Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Pit Bulls

Standards:
1. Theme - Students will demonstrate understanding of theme in non-fiction readings (Reading GLE 2.1.3)
2. Students will comprehend important information through summarization (Reading GLE 2.1.7)
3. Students will cite evidence and specific details to support their conclusions (Reading GLE 2.1.7)
4. Students will make inferences (predictions/assumptions/educated guesses) based on the readings (Reading GLE 2.1.5)

You must read:
1. Washington State Dangerous Dog Laws Please pay specific attention to 16.08.100.

2. Pit Bulls on Wikipedia (Read only "American Pit Bull Terrier" "Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2000)" and "Legislation")

Then choose 3 of the following 4 stories to summarize:
Story #1 - Jogger in Chicago loses foot after being attacked by pit bulls

Story #2 - Pit Bulls: Natural Born Killer or Misunderstood Companion?

Story #3 - A lonely life if you love a pit bull

Story #4 - The Michael Vick/Pit Bull story *After playing six years in the NFL, he served 21 months in jail for his part in operating a pit bull ring. Now he is back in the NFL.


Remember, summaries include three elements:
1) Main idea or author's main message
2) 3-5 supporting details (specifically from the text)
3) Final thought/Commentary - New thinking/your opinion

If you need an example of an acceptable summary, please look in your portfolios at the ONLINE SHOPPING EXEMPLAR. You should all have one.

Your THREE summaries are due Monday at the end of class. We will then have a QUIZ/ discussion preparation day on Tuesday.

On our block day next week (Wednesday for Period 3 and Thursday for Period 6), we will have a Socratic Seminar called "Pit Bulls: Killer Dogs or Just Misunderstood?"

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Period 3 and 6 - technology reading

Hello.
Please read the following article. Summarize it with a main idea, 3-5 supporting details and a final thought/conclusion. Due at the end of the period.

The story is about Megan Meier, a 13-year-old girl who committed suicide because she was bullied online.

ARTICLE

Standards:
Comprehend important ideas through summarization.
Cite evidence to support your conclusions.

Period 1 and 5 - action sequence assignment

Read the following article about how to put together a car chase action sequence.

Car Chase

Read the article, examine the car chase shots.

Draw out your own CAR CHASE SEQUENCE in a storyboard.

Turn that it at the end of the period.

Here are some examples of good storyboards here.

Monday, February 13, 2012

Feature Story/Character Profile Exemplar

By Michael Ko
Seattle Times staff reporter

On Sunday at the Triple Door, a Seattle music club, Avi Allison played stand-up bass at a local jazz festival alongside David "Fathead" Newman, a saxophone player for the great Ray Charles.

It's not where you'd usually find one of the state's best prep tennis players, especially a few days before the district tournament.

Allison, a senior at Garfield, defies easy categorization — even by the standards at a high school known for its rigorous academics and globetrotting jazz band.

In addition to being the school's top bassist, Allison is a 4.0 student with a heavy load of advanced placement classes, a four-year student of Latin, an officer with the school's outdoor club, a pianist, a member of the school's soccer team and a Bar Mitzvah tutor.

His tennis is pretty good too.

On Thursday, Allison will be the No. 2 seed in the Class 4A District 2 tournament at the Nordstrom Tennis Center. He lost just once this year and led the Bulldogs to a perfect 10-0 record and their second KingCo 4A Conference title in three years.

"He is the most accomplished high-school student I've ever come into contact with," says Garfield tennis coach Ira Moss.

Born and raised in Seattle, Allison, the middle child of three, says he prefers the bass because it's not an "upfront" instrument. It "fits my personality," he says. "I like the feel of holding things down in the backbone."

As for tennis — which he picked up early from his dad Tony, a top player at Roosevelt in the early 70s — the 5-foot-11 Allison hopes to reach state for the third time. He lost in the first round in singles as a sophomore and finished sixth in doubles as a junior.

His future is bright — he's considering attending Columbia University, Brown, Pomona and Stanford — and his schedule is busy.

"I enjoy doing all those things," Allison says. "I've never really gotten that stressed out. ... It's helped a lot to keep me from getting burned out on one thing."

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Two more examples of feature leads

Creative Feature Leads (Description and Anecdote)

Seattle spine surgery gave child his boyhood back
By Michael Ko
Seattle Times staff reporter
COCHABAMBA, Bolivia — Clutching his zamponia, a traditional Bolivian flute, Alfonso Figueroa stepped in front of his classmates and their parents during a recent Mother's Day celebration at his school. For about three minutes he played a lively song called "Celia." Then he grinned, bowed and leaned against the back wall, exhausted.
That he had enough breath at all is a big step for Alfonso.
"I didn't think I could finish," he said. "But I just kept going and going and trying."
Last year, thanks to the support of benefactors in the Seattle area and under the watch of schoolchildren and the media, the 12-year-old boy lived in Issaquah for nine months while doctors fixed his severely bent spine.
Before, his body was twisted by tuberculosis and his insides were so compressed that doctors feared he had lost 30 percent of his lung capacity. He couldn't eat much without throwing up. He was in frequent pain and in danger of dying.
Now back at the all-boys orphanage in Bolivia that he calls home, Alfonso is, by all accounts, faring well.

