September
30
ELA 9: Sept 30 Written notes from “Words on the Page” listening…
If you need a little help remembering parts of the storyline, you can follow my notes.
A4 Words on a Page – notes while listening
September
29
ELA 9: Sept 29 What you missed…
Hi, Driver Training folks! We missed you today.
I promised you a listening activity that would allow you to continue / finishing colouring your letter for our “Conflict” bulletin board, and today was that day! If you hadn’t finished your colouring, it’s not homework. (Sorry!)
I would like you to listen to the following short story (audio link below). It’s written and developed as a teleplay, meaning it includes the directions for this to be made into a television episode. You’ll notice soon into it what qualities are unique that inform direction / scenes etc.
The recording is 31 minutes long and it would be to your benefit if you could listen to it tonight before class.
See you in the morning!
September
29
ELA A10 / Psych 20: Sept 29 What you missed …
It was Driver Training day again today, so we had only 6 students together for our Gr 10 classes (ELA and P
sych). Instead of moving forward leaving absent students with difficult homework to complete, I altered the work for today to lighten your homework load.
If you were away today, you need to do the following before tomorrow’s classes:
ELA A10: Instead of doing “The Raven” I informed the 6 students about the next assignment to come. They spent the class (and now it’s on you for homework) to find a poem that would fit our Mystery / Dark / Goth type genre that’s at least 12 lines long, and of an appropriate difficulty level. You will have to do a poetry oral presentation with this in the coming weeks. Search online – find a poem that suits the characteristics. Do this by Thursday.
Psych 20: We reviewed our discussion of Ethics of Psychology Experiments (Section 1.4.0) and went through the 5 rules for Human ethics and 3 rules for Animal Ethics. You need to watch this video to catch up. It’s 27 minutes long.
We discussed again images like the ones to the below. Studies have proven that anyone in a role of authority, without supervision of that authority, will eventually abuse and manipulate that authority. The true life example is the Prisoner Abuse at Abu Ghraib Prison, like we talked about a few classes ago. These guards aren’t bad people or “bad apples”, but have started behaving badly because of their environment (or the “bad barrel” for good apples).
ELA A10 Repeater period 6: We also decided it would be easier for you to catch up homework-wise if we did a double Psych today while you were gone and replace it with a double ELA tomorrow. To catch up with this, you need to watch these videos (below) before class on Thursday.
Behaviour Experiments Documentary: Part 1 – 3 (Click the image to play the video)
Hope you enjoyed the day of learning!
September
24
ELA A10 Sept 20 – 25 What you missed…
If you were away this week for ELA A10:
- A3 Assignment: (Mon – Wed) We spent the majority of the week’s classes with students developing their written narrative stories that will be presented later next week. The students put the characteristics directed by the curriculum into categories for proposed rubrics; one for speaking and one for writing. They then voted on them and have picked their assessment rubrics. I’ll print them and share them soon. With your writing and plan for your presentation method, though, make sure you’ve covered and included all the following (see image).
Note: I said you could pre-record your performance of your dramatic narrative, but you still have to plan for all the characteristics to be evaluated, like gestures, etc. Recording it in advance allows you more control over how polished your performance is, too. - A4 The Raven (Thursday / Friday) – a world famous poem study! We’re going to study another title by Edgar Allen Poe, who also wrote “The Tell Tale Heart”. To start that discussion, I asked students to consider what’s possible through creativity and imagination. They worked in groups and identified both positive and negative things that have resulted from this.
- We then started looking specifically at “The Raven” poem and I pointed out that Poe originally considered using an Owl as the center of the poem instead of a Raven. Students split into two halves of the room to research briefly the symbols associated with Owls vs those associated with Ravens. They shared their findings with the other group and all students wrote answers in. What we discovered is that both birds have symbolic qualities that would fit with Poe’s genre of dark, mysterious, unbalanced writing. We watched a video, too, of a Raven that’s been trained to speak; I asked the question of them and I’ll pose it to you…
-
if one bird can speak and the other cannot, how do you think that may limit a poem written focused on an Owl and how might it open possibilities for one based on a Raven?
-
- Then we got to it! I had a 50 pack 0f Timbits I promised as a prize to the group that could re-assemble a stanza of a poem when given all the words to it and a description of the characteristics. Their words had to create a six line stanza, include internal rhyme in line 1, internal rhyme shared between lines 3 &4, and the end words of lines 2, 4,5 & 6 were all similar. They sure tried, but the bell went before anyone really got close!
- We then started looking specifically at “The Raven” poem and I pointed out that Poe originally considered using an Owl as the center of the poem instead of a Raven. Students split into two halves of the room to research briefly the symbols associated with Owls vs those associated with Ravens. They shared their findings with the other group and all students wrote answers in. What we discovered is that both birds have symbolic qualities that would fit with Poe’s genre of dark, mysterious, unbalanced writing. We watched a video, too, of a Raven that’s been trained to speak; I asked the question of them and I’ll pose it to you…
Tried something new and fun today in #ela10. Gave each group a stanza of #theraven w/ words cut up #putitbacktogether pic.twitter.com/sEzjKkwZvS
— MWaldner (@MarcyWaldner) September 24, 2015
September
22
Psych 20 Sept 21 – 25 What you missed …
If you were away the last few days of Psych class, here’s what we covered:
- Monday (Sept 21) we went through the Scientific Terms of section 1.3.0. I sent out instructions to watch the 3rd video on the Moodle page for this section to stay caught up if you missed. (Here are screenshots of the notes we took Monday together.)
