand's social/political philosophy of Objectivism and what influenced her to come up with this philosophy.

11.18 - Revision and Ayn Rand Research

We started today's class with an assessment review of the "Harrison Bergeron" and "2081" theme comparison assignment (see below). In this we looked at trends in what people were doing well and which points seemed to trip people up in completing this assignment.

Everyone then had time to make revisions to their responses or to complete their response and turn it in if they had not done so already. People who had not yet turned this assignment in were asked to review and make any necessary changes based on today's feedback.

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Next, I handed out grade report sheets for the second quarter so far while some students helped to return assessed work. Everyone then had the rest of the period to work on these revisions and work on finding their facts about Ayn Rand our Ayn Rand research project.

In class we discussed how the seven facts (from three different sources) that people find should help answer the question:

What Was Ayn Rand's social/ political philosophy?
How did she come to this philosophy?

The computers in the back of the room were available for people to use as they completed their revisions. Everyone needed to check in with me to make sure all revisions were caught up before moving on to using the computers. The work progression for today is included below.

Work Progression

Complete/Revise "Harrison Bergeron" Story v. Film

Complete/Revise "Harrison Bergeron" and "2081" Theme Comparison

Revise roots/prefixes quizzes

Complete Ayn Rand research

Tomorrow we will look at writing our paragraphs on the Ayn Rand research.


Homework:

Complete any work on assignments that were not finished today in class.

For tomorrow, have your seven facts on Ayn Rand that help answer our question about what her political/social philosophy was and how she came to that philosophy.