30 days challenge report (David)

My 30 days challenge was, of course, very challenging and hard to do and made my fingers all scratched and numb but I enjoyed it. My challenge was to practice on my guitar for 1 hours 30 minutes, and finish 6 songs by the end of the challenge. My challenge went fairly well except for few days which I couldn't make. I also couldn't finish the last song which is Canon Rock by Jerry C. It was a very challenging song and I only made it to less than half way through. Still, I am very satisfied, and happy with my progress on guitar with classic musics and good five songs I've finished. This 30 days challenge was very fun for me to try and I will do it again in the next days.

30 Day Final Progress Report (Mark)

I did fairly well on the 30 day challenge. I did not go on Facebook at all during this time. It was fairly challenging because all the people are discussing things on Facebook and I did not know, but I soon realized that not everything has to be achieved on Facebook. For example, I was going to the Provincial Debate Tournament with a person called Vicky (She was picking me up). I did not know when or where to meet her. She said that she posted the meeting place on Facebook, I thought:"I can't go on Facebook." So I asked her the next time I saw her and I did not have to achieve this through Facebook. This 30 day challenge was fun and challenging. It sometimes made me frustrated and hopeless, but I found more useful things to substitute the time. I would like to undergo some more of these challenges to experience the difference that one small change can make.

My 30 day challenge

My 30 day challenge went well. I did not complete it for all 30 days but I tried. My challenge was to drink 8 glasses of water everyday. At the beginning it went well and I was completing my challenge. Towards the end of the challenge I started to forget and get a little lazy. I am sure that this has helped me to learn that if I focus and put my mind to it, I can complete anything. I would lower the bar a little so I could do the full 30 days. I could change from 8 to 6 or 7 glasses a day. This 30 day challenge is really neat and it got me thinking to do one on my own.

30 day challenge final

My 30 day challenge was to go to homework club or flex at least twice a week to complete my homework or to review the new things that I’ve learned. I was very successful. In fact, I’ve went more than 2 times each week. I found it very helpful and saved me lots of time. After going 2 times the first week, I realized that it was becoming a habit and I would just automatically go there if I had homework and some extra time during lunch. Thanks to my friends, they accompanied me every time making me not feel lonely. I will continue going to homework club/ flex since it is a big help in my life.

My 30 Day Challenge Progress Report (Mark)

       My 30 day challenge is going fairly well. I have not gone on Facebook for the past 18 days. I have participated in more physical events and spent more time with my friends (Although my Facebook will probably be loaded with about 200 mails). I hope to continue in this challenge until this is finished.

Learning Logs

What we did today:

Today, we learning how to make a bibliography and tried it on a book each person. We also continued on our chapters review for 'There Will Be Wolves' (chapters 6~10) and took the test (there were 10 questions each just like the day before when we took the chapters 1~5 test).

Learning Intention:

The reason we learned about bibliograpy is because we will be using bibliography for quite a long time and to keep track of your books, encyclopedia, websites' author, url, publisher...etc.
We've did our chapters review to remember the story line before taking the test. We also took the test to memorizing stories you've read and organizing them because it is always good to read books and organize the basic informations in your head. (they always make good imagination)

Reflection/Connections:

The bibliography was obviously great because I will be using them a lot and they give you lots of informations about good book authors and publishers.
My test result on 'There Will Be Wolves' wasn't that great but it was a good experience, about reviewing a book you have read almost completely so I am a marvy.

Homeworks:

Our Journals for Medieval Characters we've got when we had class in the library are due monday
and also the notes for the character is due monday.
For those of you who haven't finished chapter 10 questions, you better hand them in by monday!

Learning Log Feb 23rd

What We did Today:

Today was a double block day. We started off the afternoon by copying down the schedule that we were going to follow from February 24^th to March 9^th. If you don’t already have this down, you should copy this in your agenda so you are on track for what we are doing.

Fri 24^th – Research Notes due

-Bibliography in class

-Chapter 10 There Will Be Wolves questions due

-Chapter 6-10 Quiz

Mon 27^th -Diary + skit groups?