Plenty of cheers to greet Griffey
By Michael Ko
Seattle Times staff reporter
The cheering for Ken Griffey Jr. began when the Safeco Field gates opened Friday, around 5:15 p.m. Fans streamed down the aisles, many wearing their old No. 24 Mariners jerseys with "Griffey" stitched on the back.
They cheered when Griffey took his practice cuts — hat flipped backward, a smile on his face, the familiar looping left-handed swing bopping baseballs into the right-field bleachers. They cheered when Griffey trotted to the outfield to shag fly balls.
And they cheered loudest about an hour and a half later — an almost three-minute long, stadium-wide standing ovation — when Griffey, making his first appearance in Seattle since being traded to Cincinnati in 2000, was welcomed back home in a pregame ceremony.
"Never could I imagine it would be like this coming back," Griffey said from a podium at the plate, flanked by former teammates Jay Buhner and Edgar Martinez and Mariners executives Howard Lincoln, Chuck Armstrong and John Ellis.
"I spent 11 years here, 11 wonderful years here," Griffey said. "I met my beautiful wife here. Two out of my three kids were born here. This place will be home."

Technology Readings

You are going to prepare for a class discussion about technology. The guiding question is:

"Is too much technology a good or bad thing? Why?"

You will use information from the following readings to support your arguments.

1. Opposing Viewpoints

2. Bill Gates

3. Readings on Online shopping, video games, online video and social networking (myspace and facebook)

You may, of course, include your own opinion in the discussion. But, to get full credit for the discussion, you will need to do the following things:

1) Cite specific evidence from the readings above. For example, you might say, "In the article about online shopping, it says that almost half of Americans shopped online in 2008. That means we're already there. Americans have already adopted this as a habit. Online shopping is so much easier for them because you don't have to deal with crowded malls or pay gas prices to drive there."

2) Turn in a discussion preparation T-chart (notes from the readings on the left hand column/commentary on the right) with a few items from all 3 articles.

3) In addition to the opposing viewpoints, online shopping and Bill Gates articles, pick one of the following subjects to focus on: video games, online videos and/or social networking. You are going to try and be an EXPERT on that subject.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Notes on news versus feature leads

What is the purpose of a lead?
1. To get the reader’s attention (“hook ‘em in”).
2. To introduce the subject of the story.
3. To lead the reader into the rest of the story.

A basic news lead:
1. Sums everything up nicely.
2. Covers the most important 5 Ws and H.
3. More direct.

A feature lead:
1. Tries to be a little more creative.
2. Includes more of the author’s voice.
3. Unfolds more slowly.

Two types of feature leads:

1. (Descriptive) Setting a Scene, Painting a Picture

Feature leads often begin by setting a scene or painting a picture - in words - of a person or place. Here’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning example by Andrea Elliott of The New York Times:

The young Egyptian professional could pass for any New York bachelor.
Dressed in a crisp polo shirt and swathed in cologne, he races his Nissan Maxima through the rain-slicked streets of Manhattan, late for a date with a tall brunette. At red lights, he fusses with his hair.

What sets the bachelor apart from other young men on the make is the chaperon sitting next to him -- a tall, bearded man in a white robe and stiff embroidered hat.


Notice how Elliott effectively uses phrases like “crisp polo shirt” and “rain-slicked streets.” We don’t yet know exactly what this article is about, but we’re drawn into the story through these descriptive passages.

2. Anecdotal lead
Another way to begin a feature article is to tell a specific story or an anecdote. Here’s an example by Edward Wong of The New York Times' Beijing bureau:

BEIJING — The first sign of trouble was powder in the baby’s urine. Then there was blood. By the time the parents took their son to the hospital, he had no urine at all.

Kidney stones were the problem, doctors told the parents. The baby died on May 1 in the hospital, just two weeks after the first symptoms appeared. His name was Yi Kaixuan.

He was 6 months old.

The parents filed a lawsuit on Monday in the arid northwest province of Gansu, where the family lives, asking for compensation from Sanlu Group, the maker of the powdered baby formula that Kaixuan had been drinking. It seemed like a clear-cut liability case; since last month, Sanlu has been at the center of China’s biggest contaminated food crisis in years. But as in two other courts dealing with related lawsuits, judges have so far declined to hear the case.


You find a specific person that can tell the story, and you tell the story through his or her point of view.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Try writing some leads

Here are links to a few sets of stories.

1

2

Instructions:
1) Read all the stories in both links.
2) Pick 6
3) For each of the 6 you pick, write a basic news lead AND a creative feature lead.
4) For the feature leads, you may choose the descriptive lead or the anecdotal lead.
5) Use your imagination to fill in the details you don't have.