Monday, March 19, 2012

L4T Spring students

Please go to the other blog--your blog--MsDePasL4T--and do your homework! Thanks.

http://msdepasl4t.blogspot.com/b/post-preview?token=BXnJLjYBAAA.FEp320ILk8B_J-RgxFb3wQ.E9TCFc84QlKP2Uu0qhOwvw&postId=8929247572974218010&type=POST

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Why you shouldn't copy work off the Internet

I'd like you all to write a comment on the new blog--Analyzing Literature and EVERYTHING! msdepasl4t
A few students and I spoke about the blog. I decided to separate this semester's and last semester's blog to make it easier to comment and navigate.

In class, I told you that you should be careful about what you post to the Internet (ex. Facebook, Qu Qu, Twitter, Google+ and more) because your online reputation can’t be edited or changed easily. There’s also the problem of posting and finding incorrect information online. For example, you can also find incorrect or misleading facts that seem correct on the Internet. Many times you need to find information for a paper or homework, the Internet is right there to help you—or hurt you!

I searched for “No Speak English” by Sandra Cisneros and found this essay that looked really good until I read it. This was the revision--final draft!

Can you find the mistakes? There’s one fact and one big literary technique mistake (choice and analysis). Post your answers – A) the fact, B) the correct technique and analysis.

Good Luck!

http://ncruz2011.weebly.com/no-speak-english-essay-revision.html

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

vocabulary games

Please go to the websites below to play some games that will sharpen your skills. Play for 15 minutes.Then post a comment with your name and how you felt about the game. you can post your score if you wish.

Ms De Pas

This is a fun site--the more you play the smarter you get--and you feed the poor. You can play English vocabulary or grammar or other subjects. The more you do the better it is for you. Share this site with your friends.

http://freerice.com/#/english-vocabulary/1590

http://www.vocabulary.com/

Literary device games

Please go to the websites below to play some games that will sharpen your skills. Play for 15 minutes.Then post a comment with your name and how you felt about the game. you can post your score if you wish.
Ms De Pas

Alliteration is a type of repetition--the same letter or sound is repeated. For example: "baby boy in a blue blanket" the /b/ repeated. "Cuando, cuando, cuando" is not alliteration.

http://eclassroom.110mb.com/3rd%209%20weeks%20web/Figlang1.swf

http://eclassroom.110mb.com/3rd%209%20weeks%20web/figurative_language_-_classify_it!.swf

Welcome to our Blog!

You will find new and exciting stories and poetry that we will discover this semester as well as what I did and taught last semester. I thought that it would be helpful to you to have access to the exciting work we covered last semester. If it's too long and complicated to have last semester's work and this semester's together I'll change it; just let me know. I think it may be useful.
I expect you to

join this blog by becoming a member
post a good picture of you
make comments on the tasks and to your classmates
read, write and have fun
feed the fish!

Friday, December 16, 2011

interview

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/newsinc/landing_page.html?freewheel=90057&sitesection=huffingtonpost&VID=98090

interview with Sarah Shourd

Thursday, December 8, 2011

too much knowledge a good thing or not?

We all agree that knowledge is more important than money. Now what? Is too much knowledge a good thing or a bad thing? What do you think?
It seems like that is the case with the Lawyer. What does he say about wisdom and society?

Required Vocabulary for The Bet and Homework due December 15

Name____________________________________________ Date______ L4T__ Ms. De Pas

Vocabulary List for “The Bet “ by Anton Chekhov

Directions: define in English, usage from the context of the story. Use the spaces below to add your words.