Tues 28^th

30/29^th - Portfolio prep

2^nd - Sharing of blogs/ finish portfolios

Block switch – 3412

Mon 5^th - skit rehearsal/ group evaluation/ reflections

Tues 6^th - Skits performed – costumes- props

Wed/thurs 7/8^th – portfolios returned

Fri 9^th - Novels returned

After copying all this down, Ms. Lees reviewed chapter 1-5 There Will Be Wolves with us so it would be fresh in our minds and we would get high marks for the test.

After break, we finished off reviewing and we did our test. There was only 10 questions and most of us received the marks we were aiming for. Finally, Ms. Lees gave us the last hour to work on our chapter 10 questions or finish off note taking for our characters. Both of these are due tomorrow.

Learning Intention:

The learning intention for copying down the schedule is to let us be aware of all the things we are doing before spring break and to let us still be able to finish the work we are going to do even if we are away for the day.

The learning intention for reviewing the chapters and doing the test is to show Ms. Lees that we understand the novel and for ourselves to find out if we fully know what the story is talking about.

The learning intention for doing the chapter questions is to let us improve on our understanding and writing skills. For example, we would improve on elaborating our answers and learning from our grammar mistakes.

Connections:

Being able to write full and thorough sentences can help us with lots of important things that will happen in the future. For example, as you gradually get older, you will need to write more and more answers or to explain things. With these skills, your writing would be in very high quality and make people impressed.

Reflections:

I understand that doing tests help us know if we fully understand the novel

I understand that doing chapter questions help us improve our writing skills.

Tips:

Look through your binder for any missing work.

You should work ahead if you have the time since many tests would happen next week or the week after because spring break is coming up and teachers usually wrap up units/ chapters then.

Write future chapter questions in pen because it is clearer to read in.

Homework:

Chapter 10 questions are due tomorrow

Chapter 5- 10 test is tomorrow.

Notes for our characters are due tomorrow

My 30 day challenge progress report

My 30 day challenge was to play guitar 1 hours 30 minutes total, and finish 6 songs in that 30 days. My progress is good so far. I've practiced every day for 1 hour 30 minutes just like I planned for the challenge and I already have memorised 3 songs (I'll still have to work on it a little more). I am going pretty well on my 30 day challenge.

Learning Log

What we did today:

Today, we spent the whole block in the library again. Ms. Lees wasn’t there so there was a librarian looking after us. If you forget how to write a bibliography, follow these steps

1) Go to Google and type in “Fraser heights library”

2) Looking at the first link, there is something that you can click on called “How To Write A Bibliography”

We did research about our roles for the entire block. It was our last block to do research during class time so most of us used our time wisely. If you don’t know what “research” I am talking about, I will explain. We each had a character that we were to learn more about such as their life, what were their entertainment and their duties. Some of the roles we received were: Knight, nun, cook, page. We were allowed to bring our own electronics to do research or to look through the library books. We will start writing a diary soon about the characters we researched on. All of us knew what we were doing since we did the same thing the previous day.

Learning Intention:

The learning intention to do this research is to let us learn more about the middle ages such as how they act, learn and work. Also, we worked on our bibliography skills. We would need this skill all the way until university and starting early would help us a lot.

Connections:

Being able to understand things about the past can help you for future projects or work. Doing an effective bibliography shows that you have proof on whether you are using information from good or bad websites. For example, using Wikipedia is a very bad way to get resources since some of the information can be fake.

Reflection:

Marvy- I understand that learning about the past can improve our knowledge and working on our bibliography skills can help us get a higher mark in future projects that need bibliography skills.

Tips:

You should start studying on the test about the chapters we read in There Will Be wolves

Add more information to your notes about your role so it will be easier when you start writing your diary.

Look through your binder and see if you are missing any work.

