Jake Vreeland 4/417

Today April 3rd, 2017 we got our computers out and set up our revised literature for our soapstone assignment. Before we got back to work Mr. Rivers wanted to remind us that we need to still have four claims from the text. Two claims were just needed with one soapstone and another two had to be with two SOAPSTone. (There is a picture to explain it better).  After Mr. Rivers talked to class he let us continue working on our assignment.  Today's purpose to make sure your text is completely revised and have all the claims done.  Basically organize ourselves so we can make our script or at least a planed idea for when we talked about our text. We need this done because tomorrow in class we will be able to learn how to record ourselves speaking over our work. Once we learn how to then we can record our final assignment.  I personally am not a fan of it because I hate my voice and it's even worse that we have to present our work in front of the class.  Luckily we will have time to practice and so our best job because the assignment isn't due til Wednesday at midnight like most of our assignments. Unless we don't have the program that records our voice at home because we are recording in class.  Today was a successful day like always hopefully everybody's recording goes well tomorrow in class.

Julia Orlando 3/30

Today in English class we did the same thing that we were beginning at the end of class yesterday. At the end of class, we were pairing up with groups or a partner who had different SOAPSTone topics as us. There are six topics which include subject, occasion, audience, purpose, subject, and tone. My original topic is subject and I talked about the ideal on how minorities dream, desire, fantasize, and want to be like the favorable class, white people, during the time. Yesterday, I not only began to gather information about the speaker and shaped my opinion on how the speaker not only reflects my idea but how he influences the idea. In summary today, I got together with a speaker person again and an occasion person to come up with claims that are located on Google Classroom. The ideals of this poem are not only a depiction of this time period but could be a modern depiction of our times. Langston Hughes uses occasion to address and have his poem stand out creating a strong, stand out point.

Samantha Russo 3/29

Today in class we started out by reading all of the SOAPSTONE claims that the class wrote yesterday about the poem “Let America be America Again”. Then, as a class we went over which three of the claims were the best and why. After that we paired up with members from other groups to to combine the claims and look through “a different lens”. We paired up with other people from different groups (each group was a different part of SOAPSTONE) to form a claim by combining them together. We did this because we will be starting a new assingment where we have to SOAPSTONE either a song or poem, and make claims based off the evidence. That is also where we will be starting off in class tomorrow.

3.29.17 Patricia Aldrich

Today in class we had a short class again so we tried to fit a lot in so we could get to discussing our claims in different groups, which we didn't get to do yesterday. The first thing we did was post all of our claims on the classroom page because only 11 people did the assignment at first. Once we all posted our claims then as a group we had to find the three that we thought were the best and rank them. My group chose Bayleigh's and Elias's. The class chose my groups claim, Bayleigh's, and Ben's group. My group's claim was "The speaker is ridiculing America for claiming to be the land of the free when in reality America is only free for certain groups of people." We then as a class said what made each claim so good and how it applied to the specific lens that each group was supposed to be looking at. Once we went through all three claims we then split up into separate groups. We had to go to a different table so that we could partner up with someone with a lens that was different from our own. Me and Coralyn partnered up but we ended up not being able to come up with a claim because by this time class only had about three minutes left so Mr. Rivers said we could start class of with that again tomorrow.

Olivia Agius 3/28/17

Today in class Mr. Rivers introduced us to a site called Kami, which allows students to annotate documents by using many tools. Also on kami multiple students can edit at the same time. Using Kami our class looked at the poem we analyzed on friday, Let America be America Again. Mr. Rivers passed out note cards with one of the aspects of SOAPSTone on it. Then we all went onto Kami and annotated it as groups. For examples, my group which was given speaker looked for who the speaker was, based off of what they say what do we know about them, what the text proves about the speaker, and so on. Then, we had to connect our findings to a claim. Also, we posted that claim on classroom.