1. solitary confinement

3. capital punishment

4. life imprisonment

5. immoral ( adj )

6. unsuitable( adj )

7. á priori is Latin for from the earlier, it means knowing without doing something, knowing something is true without proof

8. humane( adj )

9. clever ( adj )

10. senseless( adj )

11. frivolous ( adj )

12. spoilt ( adj )(spoiled)

13. trifle ( N )

14. Gospel –The teachings of Jesus Christ, the relighous book of Christians

15. compulsory ( adj )

16. voluntary ( adj )

17. to poison (V)

18. meaningless ( adj )

19. nonsensical ( adj )

20. reckoning (N) calculation, understanding

21. pluck ( adj ) courage, nerve

22. dreary ( adj )

23. captivity (N)

24. threshold (N)

25. bound ( adj )required, forced

26. foe (N)

27. to procure

28. zealously ( adv )

29. treatise (N) an essay, a study of

30. indiscriminately (adv)

31. indebted (V)

32. lodge(N) a small house

33. emaciated ( adj )thin, shrunken

34. whirl (N) a turn, spin

35. hideousness ( adj ) ugliness, repulsiveness

36. contempt (N) hatred, disdain

37.

38.

39.

40.

41.

42.

43.

Spoken Word Poem by Luke Nephew ......read this out loud

This was written by Luke Nephew, our resident poet, about prisoners having a hunger strike (refusing food) in California. Spoken Word is a type of rap poetry. It usually has to be heard to be understood and felt. He performs his poetry; it's not usually written. So for us, Luke typed it out with the different fonts showing different 'voices'.
Read it loud and strong with feeling!

PELICAN BAY PRISON HUNGER STRIKE

California, USA 2011

Last night, a hungry man spoke to me

His voice, echoing in the solitary confinement of a cell in Pelican Bay prison,

Grabbed me by the shoulders and said:

Child my torture is older than you

Since before 1982 we’ve been stuffed savage against too much cement

If our dissent is baggage, I hope it ain’t too heavy for you to carry, Little Brother,

We’ve been kept in cages of empty pages

I need a pen to get out this pen

My family can’t even get a picture of me

He can’t even hear his daughter’s voices

We don’t have any choice

Is this making any sense?

Am I making any noise?

I don’t know any more if this is the floor or the ceiling…

We were not transferred here for killing or stealing,

They say it’s for an affiliation with gangs but most of the time that ain’t even true

If this were for our physical security, wouldn’t they let us choose?

Somebody please, stop this abuse, I can still remember the taste of the sun

Stop the silence

I can’t remember the face of my own sun

I’ve been in solitary confinement for decades

What have I become?

What have they done?

Little brother I’ve been pushed so far to the brink…

That I think you hear me through these tears and bars and scars, I think I just think…

BROTHER, I HEAR YOU

Your voice is echoing within the walls of my chest

like I was made up of concrete cells and I can smell the hunger on your breadth

Tell me big brother, how close is death?

No, its not hear yet…but some of the brothers are getting sick

We’re two weeks into the hunger strike and its sounds like over 6,600 prisoners from across California State are jointing us in solidarity… No, wait… I don’t know if you can hear me, I know they paint us bloodthirsty dirty and unworthy so you fear me

I don’t know if you can face the facts that’s history still scripts like rips across our slashed backs, what would you do if I told you that

The United States has more human beings in prison than any other country in the world

That one in each hundred adults in America is locked up

That there is torture in the united states prison system

And we are hunger striking to the death until the United States listens!!!

I hear you

But will you listen?

Tell me,

They treat us like they hate us

Emasculate us and degrade us

They lock us up in cages, this is not the middle ages

This is right now in California states prisons

This is a plantation

This is Tuskegee and they ain’t frontin like it’s for science

They are just hoping for us to riot

So they can evoke Attica on all of us

But we are not

We are peacefully protesting

With clasped hands and empty bellies until they stop

Stop torturing us and if that is not enough we will die

If than is not enough than I am ashamed to be human

Brother, I will write your prayers like stares onto the air,

Speak the uprising tides in your words breaking to be heard…I will…

Last night,

A hungry man spoke to me

His voice entering my chest infused into my breadth,

So if you thought you couldn’t hear him yet, I get to promise you are wrong,

His bars are always ours and this is all his song,

That echoes all the way here from the solitary confinement of Pelican Bay Prison

Where many men are dying to know

If we will listen

Hard enough

To stop the massacre

Being committed

In our name,

On our land,

With our money

And with our permission

That we grant

Everytime

We do

Nothing.

