Sheehy English 9

I’ve begun a weekly podcast just to touch base with all my students. You don’t have to listen to these, but I thought it would be nice to share some of the thinking I have while working with you through the week, as well as give you the chance to respond. If you feel like commenting, comment here or write on your own blog and link back to this one.

Weekly Gab: What gets you?

This week’s audio quality is a bit low, but it keeps the file size small. I’ll make it a bit better next week.

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Attribution:

Music: Kcentric’s Roaches (Keep It Down) By: Abhi S.V.
Retrieved from: http://ccmixter.org/media/files/abhisv/12675 on November 30, 2007

Original image: ‘Fragile‘ By: Patrícia Soransso Retrieved from: ww.flickr.com/photos/40088472@N00/415094676 on November 30, 2007

You have made your arguments for why you and Odysseus are similar, and I think your essays amply address the question we posed for this unit: Is it possible for you to connect an ancient Greek epic to your lives in some sort of interesting way? The answer is yes, and you have done so by identifying the characteristics of the epic hero and relating them to your own lives, and you did so by examining the characteristics of the monsters and forming analogies between them and your own lives.

Now that you’ve received your essays back, I’d like you to look over them and write a short blog article about what you did well and what you can improve for next time. I’d also like you to address the things you said you needed to improve after the last essay (remember when we wrote a similar reflection?). I’ll write some specific guidelines for writing the reflection in a moment, but first I’d like to list a few things I thought were worth discussing as a group. They’re things we need to improve or things we would do well to learn:

1. With numbers under ten, spell them out – Don’t write 8, write eight.
2. Know the difference between have and of – Don’t write “I could of gone with you.” Write “I could have gone with you.”
3. Be careful about punctuation for quotes – know the rules we discussed in class.
4. Know what to do about long quotes – If the quotation reaches four lines, put it in its own paragraph, don’t use quotation marks, and indent the entire paragraph by a half inch on the left and right margins.
5. Many of your papers struggled at times with the “flow.” You may have had trouble with transitions, or maybe you got tangled trying to write a sentence that makes sense at times. You can improve at this by taking all your assignments seriously, even those on the blogs, because the more you write and think, the easier the process becomes. So to improve at this, try hard!

Okay, here are the instructions for writing this article. They’re copied directly from the reflection you wrote after the previous essays:

The first thing I want you to do is read over any comments I put on your essay and the scores you earned on the rubric. Figure out what went well and what went wrong. Then turn to your blog and write about it. Tell us where you did well and what you’ll need to improve for next time.

When you tell us what went well, quote from your essay. Consider putting your strongest paragraph right into your blog article (copy and paste!). If you do not have a full paragraph that was strong, give a line, like a topic sentence or an attention grabber, and explain to us why it is strong. Don’t cut this article too short. I realize the temptation is to jot two sentences and quit. I’d like to see 5-7 sentences of reflective writing and a quote from your essay.

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Image Attribution:

• Original image: ‘Odysseus Taunts Polyphemus‘ by: GR L
• Original image: ‘some cats love sinks‘ by: Kevin Steele

You’ve taken the survey, now answer the question: What are you going to do when you grow up?

When I was in high school, I thought I was going to be a radio DJ, but everybody else told me I should be a teacher. The teacher thing was a pretty cool idea because then I could coach soccer or baseball easily.

Sophomore year, I did a survey like the one you folks just did and discovered that radio announcers have trouble paying rent, their salaries are so measly. I dropped that idea and moved on, thinking I could write advertising or be a spokesman for a company or something. Then, in college, I decided I could solve the measly pay thing by living in a cheap apartment and eating nothing but pasta and rice – my ticket into the radio gig.

The rice was good for a while, but then I thought it might be nice to eat some chickens that had already hatched, if you know what I mean. So here I am as your teacher, eating the occasional chicken dinner and enjoying myself thoroughly. I guess all those folks were right about me.

All that said, what is your story? What did the little computer program say you should be? What are those all-too-practical careers it suggested? Will you make enough money to live? Then, what I really want to know is, what are your dreams? What would you do if there were no official profiles and recommendations and pressures to make money? Would you return to your third grade choice – a fireman or cop? Answer the question – what do you want to do when you grow up?

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Image Attribution:

• Original image: ‘1986‘ by: Raffaella
• Original image: ‘My New Mic ‘ by: Kieran Connellan

You and Odysseus are similar, and while that will soon be the subject of an essay you’ll write, I’d like to stop before we get there and write a reflective blog article about how the monsters Odysseus encounters are similar to “monsters” in your own life. You are going to make an analogy between The Odyssey and your life.

Choose five monsters from the seven that Odysseus encounters in what we read (Lotus-eaters, Cyclops, Sirens, Scylla, Charybdis, Helios, and the Suitors). Explain at least two characteristics of each of your five monsters, and then explain how those two characteristics are similar to a monster in your life.

This will be a long blog article, but it will not be graded on length. You’ll get 5 points for each monster you discuss. Make sure you mention two characteristics and clearly link those characteristics to both the Odyssey’s monster and yours. Total points = 25.

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Image Attribution:

Original image: ‘Grampa was never what people would call good-looking‘  by: Trey Ratcliff