Learning Log ~ February 22, 2012
Good evening! I hope I’m not posting too late...
What We Did Today
Today was one of those joyous occasions. I think you can probably guess what it was. If you guessed “A Humanities Double Block” then my hat’s off to you! This beautiful sunny afternoon in our Humanities portable we talked quite a bit and laughed a little, too. At the beginning of class we had to rearrange a few tables so that our backs were not facing the whiteboard after a quick shove to move the tables we were all set to start learning.
We started to talk about the plan for our time in Humanities up until Spring Break (which is only about 2 weeks away and I can’t wait). We talked about the due dates of things that were coming up. It was good to have an overview of what we are going to do in the near future so that there aren’t any surprises. Ms. Lees thought this was only fair because she had been absent for a few days last week and Tuesday’s class, too. We are going to have to share our portfolios and our blogs with our parents in about a week so impress them with the astounding writing of your blog posts!
We talked about an article from Fortune magazine that said what employers are really looking for in an employee. They wanted people who had good collaboration skills, were good at problem solving, and had critical thinking. The least preferred skill was to be tech savvy, incidentally what new employees are specialists in.
After talking about the master plan and the magazine article we transitioned into talking about the questions we had answered for the novel There Will Be Wolves. We were going to have a quiz later on Chapter 1-5 so it was a refresher for all of us. We went over some key questions that called on making inferences from the text. Some of them were also about making a judgement and articulating why you thought the way you did on one issue or another.
At the end of the discussion on our questions, it was time for break and we all went to wander the halls and find our friends.
We’re back! After a little struggle with the keys (we couldn’t figure out which key was the right one) we went inside and waited for our teacher to come and instruct us on what to do next.
Remember how I said we were going to have a quiz on There Will Be Wolves Chapter 1-5? Well, as soon as Ms. Lees walked in we were told to get out the dividers and obscure ourselves and our answers from our neighbours at close proximity. We received the test and were allowed to start once we got them. It was a ten question test with multiple choice and a question where you had to put events into sequence in which they happened.
After finishing the quiz we were generously given the rest of the class time to work on anything we wanted to. We had notes to finish up on our Middle Ages character, our Chapter 10 There Will Be Wolves questions, and the “A Day In The Life Of.....” diary entry for our Middle Ages character.
Before we knew it, it was time to pack our bags and vacate the vicinity.
Why We Did It and Connections/Reflections
We talked about the plan for our days up until Spring Break because Ms. Lees thought it would be a good idea for us to know just in case there were any unexpected times where she wouldn’t be able to make it to class or something.
I liked knowing just what was going to happen and when because then I can plan ahead and know if I need to work a bit faster if I know I’m going to be busy a lot at some point in time. Being swamped in homework is just not something I find fun!
I was surprised and kind of nervous upon finding out that we would have to show and tell our parents about our portfolios and our blogs. I guess it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me but it did. Obviously it was for some reason that we worked so hard to put together all our portfolios. I honestly don’t think I’ve shown very much “growth” over these last few months...
Going over the There Will Be Wolves questions before the quiz really helped me because I had no idea whatsoever about how to study for this quiz. Thankfully it was a short quiz. I thought that number 7 was kind of a trickily worded question. I got that one wrong. It was the one where you had to tell why people thought that Ursula was a witch. I circled the one that said it was because she worked with her father and was training to become an apothecary, but the correct answer was that she had cursed Mistress Elke’s baby! Ursula never really cursed Mistress Elke’s baby. People only thought so because of its deformities and the fact that it was born dead. If Ursula had not “cursed” the child it would still have been born deformed and dead.
The Fortune magazine article I found very interesting because apparently the new grads all fall short of this high and lofty standard. It’s good for us to know what people want and need in the real world so that we can start nurturing these skills and have them as close to perfect as we can. Technically savvy people were said to not be the best at communicating because when you communicate on social media websites it tends to be more of a one-way conversation than an actual back and forth communication. We need these skills to be independent and trustworthy when we start to apply for jobs. If you have good people skills and can process information and use it to your advantage, you’ll go far in life.
Homework and Tips
Today we had Chapter 10 questions assigned to us along with the diary entry starring our character in the Middle Ages. It might be easier to write the diary entry in the first person point of view to show all the thoughts of your character.
There’s going to be a Chapter 6-10 quiz on Friday so get ready for that by reading over the chapters and your chapter questions answers.
Our notes on our characters are due on Friday and have them in class if you want to be put into a skit group! Make sure you keep track of all you rsources because we need to make a bibliography soon!
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