Homework:

Chapter 9 questions due Thursday

Chapter 1-9 There Will Be Wolves test Thursday

30 day challenge progress report

My 30 day challenge was to go to homework club at least twice a week. I have been successful so far and it has been helping me a lot. My parents and my friends have been helping me achieve this challenge. They did this by asking me to go to homework club/ flex if they were going to go. Having homework everyday also gave me an excuse to go to homework club when my friends didn’t want to go.

I feel that I’ve been doing quite well with my challenge. Doing this challenge has helped me save lots of time and allowed me to do other things. I will continue to keep and follow my challenge.

Thursday, February 16 learning log

What we did today:

Today, we had a substitute today for double block. She was very nice and kind and explained things very well. We started off by her explaining what we were to do for the day. It was really easy to understand since we did something like that in the past and that all the instructions were written on the whiteboard. Our in class work for the double block was to do note taking on “Manor Life” which was in page 49-53 in the Pathways book. We were told to use one of our best note taking skills which was either 1) An outline 2) Cornell 3) A web

Remember! Note taking should have enough information for you to understand and that it should not be too brief. Also, you don’t want to copy it word by word or else it would be called “plagiarism.” Finally you should title all the information that you are writing and also avoid writing words that could be removed from the sentence and make sense.

After we were finished the note taking, we had to do a Venn diagram that showed the comparison of women in the high middle ages and women today. The comparison could be of anything such as their rights, their jobs and how they were/are being treated.

Finally, if we finished all the note taking and the Venn diagram, we had the time to work on our chapter 8 There Will Be Wolves questions which will be due tomorrow.

Our class behaved quite well today since everyone finished the in class assignment.

Learning Intention:

The learning intention for doing note taking on “Manor Life” in the past was to let us improve our note taking skills such as the ability to identify the main ideas from the details. The learning intention was to also learn about the life of the Manors in the high middle ages. Did you know that writing things down helps many people memorize better? Well if you didn’t, now you know!

The learning intention for making a Venn diagram to compare women from the high middle ages to women today is to let us learn about the big difference between this large time period. Also, it helps us work on our comparison skills. For example, we worked on taking out the important ideas in the paragraphs and making it into a comparison from the things we know about women in the present time.

The learning intention for doing the chapter questions is to let us work on our skills for 1) including the question in our answer 2) grammar 3) supporting our answers with text info

Connections:

Working on note taking can save us lots of time when a test comes up, answering questions from watching a video, or a professor/ teacher giving you lots of information orally. It helps you to prepare for a test because if you use note taking, all the important information is in your notes so it saves you time from reading the unimportant things that are in the text.

Working on our comparison skills can help us decide on future things. For example, making a comparison is mainly based on two things and finding out which one of them is better, worth more, can help you benefit from something or just for learning.

Doing chapter questions can help us lots in our future work since we would have very detailed answers for our questions. These questions can be used for anything such as writing a resume or a report. Our answers would have many supporting ideas and includes the question or idea we are talking about.

Reflections:

Marvy- I understand the working on our note taking skills can help us save lots of time.

Marvy- I understand the comparison skills are used daily and if we improve them, we would benefit from the a lot.

Marvy- I understand that doing chapter questions can help us in our writing since we would have a habit of including the question/ idea in our answer, have support from the text and have less grammar issues.

Tips:

- If you are not finished your chapter 1-7 questions from There Will Be Wolves, you should go to flex or try to catch up as soon as possible

- You should review the things that you did in note taking today so you won’t forget easily

- If you want extra practice or a head start, you can start reading ch9 and finish the questions.

Homework:

Chapter 8 questions from There Will Be Wolves are due tomorrow.

I was going to ask you all during class what we are going to do about the amount of blog posts I only have seven so I was planning to post again tonight so I would be able to catch up to ten let me know within a comment if there is something wrong my request of posting tonight and I will be glad to post another day but remember that more than one person can post on the same day so everybody can catch up on posts they have missed

These are the notes we took today in class

What did we do today :

Today we for once got out our pathways textbooks. Ms. Lees showed us a pyramid showing the highest ranking in society to the lowest, of the serfs (the lowest rank) and the kings (the highest rank) .We mainly wrote notes through the whole class of the nobles and vassals. Ms. Lees got us all to write down into our notebooks a web showing the influences on medieval society, which included the three f's. We also copied down a chart showing the responsibilities and obligations of each standard of person in society for example the kings responsibility was to defend nobles from attack and settle disputes between nobles.. She than told us to create a Venn diagram comparing the Canadian citizenship oath and the vassals oath.

