The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.

Joanna & Jose

I study at Cooper Union…
(Cooper Union: The Great Hall of The Cooper Union has stood for more than a century as a bastion of free speech and a witness to the flow of American History and ideas… in Cooper's famous auditorium that the politics and legislation necessary to build a humane city took shape.)
But I left.
-Jose

It's nice how he try to talk in Spanish. Its funny cuz sometimes we sound like that… talking english.
Jose looks like Luis, you know, all disoriented and stuff, but, he has a lot of talent. Luis got it too, but he doesn’t want us to know.
Jose, congrats, your pieces are very interesting and authentic. I love the skateboard, I can’t imagine someone who has that tenacity.
http://www.myspace.com/sipestar/photos/22177319#%7B%22ImageId%22%3A33541031%7D

Joanna shows us her site. It contains lots of interesting pictures. If you want you can see it here:
http://www.joannanovelli.com/
There’s a lot of interesting stuff.

Teacher Evaluation and Final Gatsby Charts

My favorite students,

How are you? It's been a while since we've been able to have real class. And next week you'll be in Leadership Workshops on Monday and Tuesday. That means we won't have class until next Thursday, December 2.
There are two assignments due on Thursday, December 2, 12:00am:

1. Final Gatsby Charts for Chapters 7-9. There will be a small quiz on information related to the charts. If you do the charts, you can use them for the quiz. If not, vaya con dios!

2. Please post the answers to your English A2 - Teacher Evaluation.  Your responses are very important for the progress and improvement of the class.  The 3 questions were:

• What did I learn in Term 1?
• How was my teacher's performance in Term 1?
• What do my teacher and I need to do to achieve high grades in next year's English A2 - DP Exams?

Be well and get to work.  Remember that blog participation is important for your final grades.
Luis 

As All You

Follow the next link and you'll find a song made for yourselves..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9ndJUCoFJc

More Homework

A2 Students...I'll be checking your classification charts for The Great Gatsby, chapters 4-6, on Tuesday, November 2, 2010. Please do these individually. I will notice if you copy. Be well.
Luis

Literary Terms

Students...the following links will take you to the University of North Carolina at Pembroke and to the Orange Unified School District of California's respective thoughts and definitions of literary terms. Please refer to these two sources while working on The Great Gatsby...and beyond!
Luis

From El Dorado...

Students,

I hope you guys are doing well, enjoying and learning on your Social Studies field trip. Please take advantage of these moments. They might seem boring, but trust me, after you're enrolled in college(in the near future...for MOST of you)high school life will become a simple, affective memory. I write to you from the airport, waiting for my flight to Ft. Lauderdale. I'm happy...
...to inform you that your Written Tasks (WT) will be due on Tuesday, October 19, 2010. We will engage in a peer review grading session with your classmates on that day. For more information on the WT's, pleas check your notes and pg's. 18-20 of your A2 bible. The bibles were sent to your cyberskoolz accounts.
Your Interactive Orals (IO) will be due on Thursday, October 21, 2010. For more information on the requirements and options of the IO, look at your bibles, pg's. 39-40. If you decide to do group work, no problem, just make sure your groups contain a maximum of 3 people. You may videotape your IO's and show them to the class. I will be videotaping the ones that are not handed in as videos.

Please be serious with your work. These will potentially be the samples of your work sent to the I.B. for external assessment. Both must be on the Cultural Option: "Media and Culture: Advertising, Bias and Media Manipulation".

Lastly, please wish me luck, write me a message on the blog. I will be available during recess week to answer questions. You can email me: lramirez@tvs.edu.co. Or you can just leave me a message on the blog. You know what? Please leave me a message on the blog...pray for me...I am flying AIRES!!!!

Luis

...and how does that make you feel?

The Famous "Emotions Wheel"

Since you all like twilight....

