Please check out Schoooooooooooooooooooooooooology for our new mandatory updates. All our common LA 9 skills and tasks will be posted there. View it is the Academic Extended Learning environment.
The class website will be used as an example of what it means to extend your academic world into the REAL WORLD. I will be posting how I am engaging in the same tasks that I have asked you to complete. I will be providing samples (that I will post to Schoology as well) of how I would demonstrate our LA skills.
Feel free to follow along with me, watch my videos, listen to my songs, read my sources and comment on the website.
Even teachers need a classroom to learn. We need you. I miss our time together because your growth helps me grow. Let’s keep that going.
Mr. M
Essential Question for the Week: How do individuals build or maintain their 5 human needs (safety, freedom, control, sense of belonging and fun) in a time like this?
Task #1 - Reading Skills Warm Up: Always start with music - My ideal daily routine is getting up early, making coffee, opening the laptop and turning on KEXP.org while I do my work. Music is a great way to get the senses working.
This week’s song is MY ALL TIME FAVORITE. We have a weird video and some challenging lines. I would recommend watching the video first, then annotate the lyrics.
I will be posting what I think is the most important CDs (1 visual and 1 line) to the class comment section.
Task #2 - Writing Skills - Figurative Language Makes Life More Interesting: Please look over my sample below for a response that analyzes figurative language with a bit of theme thrown in.
Red = CDs that have context, embedding, edited down, obviously important and properly cited.
Green = 1st CM explains the importance of the CD in the source.
Blue = 2nd CM makes the CD important outside of the source...it is MY insightful opinion and “truth” that can be applied to the REAL WORLD.
It is very easy for society to judge an individual based on the mistakes they make, instantly labeling someone as unworthy or unacceptable. Alexander Ebert’s song, “Truth”, tries to challenge this knee-jerk reaction so many of us have to quickly condemn others. The protagonist of the song confesses that when he was younger, he let his selfishness lead him to make some negative choices. But, over time, he realized that his “darkness was shining” and he must “have faith in [himself]” (Ebert). Ebert overcame the guilt and shame that comes with making mistakes and even went so far as to embrace it, letting it shine. He refused to let his faults and blunders define him and even encouraged us to have faith that we can overcome these lapses in behavior. We cannot let our past control and damage the potential of our future. If we live with guilt we can never have the confidence to be better. After encouraging the listener to forgive themselves, Ebert attempts to help those who judge too quickly. Ebert recommends that the only way to understand him, or others, is to “[tilt his] chin back slit [his] throat/take a bath in [his] blood get to know [him]” (Ebert). While this violent imagery may seem unsettling, the process of truly empathizing with another human being requires us to connect deeply and feel their life, their struggles, their heart. To open someone up and see inside is how we overcome our surface judgment and make true human bonds. We all are the same on the inside. We all bleed red. It is a noble goal to look past our external perceptions of someone to see that we are all more alike than different. We need to empathize with each other and understand that our mistakes do not define us as individuals but rather, combine us as humans.