AP Test — IMPORTANT

In spite of the dire announcement that just wafted menacingly from the PA system, if you talk to Mrs. Ritchie AND bring your $15 tomorrow, you may still take the AP test.

Change in Plans

The Elephants have shifted directions.  Charlie is sick (ew!) and I am staying home with him today. Thus, we are putting the Elephants off for today and will pick them up tomorrow.  If you check this in the morning and haven’t read the article yet, you have an extra day. 

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!!!

IMPORTANT AP Test Information

Our AP Coordinator has informed me that she needs to order your AP tests by March 25th.  Therefore, you need to declare your intention to take the test by placing a $15 deposit with the bookkeeper by March 25th.  If money is an issue, see me or your counselor.

Let me repeat, you must make a deposit of $15 with the bookkeeper by March 25th if you wish to take the AP test and take a shot at earning college credit.

A note on plagiarism before we need to talk about plagiarism

As we mentioned in class the other day, plagiarism is something we want to avoid at all costs. We’ll talk about this more when we get to synthesis writing, but in case they take this down, here is an interesting exercise in plagiarism that a local radio station did recently.  Check this out.  They list the rip-off first and then the original second. It’s amazing how many big acts have borrowed from other people, including Coldplay on almost every one of their major hits. 

Every once in a while someone gets sued, like George Harrison who paid about $587,000 in a lawsuit with the Chiffons (#2 on the list).  While it didn’t make this list (possibly the radio station didn’t consider Ice, Ice Baby to be music), I think Vanilla Ice’s stealing the very recognizable baseline from David Bowie and Queen’s Under Pressure is one of the worst ones of all time.  Mostly because he still denies it.  Bowie should sue him, though then he’d have to admit he’d heard Ice, Ice Baby. 

Class Notes

For those of you who were gone for FBLA, Junior Conferences, or other sundry reasons today, this post is for you!

With so many missing, we postponed the vocabulary test to Monday (to Caleb’s delight and Hayley’s consternation).  Remember you are responsible for the Monday work on DGP sentence #2 as well.

Otherwise this is a nice, unencumbered weekend before we begin the JFK paper (whoo hoo!!).  Enjoy. 

Sweetheart Friday

We have 30-minute periods tomorrow.  Here’s the plan:

• DGP
• rhetorical vocabulary quiz
• return meta-cognition papers
• Fun with analyzing Super Bowl commercials

There is no homework other than to do DGP and study for the vocabulary quiz (oh yeah, and work on your Chesterfield paper! 

Who am I kidding?  You have a 4-day weekend coming up!  You’re probably not even going to start until 8 o’clock in the morning on Saturday! Of course you’ll finish sometime on Sunday, probably meet with someone Monday to peer review and revise (maybe do this over email), and then have a day to relax on Tuesday.

Weekend Notes

We will be in the study hall computer lab during the 2nd half of class on Monday and all of Tuesday.

So, Monday we have 45 minutes in the lab to write.  If you don’t have a USB drive, you can get your paper to the lab by pasting it into a post on your blog.

Tuesday is for peer review and revising.

We will spend the first half of Monday looking at some of the introductory material on rhetoric in our books so please bring your books to class on Monday.

Lastly, we’ll start our SAT vocabulary with Vocab 1 next week.  All the vocabulary is available here or via a link on the Class Info & Docs page.

Have a great weekend and happy thinking.

Support Videos

Here is the link to the videos about how to use this site: http://edublogs.org/videos/.

Remember your homework tonight is to take another look at the Rodriguez piece in light of the SOAPStone tool to see if it helps you organize your observations from last night.  

We’ll discuss the Rodriguez piece more tomorrow and introduce your first paper (I know, I know).

 

Books!!!

I forgot to mention this in class, but

Please bring your books to class!

(No, you can’t use them on the test, but we are taking them back.)

 

Final Reminders

• This I Believe paper presentations are on Tuesday.  Be ready to go as there really isn’t time for make-ups.  Next week is going to fly by.
• Remember that if the class averages 80% or higher on the final, then both the final and the DGP final will be set to “can be dropped” and they will only be able to help your grade.

Enjoy your three day weekend and here’s to good studying for your various finals and final projects!