Wed Oct 31

This was not my slide. #uglyslide

We spent some tie today with an introduction of Death of a Salesman. We used two rather bad powerpoint decks to get us aware of some of the issues in the background of the play.

For example, this film was famous ... or infamous ... back in the early 1980's for demonstrating for the first time what a nuclear war would look like:




We also talked about the playwright himself and did some discussion of what happened to him after DOAS was published. We also talked about the American Dream and how it's been changed from the pursuit of happiness to the happiness of material goods.

Tuesday Oct 30

So ... we are in a weird week.

We will be finishing one unit and going on to the next.

Here is the next thing

It's weird in class, as a good number of my students want to work together, but a number of things are working against us.

Meh, we will continue moving forward tomorrow!

Monday Oct 29

So ... today.

Today was the day we were working as a group to get different presentations together.

We did finish the novel last week and we were still glowing a little in that achievement.

But we have to move forward. Always forward.

We did establish which groups were going when. I will post the titles/topics of the groups in order that they will be presented on this blog tonight/tomorrow. They will be done on Nov 5 and 6.

We also posted the due dates for the last section of Into Thin Air and the short quiz for that, too. It's all due Nov 2... this Friday.

At the end of class we watched a bit of Everest, a film based on NOT Jon Krakauer's book. Not badly done, with the guy who played Thanos and the guy who played Jake Sully in lead roles.

Friday Oct 26

I promised to find a picture for a student in this class and here it is

The link is here for this group. I recommend them.

Right.

We finished the book. We finished Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer.

We.

Are.

Awesome.

After we finished reading, we got a chance to conference about the upcoming seminars for the novel next week. I will see about us getting some library time this week for research and collaboration efforts, too.

One more time: We are awesome ...

Photo Cred: The Teacher on Burlington Beach

Thursday Oct 25

I posted the due dates for ITA, part 3 in the classroom but forgto to take a pic. I'll have that posted tomorrow.

Today we took up some home work - I also handed back a bunch of stuff that was handed in on paper. I running into the lack of wireless at work in order assess and evaluate the work handed in eletronically. I will get that done tonight.

Today we read to the end of Chapter 21 ... we only have the Epilogue left to read and we are done this novel.

Today we also got the groups together for the "Seminar" presentations on Into thin Air. The electronic version is here.

Right ... I did chat about how to handle the division of topics and such for this assignment. We are going to keep going with this tomorrow and into next week.

It's going to be ok.

Trust me.



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Wed Oct 24

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It's Pink Day.

I had no one in class that didn't buy out. Thank you for your Spirit and support.

See you Thursday!

Tuesday Oct 23

We read today. All the way to the end of Chapter 20. We have less than 30 pages left in this novel.

#solong #whyarewereadingthis

We got questions 41 and 43 for homework.

Monday Oct 22

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Today was a wild day - we read from page 216 to the start of Chapter 18.

I appreciate that was a hard ask of my students

The homework I assigned was these two questions:

38.  Lopsang makes a major decision in Ch 17. In your opinion, was he “Right”? Why or why not?

39.  Should Hall have stayed with Hansen? Why or why not?

Thursday and Friday Oct 19

Thursday I was away with my Grade Nine homeroom on their retreat.

I got some feedback that things went well. Thank you for that.

Friday was a Quiz Day and a Hand Stuff In day. It worked ... as well as it could.

After that we got to reading and got to page 216 and got question 35 for homework.

Wed Oct 17

Right.

Today we read to the end of Chapter 14. Then we finished the film Into the Wild. It was a pretty dark ending.

Tomorrow I am away with my Grade Nine homeroom.

You will work on the Character Sketches for these four men:

Andy Harris                  Rob Hall           Doug Hansen                 Jon Krakauer

I did show the class what a Character Sketch was yesterday ... but If you are new here, what I am looking for is a written description of those men. Wikipedia and Smoop are your friends here.

Look also at the "Helpful Links for ITA" on the right-hand side of this blog. Please ... if there are nay questions, email me at Chasserhandin1 at gmail dot com and I'll do my best to be helpful.

If you are really really super worried about something, relax and we can take care if it Friday. You are all awesome. 

Tues Oct 16

This was the gentleman who spoke this morning.

Today was the Yellow Bench presentation in Period One.

Quite a story.

For this class, we got to the middle of Ch 15 and got 30, 32 and 33 from the questions for homework.

I did point out the due dates and what we are going to be handing in on Friday.

Then we watched a bit of the film Into the Wild.

Monday Oct 15

So we kept reading and "moving the chains" forward on the text. We got to the end of Chapter 12.

We also watched a good chunk of Into the Wild, too.

While that was playing, I got to chat with almost all of my students about their assignments and whether or not they owed any assignments.

After that, the bell went "GRRRRRR" and we moved on with life.

Alex Supertramp on the river, without permission.

Fri Oct 12

We did read until page 170.

We then started to watch Into the Wild, a book written by the same author that deals with a similar set of themes and ideas as in Into Thin Air.

Thursday Oct 11

I find this relaxing


RosterBot Holiday Zamboni Loop from ianb on Vimeo.

 At least I think it's Thursday. As Monday was a holiday, I'm just off. I woke this morning thinking today was Tuesday.

In any case, we read to the end of Chapter 11 and got questions for homework

So far this is what you should have completed:

Woo! on to Friday!

Wed Oct 10

So ... today.

Yeah, we did some work today. We read to page 143 of the novel and got question 24 for homework.

We also chatted about the Bruce Trail here in southern Ontario and lots of ideas that spring from the novel we are reading.

 I also took the opportunity to interview with the remaning students aout their progress in my class. I started yesterday and finished today ... well, I finished with all that were present.


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Tuesday Oct 9

We had a great class today.

We started off with some insights about the start of this stretch of the school year. I find this stretch the toughest of the year, as there are no holidays, all five day week with less sunshine until Christmas.

It's a grind. Honestly.

I suggested to my students that they do the following 1) wash their hands 2) Keep a healthy body by getting to sleep on time and drinking lots of water 3) perhaps getting a small bottle of hand sanitizer in order to protect themselves from bacteria.

It's a tough part of the year. We'll get though it together.

We read to the end of Chapter 8 in the novel and got 20, 21 and 22 for homework as the first part of Part 2 of the novel study.

I also got a chance to chat with about a third of the class about the comments on their progress report going out this week.

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Thursday Oct 4

Today we were in the library and working on getting logged in to the Brightspace/D2L system and the online part of this course.

It was a pretty straightforward thing I was asking people to do and they got it done.

In record time.

I seriously thought it was going to take a heck of lot longer for us to get that done.

Luckily I had a second thing for us to do - the profile pic competition will be voted on by the end of Period 2 on Tuesday.

And then .... I had a third thing to do, which eventually got uploaded by the end of class. It was a tought slog in the virutal classroom, but we made it.

A Batman thumbs up for this class!