Venn diagram- a diagram that is made of two circles that overlap in the middle. It is used to compare to things. The middle were the two circles overlap is were you would put the things the two compared things have in common and in the rest of the circles what is unique to each topic.

Obligation- an act or course of action to which a person is morally or legally bound; a duty or

Commitment.

Learning intention:

We did this because we all should work on our skills to take proper notes since we our in such a rush it is hard to copy down efficient notes you can understand later. Another reason we did this is so we can learn more about how the people were ranked back then in the High middle ages. For example the king was the highest ranked and the serfs were the lowest ranked. We have been learning quite a bit about the crusades lately so this was a good note taking opportunity to help us all understand something’s that the highest of ranked people were obligated to do there responsibility’s and more and all the way down to the lowest people.

Connections\reflections:

You can use note taking when you are in a seminar and you need to write down everything the person is saying very quickly but in a efficient way so you can read and understand the notes ate when you need them. Note taking is a great skill to learn. Since you will use it and need it all throughout your life, in college or wherever you may go.

Homework:

Start your chapter eight questions if you have time they are due on Friday Ms. Lees did though say we would have time to work on them in class double block on Thursday

Tips:

Remember to write your questions in pen since that is what Ms. Lees has been requesting us all to do

I will attempt to scan a copy of the notes on to my blog for the people who were sick and did not / were not able to copy them down.

I will be posting tonight and I'm going to try and scan the notes we took to say and attach them with my post just so anybody who didn't have a chance to copy them all done can use them

Hi guys I was wondering if someone could help me on a few of the questions for there will be wolves. Thanks.

February 09 learning log

What we did today:

Today, during the double block we did several things as a class. During the first block, we started off by Ms. Lees telling us information about the new Ipads. As you may already know, our school bought 30 Ipads and many classes had already started to use them. Unfortunately, there is a rule stating that no IPads were allowed in the portables so in the future when we need to use them, Ms. Lees might ask a teacher who has a classroom in the school to switch classrooms with her for a day. After informing us about the IPads, we handed in our chapter one to five “There Will Be Wolves” questions to let Ms. Lees see our growth from the first chapter to the fifth. Finally we shared our 30 day challenges to the whole class and gave advice for those who aren’t doing so well on keeping their challenge. Remember, if your challenge is too hard, you should change it to something that is different from your habits but is accomplishable in 30 days!

During second block, we jotted down all the things we knew or learned about the crusades and where we learned it from. For example: All crusades followed a religion – (There will be wolves) After that, we watched part of a movie called “Kingdom of Heaven” to learn more about the living conditions during the Crusades, what they wore and much more. There were quite a few parts where we didn’t understand what they were saying so Ms. Lees would stop the movie and help us out. When 40 minutes have passed, Ms. Lees stopped the movie and gave us ten minutes to write down the new things we learned about the Crusades. Finally, she gave us the rest of the time to do our chapter six questions which will be due Monday.

Learning Intention:

The learning intention for checking in on how we were doing on the 30 day challenge is to let us remind ourselves if we were doing our challenges. Giving feedbacks for everyone is also a very effective way to improve our performance. You might think what the purpose is for setting a challenge and it doesn’t help at all but it actually does! Setting challenges make us have a clear and focused purpose and not only does it let you achieve something, but learn how to set proper challenges. For example, you might set an amazing challenge but is not able to achieve it because it is way too difficult. You need to think a bit and come up with a challenge that is something different from your habits but can be achievable and will somehow benefit for yourself.

The learning intention for watching and taking notes on the movie is to let us gain more knowledge about the Crusades such as their living conditions, how they reacted and their environment. Knowing this may help you in future projects.