-The Peace Poets

LRN

Luke R. Nephew

Co-Founder and Artist Educator

of thepeacepoets.com

Sarah Shourd interview

This is a long but interesting interview that Sarah gave. I think that her fiance and friend are still in Iran.

BTW PTSD is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It when the sounds and events of war or prison interrupt a person's life or sleep. It happens to soldiers who come back from war. Jeff, my former student to visited L4T-08 today, talked about not being able to sleep after 2 years in Afghanistan.

Post settings
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/world/middleeast/20hiker.html?ref=christianeamanpour

Background article about Sarah Shourd

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/world/middleeast/20hiker.html?ref=christianeamanpour

This article was written just after Sarah was released from 13 months of solitary confinement.

What do you think of her saying that she feels only 1/3 free? What does that mean? When, if ever, will she be 100% free?

Monday, November 21, 2011

The text of The Bet

http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Bet.shtml

This is the actual version we are using in class as well as the one that is read on Librivox. (http://librivox.org/)
You can listen online, put it on your MP3 player or iPod to listen at your own leisure.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Personal Essay on Solitary Confinement Today

New Your Times Essay on Solitary Confinment

This essay is required reading after you read "The Bet."

Monday, October 31, 2011

Kermit the Frog

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Tips for writing .......On the Paragraph

On the Paragraph: These are great tips for good writing.

'via Blog this'http://www.sabri.org/OnTheParagraph.htm

More Vocabulary Games

Please go to the website below to play some games that will sharpen your skills. Play for 15 minutes.Then post a comment with your name and how you felt about the game. you can post your score if you wish.

Ms De Pas

This is a fun site--the more you play the smarter you get--and you feed the poor. You can play English vocabulary or grammar or other subjects. The more you do the better it is for you. Share this site with your friends.

http://freerice.com/#/english-vocabulary/1590

Literary Devices Games

Please go to the websites below to play some games that will sharpen your skills.

Alliteration is a type of repetition--the same letter or sound is repeated. For example: "baby boy in a blue blanket" the /b/ repeated. "Cuando, cuando, cuando" is not alliteration.

http://eclassroom.110mb.com/3rd%209%20weeks%20web/Figlang1.swf

http://eclassroom.110mb.com/3rd%209%20weeks%20web/figurative_language_-_classify_it!.swf

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Summary of "The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant

This is my brief summary of the story. You can read this before you watch the videos (look in the posts from September) so that you can have an idea of what is going on in the French videos. Since you don't understand French, and the story I gave you is long, this will help you. YOU MUST READ THE WHOLE STORY ANYWAY!

Madame Loisel is unhappy and poor in Paris, 1865. She wants to be high class and rich, but she's married to a clerk. Her husband, the clerk, comes home one afternoon, after a long hard day's work with an invitation to a party at the Minister of Education's house. Instead of being happy, Madame Loisel is unhappy because she has no dress to wear. Her husband, who has worked hard to save up money for a gun, uses the money to buy Madame Loisel a dress. She's still not happy because she feels that she will look out of place (poor--which she is) if she does not wear jewelry. Her husband makes a good suggestion.

Madame Forestier, an old school friend, has lots of jewels, including a beautiful expensive diamond necklace. She gladly lends it to Madame Loisel for the party. Now, Madame Loisel is finally happy...until she loses the necklace. She and her husband decide not to tell Madame Forestier the truth about losing the necklace. They must borrow money to replace the necklace and spend the next 10 years of their life, working hard to earn enough to pay back the money they borrowed. One day while strolling along the a very nice street in Paris, Madame Loisel runs into Madame Forestiere and tells her what happened. Forestiere, shocked by Madame Loisel's tragic story, informs her that the necklace she lent her that day ten years ago was a fake.