Christina Bally 2/24/2017

Today in class we had a substitute teacher. By the time the bell rang we took attendance and then were instructed to complete the assignment that was on the google classroom. The assignment was titled "SOAPSTone this!". There was a poem attached to the assignment. This meant that we had to analyze the poem and check it for the qualities in which make up the letters of the word soapstone. This included addressing who the speaker is, what the occasion is, who the audience is, and the purpose, subject, and tone. On top of this we had to look for rhetorical and literary devices. We were able to annotate the poem by commenting on the certain sentence that had the particular quality. Doing this allowed us to grasp a further understanding of the text. We were able to analyze the poem word for word. The poem was titled "Let America Be American Again". In this poem, it is explained that America should be the way is used to be, free and the dream it once was. The speaker of this poem is a man named Langston Hughes and the audience was all members of America.

3/24/17 Elias Frieling

Today in English, something was wrong. Sitting at the desk was the not Sparta High School teacher of the year, Brent Rivers, it was a sub. Our assignment for the day was on google classroom. We had to SOAPSTone a poem by Langston Hughes, Let America be America again. The poem was pretty long, about 4 pages so there was lots of work to do. The speaker of the poem was not just one person but many. The speaker claimed that, “I am the poor white, I am the Negro, I am the red man, I am the immigrant.” The speaker is different than the author because obviously the author cannot simultaneously be white, black, and native american. After a quick google search to learn about the author was I found that Langston Hughes was a black poet in the early 1900s. As for the occasion of the poem it seemed to me that it was to highlight the injustices some Americans face. How some Americans do not experience freedom and equality. He talks about blacks being slaves, native americans being pushed off their lands. We continued to work all period on annotating the document with SOAPSTone finding the speaker, occasion, audience, purpose, subject, and tone. We also found and analyzed the impact of its rhetorical devices in the poem. Overall class today was fairly easy, we did not do anything new, just practicing SOAPSTone.

3/23/17 Jake vreeland

Today, March 23rd,2017 we entered the class as normal by grabbing our laptops and getting our notes ready.  Mr. Rivers usually starts the class by getting us to shut up then asking our groups a question from the day before.  I was absent the day before so I just observed what my group said and got the work my class did yesterday.  That work was also involved in this class today.  It was a sonnet written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, he read it when he won a Tony award this past June.  A sonnet is a fourteen line poem with a with rhyming themes, which we learned in class today.   The class analyzed the poem yesterday and found literary devices in it.  Today we started going over a subject called SOAPST.  Which stands for Speaker, Occasion, Audience, Purpose, Subject, Tone.  We took down a few short bull it points for each word.  We did not get to finish and we won't be able to tomorrow because sadly Mr.Rivers will not be in school.  Instead we will practice with what we have learned so far and be prepared for him next time we are all together.  Also with the SOAPST as a class we found a few examples for each part of SOAPST we were taught.  Since there is parc testing next week we will most likely not get to finish this for a little time.  But still have to stay focus and used what we have learned so far throughout the year for the up coming testing. Here is a picture of Lin-Manuel Miranda.

3.22.17 Patricia Aldrich

Today to start class we watched James' blob fish video from when he was a freshman. It was actually so funny that everyone was laughing out loud, one time I saw Mr. Rivers laugh and his head went back, so that just shows how funny it was. Then we wrote down our objectives (IWBAT reflect on my argumentative writing process & IWBAT evaluate how an essay prompt affects an essay's outcome). Everyone got SAT essay prompts so we could see for ourselves how ridiculous and vague they used to be back in 2012. We pointed out that they did not come with an article so there was no evidence to prove your point, they also did not tell give the writer any direction to go in so they would be hard to write a good essay from. After that Mr. Rivers gave us a poem and from it we had to find examples of metaphor, anaphora, antithesis, personification, and parallelism. These are some examples... symphony of one (antithesis), our son is her beautiful reprise (metaphor), this show is proof history remembers (personification), she nudges... she is... (anaphora). We discussed multiple examples of each until the class ended and also went over the definition for each of those terms because the majority of the class had seemed to forget what all the terms meant because we hadn't talked about them since October.