The learning intention for doing the chapter questions is to let us work on our writing skills. For example, a good answer includes the question itself in it but in a different form, have lots of examples and a variety of words.

Connections:

Setting goals/ challenges in your life will help you improve your life because you will be looking forward to something to focus on. When you continue on with your school career and go on to university or finding a job, setting goals/ challenges for yourself is a good way to get something that you want to accomplish. Remember, when setting a goal, you will also need a plan to achieve it or else you might procrastinate and eventually forget about it.

Improving your writing skills helps you a lot in the future. For example, if you were to become an author, editor or journalist, you would need very good writing skills. Think of this, would someone want to read a book or an article that has boring words, spelling mistakes and grammar errors?

Reflections:

Marvy- I understand that setting goals is a big part of achieving something. You should always set another goal for yourself if you’ve completed the previous one.

Marvy- I understand that having good writing skills can help me in the future for essays, my job and much more.

Homework

Chapter 6 questions due Monday

Tips

Review the things we talked about today on the Crusades

Go to Flex if you haven’t caught up on homework ch1-5 There Will Be Wolves

Ask a buddy to help and remind you to do your goal each day if you keep on forgetting

Learning Log Feb.7th

What we did:

Today, we learned a bit more about our answers for questions on Chapters in the book 'There will be wolves' so we wouldn't have to peer check our answers again, and about 30 days challenge we talked about yesterday which we have to set up a goal and finish it in 30 days by working on it.

Learning Intention:

We have worked on fixing our answers for our qustions to improve our writing skills and so we wouldn't have to peer check ourselves again. It was very interesting and fun for me to learn how we can improve our writings, and extending our answers.Working on 30 days challenge was also very fun. It was a little difficult to set up our goals but I think it is a very good ideas to do this challenge. This challenge will help us set up a goal another day and feel very comfortable when we do it again. I am a marvy.

Connections/Reflections:

The connection between these activities are so we can do these again (because it helps so much by accomplishing our goals) later on in life and to succeed these goals, challenges later on.
These activities were very fun and helped me improve by a lot. I will be doing these challenges a lot later days.

Homework:

Our homework is to finish our questions for chapter five, There will be wolves, and thats it.
My tip is not to waste your time and work on it when you still can.

The Next person to post is Emily C.

My 30 day challenge is to not procrastinate ,and get everything done when I have time to do it ,and not wait for someone else to do it. I have always set this goal for myself but I have never kept worthy too it . I know how stressed I have gotten before when I haven't finished my homework ,and had to do it last minute. It doesn't only hurt me but I tend to be a quite irritable person towards my parents. Since I cant stand when i don't have things done and since i am i guess what you would call a "goody toe shoes", I hate getting in trouble for handing things in late,which makes me even more stressed . I plan to reach my goal by having my mom or dad to help me and remind me to start my homework as soon as i get home from school. I hope I can gain this skill of reminding myself and do it automatically. In these thirty days I hope my life will have a lot less stress in it ,so when I am done my homework I can have fun!

David's 30 days Challenge

My 30 days Challenge which Ms.Lees assigned us to do today is to practice my instruments 30 minutes each every day (I play 3 instrument acoustic guitar, Bass guitar, and electric guitar).
Also to complete four songs on my acoustic guitar, a song on my bass guitar, and a song on my electric guitar. six songs that I'll be working on is

'Tears in heaven' by Eric Clapton (acoustic guitar)
'Twilight' by Kotaro Oshio (acoustic guitar)
'River Flows in you' by Yiruma (acoustic guitar)
'Start' by Depapepe (acoustic guitar)
'Love' by Cnblue (Bass guitar)
Canon Rock (electric guitar)

These are the songs I really like, and also very beautiful but really tough for me (you should try listening to them) so I will try to finish all of them.