Congratulations to Juan Diego Lahidalga, Javier Ayala, Jorge Lince, Juan David Bonilla, Luis Espejo, Maurico Castillo, Santiago Vasquez and Ana Maria Ortiz (She wasn't even in school today!!!) for handing in the first drafts of your essay. You should be proud. By the time we finish drafting, you'll have the best essays on the planet. The rest of you should be ashamed of yourselves. After giving it much thought, I won't read any other essays until the 2nd draft deadline. Be well. Now go enjoy your Twilight Cake! hahahahahahahaha

Satan?

The following article from the popular business magazine 'Fast Company', criticizes WalMart's pricing practices and their effect on consumers and competition. We will read and analyze this article in tomorrow's (Thursday, Sept. 9, 2010) class. Please familiarize yourself with the text, its themes and structure. Be well.

Article: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html?page=0%2C0

Write Here!!!

Seniors,

Please leave your thesis statement as a comment to this post by Wednesday, September 8, 2010, 8:00PM. Thank you.

Luis

Publicity and companies.

We can see that in the society, there is a very high consumption index in the teenagers and that is affected by what companies make them think, by showing publicity and make the teen waste money in things that they do not need.

“We`ll buy a lot of clothes when we don´t need em” (Kanye West).

*The companies are using publicity that makes them appear in a higher class than other companies, for example “Pepsi” used publicity that criticizes “Coca- Cola” ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Gh61DRCT8A&hd=1 )

We can see that Pepsi is trying to make the teenagers consume Pepsi and not Coke.

*Other example could be “Televentas”, that wants to show that their products are very cheap and are better that the OTHER companies. They want to sell an idea that what they publicity shows is the best, using black and white images to show that the other products are very old, so the people decide to buy in “Televentas”.

“If I could be like that
I would give anything
Just to live one day
In those shoes”

Such has been the influence of media in our lives that we must deal with everyday personality twists.

Fashion and major corporations plays such an important role in our daily actions that we`re constantly pursuing their ultimate releases to buy them in order to fit into certain social groups.

There`s a clear example in Kanye West`s song “All falls down” which states

“We`ll buy a lot of colthes when we don`t really need ‘em.”

People become so obsessed with their artists that they forget to be themselves and try to imitate them. However, not only fans try to act as their favourite celebrities, but also among them, performers sometimes emulate characteristic actions of others in order for fans to follow them.

Corporate Believer

What is Rushkoff talking about???

Pre-Writing Assignment (Lang. B)

Class,

How are you? Please respond to this blog post by Sunday, May 23, 8:00PM, where in 5 to 8 sentences you tell the class WHICH type of text (Monologue, Speech or Manifesto) you have chosen to answer the MYP Question: "Are you a puppet or a master?". You must also tell bloggers WHY you have chosen your respective type of text. Unsatisfactory responses will be revised and rewritten until they receive my approval. Please follow instructions. Be well. See you guys on Monday.

Luis

Free At Last Pt. 2

Dr. King Part 1

speech .....

Step 2: Say It

Previous

Next

After you've written your speech, it's time to practice saying it before you record it for Scholastic.com. There are two main tips to help you get ready.

1. Say It Out Loud
2. Mark Up Your Script

Say It Out Loud
You can't just mumble to yourself! You must practice reading your speech like you're really talking to a group. Why?

• First you'll find out how long it is. Remember, one minute is the maximum.
• Second, when you read out loud you hear problems that your eyes didn't notice, like sentences that are way too long and seem to go on forever like this sentence does so that I can make a point about sentences that are too long.
  (Whew! Can you say that sentence without taking a breath or stumbling?)
• Third, when you read out loud you'll hear accidental tongue-twisters. For example, these sentences are easy to read to yourself. But try to say them out loud! (You'll hear what we mean!)

  The President pleasantly prepared to pack his putter for the trip.
  Sarah sold her seashells slowly Saturday.

Mark Up Your Script
What script? Your speech! It's a good idea to think of anything you write to read aloud as a script. So when your speech is finished, get a pencil and mark it up. That means actually making marks on the speech to help you remember how you want to sound when you record your words aloud.

Professional announcers, newscasters, and actors do this all the time. And so do people giving speeches. You can underline words that you want to emphasize by saying them louder or with more energy. And you can mark places where you want to pause for dramatic effect, or where you need to take a breath. There are no special marks to use. Just make up your own. Maybe put a "P" where you want to pause.