Julia Orlando - 03/20/17 ( Late )

Hello, two days ago in Mr. Rivers classroom the class just finished up their essays and asked for help with Turnitin.com, citations and any other complications a student may have had. The essay, after a month of being drafted and all the hard work put into it is finally over. Agfter an outline, draft, long periods of research, the essay is finally completed and should have been done by Monday. On Tuesday, 03/21/17, Mr. Rivers allowed each student to make comments on their essay to show the qualities that were effective and ineffective in content, research, presentation, voice & style, and organization. Those were all on the Sparta Argumentative Rubric which you can find on the Sparta website or linked onto the Google Classroom. If you were absent for both days, this is just a reminder to make sure to turn your essay on Classroom and Turnitin.com. Best of luck to everybody who finally completed their paper after a long process of writing inside and possibly outside of class.
Link to picture ( Would not upload as an image ) : https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/e7/11/14/e71114a2d9ac910a9bdfb875d8f58302.jpg

Jimmy Bliss 3/21/17

During English class today, we were instructed to list items that are effective and items that are ineffective while writing essays. Since our better than the best draft ever were submitted last night to both google classroom and turnitin.com, it appears that we have a brief break from writing these such essays in class. Nonetheless, Our five main categories were Research, Organization, Content, Presentation and Voice & Style. We were split up into groups depending on our seating arrangements. Each group was assigned a marker and a writing space, and we were told to write what came to mind.  We, then, walked around the room and broused at what the other groups came up with. After this, we were instructed to unsubmit our better than the best draft ever and point to specific places in our essays as where we could have improved, and where we excelled. Using research, organization, context, presentation and voice & style, we were told to give an example of a piece of our essay where these terms were used, and comment. One comment was to be how I did well in this sentence, and the other comment was to be how I can improve my writing next time. When you finished your ten comments, you can resubmit your better than the best draft ever on google classroom. Students have until 11:59 PM tonight to do so.

Jackie Dowd- 3/21/17

Today was a nice and easy day in class that helped all the students, other than the few who had to listen to their own voice, relax and enjoy visual movie/show reviews. Lucky for me I went yesterday, which meant this day was a breeze. We watched 3 and a half movie reviews, all very good in their own ways. Although Zach almost had a panic attack watching his own review, it was very well thought out and put together. Kirk also had a very good review, but neither came close to being as thoughtout and put together as Michaela's. This review blew my mind and really showed how much can be done in one episode with just body language. Her explanations were spot on and I really enjoyed it. All the students wrote down what they thought of these reviews (yes we reviewed reviews) and voted for their favorite ones. Tomorrow we will finish Jakes presentation and continue on with our mini movie festival! 

Chloe Rippey- 3/21/17

Hello,
So for the past month or so we have been working on our research papers. A lot of time and effort was put into them and we finally submitted them last night. That is now the end of our argumentative unit I believe, and we are next starting a new unit. Today in class we went over the Argument rubric to see how we could have improved our papers. The class was split up into 5 different groups and each of the groups analyzed a topic from the rubric. Each group wrote out what would be effective in the research paper and what could be ineffective. We also translated the rubric language to a language we could better understand. Following this we unsubmitted out final drafts of our research paper and commented on our paper 10 times with effective and ineffective parts of our essays for presentation, organization, research and citation, voice and style, and content. Once you finished your comments you then resubmitted your paper and that was our class today.
~ Chloe
(here is an example of what my group did for organization)

3/16/17 - Zabrina Branning

Today in class, Mr. Rivers discussed with us how after reviewing some of our ‘Best Drafts of All Time’, he found that some of us didn’t take “Best Draft” too seriously. He explained how he disappointingly found that a good number of us did not have an introduction for our research quotes, or possibly didn’t even cite them. He also brought it to our attention that he found that if we used our time a little more wisely last week in drafting, that our drafts most likely would have looked much better. He then went on to lecturing about evidence, and ideal ways to introduce the background information. We also took some time to look at some claims on the movie Beauty and the Beast. We also read and identified the problems with a paragraph that was giving a person’s review on the movie, and the paragraph did not have an introduction to the quote or a strong analysis of the evidence following it. It was also missing an official citation of where the quote came from. We looked over and focused on some of the issues with the way that the paragraph was written. We looked at the paragraph after it was drafted and fixed three more times, as the introduction, citation, and quote were all fixed to make the paragraph flow and make more sense to the reader, as the claim or topic of the paragraph transitions to the quote itself, with a stronger introduction that provides context and specificity to the information. The final paragraph differed from where it began with the way it flowed and how the information  was presented, and the quote was shortened so that it was more appealing for an audience to read.
                                                              