The reason why I am doing this is because I personally like to play on my guitar and I have not been practicing a lot on my guitar for a while. It helps me to be better at playing guitar and be more comfortable with it. Also I will feel the accomplishment for finishing these songs

Emily's 30 day challenge

There are many existing challenges in the world that people are undertaking each day. For the 30 day challenge, there are many things that I would like to do. For example, eating five portions of food, vegetable each day and not going on Facebook, but the one that I want to do the most is to try and go to flex or homework club two times a week. If I don’t have homework that week, I’ll review and refresh my mind with the things I learned previously. I chose this challenge because I figured that if I took the time to do my homework during my spare time or to review the things I learned, it would save me time when I’m at home and I would be much more prepared on tests or pop quizzes. I plan on reaching this goal by reminding myself to go to homework club when I have more than 30 minutes of homework that day. Good luck to others out there who are doing the 30 day challenge!

Do Something New For 30 Days ( Mark )

The 30 day challenge is an interesting activity that helps people establish new habits. This activity should be fairly challenging for some people. For me, going on Facebook is almost like a regular part of my life. Facebook is great for socializing and such but takes up too much time. It is useful in some cases but the socializing is virtual and less real. Socializing with people physically is much better than socializing virtually. This 30 day challenge for me would be to not go on Facebook for 30 days and socialize more in real life. This way, I can become less attached to Facebook and be more participating in activities.

My Challenge

My 30 day challenge is to drink eight glasses of water every day. I chose this challenge because sometimes I don't drink enough water and I regret it when I play soccer. Water is very healthy for your body in many ways. It helps in growing and building more muscles. I usually drink 3-5 glasses when I should be drinking 8. I plan to reach my goal by setting times for when to drink my glasses. Drink 1 in the morning, 2 at lunch, 2 in the afternoon, 2 around dinner, and 1 before I go to bed. I hope this 30 day challenge will become a daily routine for me as it will benefit my health.


What's yours?

Today's Learning Log

Homework:
- Post "Do Something New For 30 Days" goals on your group's blog.
- Finish catching up for "There Will Be Wolves" chapter 3 & 4 questions if you did not finish them.

What We Did:
- We looked at almost everybody's blogs and critiqued on certain posts.
- We looked at a video where a person introduced "Do Something New For 30 Days"

Learning Intentions:
- Critiquing the blogs helped us understand what each of us excelled in blogging and what we needed work on. Ms. Lees Showed us the most recent blogs. The first person's blog was Kia's. Her post was thorough and well explained, a person that did not come to class would understand what she wrote, but her "Connections and Reflections were a little weak. She was very vague when explaining her connections and reflections. The blogs that we write should include all parts on the criteria. If you're missing even one part of it, you would lose a lot of marks.
- "Do Something New For 30 Days" is a task to challenge yourself. You choose something that you want to do for 30 days ( It should be something you think is challenging or it wouldn't have much of a point) and try to fulfill this. This may help you quit bad habits and/or establish good habits. A smoker could use this to try to quit smoking. Anybody could use this to establish reading interest. << Don't forget to post what you want to do for thirty days on your blog. >>

Connections:
- Critiquing the blogs is important as you need to evaluate what others are doing all the time. Critiquing is used not just for other people but for yourself too. When you critique what you do, you learn what you did well and what you need to improve on, and when you take out all the bad parts, you're left with what is the best and most useful part.
- "Do Something New For 30 Days" is important for establishing habits. When you look at yourself and ask :"What do I want to change about myself?" You can use this to accomplish the goals you set for yourself.

Reflections:
- Critiquing the blogs: When I look at the criteria of the learning blogs and compare it to my posts, I find that I lack a big part in the criteria. I need to explain the topics more thoroughly and finish all the parts to a blog.
- "Do Something New For 30 Days": I have done similar things in the past, but my style is a little different than this. My dad use to make me do push ups everyday, I would protest but wouldn't get anywhere. Then my dad would make me keep this up for a month or so. I found it useful in the end because I easily did the push up test.

Tips:
- Take your time to think before you post "Do Something New For 30 Days". This way, you might be able to think of something practical.

The Next Person Posting Is David....