Here's an example of a marked-up script. The words are from a speech by President John F. Kennedy. Can you tell how it was meant to be said?

Eagle Fly Free

Today we talked in class about fate, self-determinations, introspection and human race in general related with Sophocle´s pla "Oedipus Rex".
How can the lyrics of this song be related to Sophocle´s book?
How about life in general?

Tragic Hero (Lang. B)

Students please follow this Ohio University link on Aristotle's Tragic Terms. For Monday, please write three paragraphs of informal writing where you identify Oedipus in the stages of 'peripetia', 'anagnorsis' and 'pathos'. Please quote the play directly in your paragraphs. Be well.

Sing it Kingston!!! (Lang. B)

Puppet Time (Lang. B)

Great Author. (Lang. B)

You know who was this author?
He was born on Jan. 1, 1919 in Manhattan, lived in seclusion in the small town of Cornish. N.H. for more than half a century. He was not photographed for decades.

"The Catcher in the Rye", his most famous book, caused a sensation when it was published.With its very first sentence, the book, Which came out in 1951, introduced a brand-new voice in American writing, and it quickly became a cult book, a rite of passage for the brainy and disaffected. "Nine Stories," published in 1953, made him a darling of the critics as well, for the way it dismantled the traditional architecture of the short story and replaced it with one In which a story could turn on a tiny shift of mood or tone .
This author is J. D. Salinger, the private Obsessively author who captured the hearts of several generations with his pitch-perfect knowledge of adolescence and his ear for the vernacular, died last Jan. 28.
This is unfortunate, but it's past, however we should read with pleasure his most famous book, "The Catcher in the Rye". This has made us transcend, has made us see a new culture, and in addition was made by the best English-language author ever existed, in my view.
J. D. Salinger, rest in peace.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/j_d_salinger/index.html

More??...YES!! (Lang. B)

Kiddies...the 3rd draft of the essay is due on Thursday, March 4. The following link http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/ , plus your class notes, and a model I have sent through cyberskoolz will help you accomodate your essays to APA standards and format. Approach me for help, if needed. Be well....lucho

Evaluator Viewpoints (Lang. B)

Groups...thank you for the presentations today. They were substantially better than the first time around. Your fellow classmates that reviewed your presentations, have given you grades, moderated by me...and will post a general comment about your performances today. Thank you!...lucho

Reading Logs/Register and Diction/Mood and Tone (Lang. B)

Class...how are you? Part of analyzing and criticizing literature is knowing and understanding literary terminology. For Wednesday, February 24, please find three online sources (an online encyclopedia, writing and literary specialists) to define and speculate on register, diction, mood, and tone. We will be having a discussion on these topics, possibly a quiz. You should also have Reading Log #5 completed. For Catcher: Ch's 17-21...For Mean Streets: Ch's 20-24 'Harlem'. Get your work done and be well...Lucho

Hello guys as you know the group has been through some deals ........ i got into a very deep reflection and i felt horrible, i saw a picture and felt very bad, the way that we are so lucky having the love of our parents, having the opportunity to study, having a place to pass the night without feeling cold, the chance to have something to eat..... i want you to reflect and tell me how do you feel after doing this...

NEW POINT OF VIEW

Hello! I think the question: Why evil exist in man?, focuses much on a special topic, but I think we all would like to vent, so to speak, for a question a little more open about the novel. For example, I'm reading The Catcher in the Rye, and on those days I was thinking of one in particular, this is it.
If any of us had a chance to change their lives for a day with some character in the novel, what would it be? Why?

respond according to your novel.

Obsession for Identity

As we read "Down These Mean Streets" and Catcher in the Rye" we notice that the whole story is about finding a group to belong and/or social acceptance. In some cases they need to sacrifice certain things in life in order to actually make part of something. It even happens that some of these sacrifices are unconscious, like getting into a fight just to help a friend in need, without asking anything in return.

Why do they do this?

Is it a common pattern in mankind?

What kind of sacrifices do we do to belong somewhere?