Justin Rhodes 3/16

Hello class, today in Mr Rivers class we started off by discussing integrating evidence, and what it means to integrate. To integrate something is to put in, to make it simpler, or to insert something with specific intention. After discussing the definition, we then went over multiple examples of paragraphs making a claim, with evidence provided. We analyzed what was good, and what was bad about said paragraphs, These examples showed how to properly cite evidence, introduce it, as well as how to analyze the evidence, and the proper length for a quote so your paragraph isn't too overloaded with quote. Overall, your paragraphs should be mostly your words, containing an introduction to the quote, the pasted quote, analysis of the quote, and then the rest of your paragraph. After discussing all this, we recieved our rubrics for the outlines which came with the estimated grade range for the best draft of all time. Going forward, you should look at the comments listed on the rubric, as well as making changes to your final draft so it's ready to submit without any stress or worries.

Samantha Russo 3/16/17

In class today we went over how to seamlessly integrate evidence and specific evidence. We looked at three excerpts of writing and went over which was a claim and how did we know, we also revised an example paragraph and went over what was wrong with it. At the end of class today we Mr. Rivers handed back the improvements that we should make on each of our research papers.

Justin Rhodes 3/13 blog

Hello class, on Monday in Mr. Rivers class we had recently submitted our best drafts of all time through turnitin.com, and after discussing submission issues and getting through those issues, we moved on with the lesson. On Monday, we discussed transititions that help reinforce relationships, to help revise and make our essays better. Inter paragraphs are the transitions between claims, and are integrated into the topic sentence. Additionally, inter paragraphs establish the logical relationship between the claims of new paragraphs in the essay. Intra paragraphs are the transitions within the claims, and it links the analysis of evidence A to intro of evidence B. It establishes the logical relationship between the examples. The new due date for the essay is still on the table due to back to back snow days, however it will be told soon.

Ben Dottinger 3/9/17

With today's class, we wrapped up the final leg of our essay-drafting peregrination with a short lesson about our conclusion paragraphs and what they should look like. Mr. Rivers instructed us to take our past transitional phrases we used (e.g. in conclusion, to sum it up, at the end of the smoking gun, etc.) and host a metaphorical funeral for the impending consignment to oblivion of such phrases; we are never to use them again. We also learned about what a conclusion paragraph should include within its hallowed sentences. The main thing we should be doing in our conclusions is to look backward at the analysis we have provided and used to support our evidence and claim, and to look forwards at the results of our argument, whether positive or negative outcomes. In our conclusion we should mainly be focused on context, characters, and content in our essay, whether those characters be important authors, directors, researchers, or the likes. We were then turned loose to work on our best drafts ever wherever we saw fit. Tonight at 11:59 our drafts are due. Good luck to everyone who spent a good deal of their time in 'Procrasti-Nation’ (seen below)!

Tony Xhudo 3/8/17

Today in class we got to work some more on our 5 page essays. The class originally started by looking at a turnitin.com assignment which was requiring us to put in any random document. This way Mr. Rivers could not only see who has gotten signed up for the digital class but also make sure we don't have any issue to turn stuff in during the future. Soon after that the class was back to compiling their evidence and making the greatest draft of all time. Overall today's class allowed for some good work to be done.

Jimmy Bliss 3/8/17

Today in English, Mr. Rivers demonstrated how to use turnitin.com to the class. Mr. Rivers created a mock assignment, as each of us were instructed to submit something into the assignment and hit submit.Some people decided to copy and paste parts of books, blog schedules, song lyrics, etc into the mock assignment. Once you hit submit, a little pop-up should follow, ensuring that your submission actually occurred. After we completed the mock assignment, Mr. Rivers instructed us to continue working on our best draft ever. It's not a "rough draft" because often times, people tend to use minimal effort in their rough drafts. On the day prior to today, Mr Rivers taught us how to write an effective introduction, as well as a powerful conclusion. So, today many students took that information to further develop their best drafts ever, as it was still fresh in their memories. The rest of the class was spent with the entire class working strongly on our argumentative essays. At the end of the class, Mr. Rivers reminded us that our best drafts ever were due on Thursday, March 9th at 11:59 PM. This must be submitted on turnitin.com or else you will receive a 0.