Sept 21 Psych 20 notes - Tuesday (Sept 22) we reviewed those terms to see if everyone could articulate what they are and how they’re used in experiments and the class did fairly well. We spent time reviewing what a Control Group is of an Experiment and why it’s significant. This image (on the right) should help jog your memory from when we first discussed it.
- Then we read through the questions for section 1.3.2, which leads to your next assignment. What you will do is select an experiment performed by the show What Would You Do and after watching you will analyse or dissect the “experiment” of the video by answering the questions in that section.
- For practice, we picked a video to watch as a group and worked through and answered the questions afterwards. I took screenshots of our answers to share with those who were missing. You can watch the following YouTube video and read our responses to the questions to help you understand how you will approach responding to each.
Sept 22 Psych 20 Notes Here are screenshots of our group responses to the questions. This is practice; you’ll select your own What Would You Do video of an experiment performed and develop your own responses to the same questions for your next assignment.
3. Repeater Period Tuesday (Sept 22) We finished filling in answers to the practice questions as a group. In particular, we had a good discussion about the possible confounds we identified in that experiment (race and gender of either participants or actors). We also discussed how unreliable this experiment’s results would be, depending on the location of the restaurant, such as city vs rural location.
- Everyone then chose their own What Would You Do video of an experiment from YouTube to view and respond to the questions for the Assignment. They wrote out (in the pdf below) the names of the Experiment they chose, so you can look for ones not selected already.
4. Wednesday (Sept 23) The class continued applying their understanding of the terms and process of the Experimental Method to their individually selected What Would You Do video and filled in their Reporting an Experiment answers. NOTE: I have altered this handout a bit, updated the wording of the questions, so make sure you’re completing the right copy. (see below).
In today’s class, I also went through an example of how to plan out procedure for the Control Group and Experimental Group of an experiment, question 11 of the handout. You can see from the image below that everything in the setting and procedures should be as similar as possible in the control and experimental groups, with the exception of the Manipulation. In our example case, the manipulation isn’t the mother and foster child, it’s the comments she makes, so you’d still want them to be noticed in your control group. This took the whole class for most people. Others who finished were able to review their Scientific Method terms with the matching practice sheet in your booklet.
1.3.2 Assignment – Report Experiment (updated handout)
5. Thursday (Sept 24): We started the class today by reviewing the “What You Should Know” review questions for section 1.3.0. We worked through them as a class and people with correct answers got Timbits! (Jealous, hmm? Yumm
y!) Hey, rewards work to motivate learners, don’t they!)
Once we’d finished those questions, we moved on to a terms review page that’s just before the next section. It looks like this (image to the right). We went through them together again and everyone easily matched the description with the term.
Then we started looking again at the two categories of research: experimental vs non experimental.
Remember that sometimes you can’t manipulate to learn from behaviour, so that’s why you have the two categories.
You can watch the instructional video #2 in section 1.3.1 of Moodle.
September
16
ELA A10 Sept 16, 2015 What you missed in class…
If you were away for Driver’s Training today, this is what we did in class without you. You’ll be expected to complete these steps at some point. Tomorrow, we’ll be continuing on so to catch up 
you could do the missed work tonight.
- We discussed the work you did as groups the last few days
- identifying signs the narrator was insane (his repetition of words and phrases_
- times when readers have to question the author’s perspective (thinking neighbours would be able to hear the old man’s heart beating)
- we didn’t specifically look at Rising Action events, but mentioned the story starts out with tension established by even the first few lines (“True! — nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous”) as well as stating the narrator “made up [his] mind to take the life of the old man”.
- We discussed the climax moment – it is just between the last paragraph and first word of the last line. (“hark! louder! louder! louder! louder! – – ‘Villains!” I shrieked”)
- We talked through the three questions lower on the page:
- Questions you had after / while reading the text
- style of the author to make a great reading experience
- what you can “know” and what you “think you know”
- To Do: We then jumped to a viewing activity. I have three visual representations of “The Tell Tale Heart” for us to view. You’ll be watching / listening / observing them to compare:
- the narrator’s use of voice
- character motions / movement
- visual effects used to enhance mood
- sounds used / sound effects and music
- There’s a chart in the handout attached. If you want to watch these videos and fill in some details for these (above) characteristics before class tomorrow, you’ll have caught up and be ready to move on with the group.Handout: Use the chart on page 4: A3 The Value of Imagination – Tell Tale Heart
- These are the three videos we are watching to compare (below)
- When you watch, try listening without viewing for the first few minutes, to really focus on the voice and sounds.