Friday is testing day for Media

It's almost the end of the week and we're ready for our first test in Modern Media. I want to be sure to say once again. Do NOT take this test lightly. History has shown that this is not a good test for many students. Don't let that happen to you. So here, as promised, is your essay.

Books are a form of communication that has been around for ages. Now with the advances in technology our society is experiencing, things are changing. Identify some of the changes that are being made in society and explain how this will impact the buying and selling of books in the future.

To get full credit for this you need 3 paragraphs in which you identify 3 different examples of changes in society and how each one will impact the book market.


In Creative Writing we have been looking at the story "August Heat" and are in the process of writing an ending for it. Yesterday we did a writer's workshop, today we will be typing. The story is due tomorrow.


English 10 read another story today focusing on plot and setting. We also took a quiz over setting on the notes that we took in class yesterday.


Good luck to all.

Mr. Bass

Blindfold walks and writers workshops

Today was a great day in room 359.

English 10 discussed technology and how we use it in today's world. Yesterday we read "The Pedestrian" by Ray Bradbury, a story set in the future about a guy who gets arrested for taking a walk. We then wrote a short essay describing how technology is used in our world.

Modern Media took a blindfolded walk around the school to illustrate the communication process and how it is disrupted. Tomorrow we will be reviewing for our test on Friday.

Creative Writing did a writer's workshop today in which they are talking about the end of the story they are writing for "August Heat." Tomorrow we will be finishing this and the story will be due on Friday.

Have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow.

Week 2

Well, week 2 is upon us. Things changed drastically in one of my classes today. My 2nd hour was completely disbanded. Ms. Carter and Mrs. Kurtz split my students and now I'm supervising a lunch hour. Oh well, so be it.

In Modern Media today we finished our bookwork and created a symbols poster in which they were to identify high-c, mid-c and low-c symbols for 4 different referentsby cutting out pictures and text from magazines. All of these things we have been over in class last week.

In Creative Writing we took a quiz over plot and read the story "August Heat." In reading this story we were concentrating on the style of the author and how that is told through the story.

English 10 also took a quiz over plot and read the story "The Pedestrian" answering questions out of the book.

See ya tomorrow.

Friday at last

Well everyone, it's Friday. We made it through the first week. I hope you all get plenty of rest over the weekend and are ready to start fresh on Monday.

In Modern Media today we expanded on what we did yesterday and analyzed a piece of media using the Media Literacy Paradigm. Most of you completed it in class, but if you didn't, you need to bring it back Monday finished.

English 10 took a reading and literary analysis pre test for the semester. This gives me an idea of where you are currently and will allow me to alter the curriculum to serve you best.

Creative Writing presented their inventions and found out what each thing actually did. During the presentations we recorded the audio for a test for upcoming podcasts that we will be doing. Once that was done we did an exercise in which three words were given to the class. They then had to whittle that word down one letter at a time until only the word "a" was left. Below is an example.

Aspects
Paces
Caps
Sap
As
A

The words that they were given were: Literary, Secretary and Bladders. Only one group is done so far.

Good weekend to ya.

What a day!!!

What a morning I had. On the way to work a tie rod on my car broke, luckily I was just getting gas and the attendant said he could fix it right there. He did. I barely got to school before 1st hour. But here I am, I'm just happy that it didn't happen on the interstate and that my kids weren't in the car.

But now school is here and things are good.

Modern Media -- Today in class we took notes over the communication process and how it connects with media. We will have a test next Friday over this and other information. Tomorrow everyone is supposed to bring a form of media to analyze using the media literacy paradigm.

Creative Writing -- We did our first writing assignment in class today. Everyone wrote one page about their writing process. The purpose here is to analyze each individual's writing process so that when we actually start writing for real they will have already thought about how to approach the assignment. Tomorrow we will be presenting our inventions that we began yesterday.

English 10 -- We also wrote in English 10 today about what qualities make a good friend. This is simply for me to see what kind of a writer each student is currently and to see what stregths and weaknesses we already have.

I hope everyone had a great day, tomorrow's Friday, the first week is almost done.

Day 2

Hello again. Today in class we jumped right into our curriculum and got started.

In Modern Media we talked about the amount of money that is made in the media industry every year. We also took a self inventory about how each student uses media in their everyday lives to demonstrate how media influences our lives. We did another inventory to see how much money we spend on media in our society to demonstrate what a big business it is.

In Creative Writing we did our presentations over what makes a creative person. Once we finished that we began to look at old patents. The assignment the students got was to create an explanation as to what each patent did and how it worked. We will be presenting these in class tomorrow.

In English 10 we created posters of our avatars. We're doing this so that when we're online we can have anonymity. Each student created an alternate identity including a name, location and description.

Have a great afternoon.

First Day of School

Hello students and welcome to the first day of the 05-06 school year. On this blog I will give a brief synopsis of what we did in class that day as well as other information. I'm really excited about what this year will bring and what kinds of things we will accomplish. Here are the things that we did in class today, you can refer back to my website to get any handouts or worksheets.

Modern Media: This class was cut a little bit short today because of homeroom and the passing out of schedules. All we really got to do was go over the class overview and the bell rang. Tomorrow we will definitely do more.

English 10: In English 10 we talked about the procedures of the class and the kinds of things that we would be doing in the class. We also began to create our Avatars (online identities) that we will be using throughout the course of the class.

Creative Writing: In this class after we got through the basics we talking about what makes a creative person. Students then paired up and interviewed each other. Tomorrow we will be making a presentation of that person to the class.

I hope everyone had a good first day. See ya tomorrow.