Posting Count

Hi Guys!

I went through all the posts and found out that we posted this many times:

Mark-5
Chelsea-5
David-5
Emily-5
Arthur-5

Looks like everyone posted the same number of times so we can start Monday fresh.

Thanks,
Arthur

Toay's Learning Log Feb.2/2012

What we did today:

Today in Ms. Lees Humanities class, we mostly worked on our novel, “There Will Be Wolves”. Some students shared questions from chapters 1 and 2 with the whole class, and then everyone went over them in groups. When we reviewed chapters1 and 2 in groups, we all received three poker chips. These chips were used to allow everyone the same amount of time to speak about questions for each chapter. Anyone who had something to add to the conversation would have to place a poker chip to a pile and speak. Later, we got a piece of paper with questions to all remaining chapters. Then we started to work on chapters 3 and 4.


Why did we do it?

Ms. Lees checked some student’s responses to the questions to see how well we were doing. She then placed us into groups to see how well we could answer these questions and with how much detail. The poker chips were used again so that everyone could talk around the same amount of time. Some people like to talk more than others, so the poker chips method worked really well as it helped everyone out. Ms. Lees gave us the sheet with all the questions so she would not need to give us new questions every two chapters. She gave them to us so we could see how much work we have left and to help us manage our time. She said we might not be able to answer questions for all chapters but we got started with chapters 3 and 4.


Connections beyond English:

Many jobs require working in a group situation. There are different kinds of people; some are dominant in talking, while others are shy to add to the discussion. You need to listen to others as well as speak for yourself. Group school projects, for example, help in developing and improving conversational skills which will help in the future. Working together will make you more successful in everyday life.


Homework:

· Finish chapter questions 3-4 for our novel “There Will Be Wolves”

· You should have chapter 1-2 questions already done

· Go to Flex if you have any questions or need help


The next person posting is……..Chelsea. A!

Today's Learning Log

Homework:
Finish chapter 3 of "There Will Be Wolves".
Finish questions on chapter 1 and 2 if you have not already.

What We Did:
- The group that read "The Boy And The Samurai" presented their novel webs to the class.
- Our class took a closer look at the "Shopping Cart" video that was on Ms. Lees blog.

Learning Intentions:
- This is to finish up what we started last week."The Boy And The Samurai" talked about a little boy named "Saru" in Medieval Japan, this story can tell you a lot about the history of Japan, it's living conditions back then, and it's religions.
- This video explained how important teamwork and cooperation is. The company "IDEO" was given the task of making affordable, convenient, and safe shopping carts. The members of this task group each made their own shopping carts. In the end, they listened to everyone and took a bit of everyone's work. This way, the shopping cart turned out to have everything it needed. Cooperation is and extremely important skill. You need to cooperate with co-workers or friends all the time, and you need to know how to cooperate in the right way so that you include everyone's ideas. This way, whatever your project may be, it will always have the opinions of more than one person - being accepted by more people.

Muddy or Mary:
Marvy: I have (and most people probably should have) worked with groups in the past and cooperated with peers before. This is not very new to me. I understood it quite well.

Reflections:
I have experienced situations with need of cooperation too. I'm not sure if I cooperated as well though.The shopping cart video was actually quite similar to what we did.

The next person posting is Arthur.

What we did today:

Today in class we went to the library so we could use the computers. In the library we first sat at a table with our blog groups. Ms.Lees handed all of the groups out a piece of paper for us to fill out as a group and another piece of paper for the whole group to have their own but do it with a partner. When we finished the group sheet we would be aloud to move over to the computers to look at the posts of our fellow group members and critique them with the knowledge we have of a good blogging post.

Learning intention:

The learning intention of this task today was so that we could grasp a better idea of what the expectations of our blogs are and how we can make are blogs better by setting goals so plan out what we need to do. We worked in partners so we could have somebody else's opinion on our because as most people would mark themselves high because they want to get a good mark . If you have a partner they can pin point the areas you need improvement on that you would not have seen and not want to have them pointed out.

Connections beyond english:

When learning the skills to analyze your work and find the things you could fix or make better you can use these skills in many different ways such as if you need to critique anything maybe a paper or your email to a university. You can use these skills of critiquing to make your letter or recommendation even better. And impress the person you want to impress.

Marvy:

I understand how if I read to myself I may not realize things that i have done wrong and skipped over while reading but if my partner reads she/he may be able to find things in my paragraph or letter or writing assignment i may not have seen.

Homework:

If you have not completed the sheets ms.lees handed out to us on critiquing finish them and hand them in tomorrow along with the questions we were assigned on there will be wolves chapter one and two

Today's Learning Log Jan.18/2012

What we did today:

Today in Humanities class, we worked on our novel webs. We got into our groups and worked on the poster for most of the period. At the end of the block we did something called an “Oral Language Skills: Personal Record”. This is a chart with categories: Tell your idea, Ask questions, Listen respectfully, and Keep the conversation going. These all referred to the webs that we did and we need to answer these questions. Did I listen respectfully?...etc.


Why did we do it?

We worked on our novel webs in groups because we need to develop communication skills. Ms. Lees put us in groups to develop those skills and to connect each others thoughts into one answer. We needed to do the “Oral Language Skills” sheet to think about how we did as a group and if you contributed something to the answer. If you did everything you could in class that day, then the “Oral Language Skills” sheet would be very easy for you. If you did not pay attention and not contribute, then you need to write down how to fix the problem and then do it.


Connections beyond English:

Marvy: I understand how to communicate with others and try to understand their thoughts. I also understand what the criteria are for the project and that we need to finish it on time.

If you get hired for a job and have a meeting, you need to have good communications skills. If you attend a meeting and not say a word or not let anyone else talk, then you have poor communication skills. In order to improve communication skills you need to practice.


Homework:

Finish novel webs this week

Go to flex on Thursday if you need to finish your webs or paragraphs

Make sure to be all caught up in Humanities work


*Hope that this helps*

Next Person posting is Chelsea

Tuesday Learning log

What we did today:

For our whole block today, Ms. Lees gave us time to work on our group concept maps. As we were doing that, she went to each group to see how we we’re doing and gave us hints on how to improve our map. Ms. Lees did that because she also wanted to make sure that everyone was doing equal amount of work. We also discussed with our groups on the new information we researched yesterday that can be put on the map. Most of the groups are close to done on doing the good copy in pencil. She will give us another block tomorrow to work on it. We are expected to have not only information on it, but pictures and diagrams to also represent our work. Towards the end of the block, we filled out our group evaluation sheet. This evaluation sheet is separated into four columns and they should be filled in with your own opinions on how you did today. This is the titles for the four columns that you should be filling in about.

-Tell your idea?

-Ask questions?

-Listen respectively?

-Keep the conversation going?

Why we did it:

We did the concept maps in groups and in class because Ms. Lees wants us to work on our communication skills. For example, we worked on our listening skills, our cooperation skills and our questioning skills today. In the future, you will need this skill for many jobs or even interviews. We also did concept maps to learn how to display the information in a neat and effective form. Doing a concept map can also help a visual learner. We did an evaluation sheet today so we would know if we were on track of time and did our part of the work. If you did a good job in class today, filling out the evaluation would be very easy since you would have lots of proof to support yourself.

Connections/ Reflections

Marvy- I understand the criterias needed to get a good grade on this project. I also understand that communication skills are very important in your life.

Learning to do an effective concept map can help you in other projects in life. Also working on communication skills can help you with interviews/ getting jobs or even just in your daily life. Think of this. If you were a manager of a company hiring one person to work for you, would you choose someone that has strong communication skills or one that has a weak one?

Homework/ tips

· Concept map are due this week

· Course selection sheets should be handed in

· Go to flex or make a schedule with Ms. Lees if you haven’t finish your paragraphs yet

· Research for more ideas to add on to you concept map

· Make sure you are caught up with the work in humanities

The next person posting is Arthur