JUNIORS:
In 200 to 300 words, share what advice, wisdom, and encouragement you have to offer this year’s graduating seniors. As they take the steps that you will soon be taking yourselves, what do you want them to know?

SENIORS:
In 200 to 300 words, share your parting words of wisdom, hope, encouragement, and advice with the classes to come after you. As you leave high school for your future, what sage words to do you have to share with the students who will remain behind?

CHALLENGE!!!
Any class that can get EVERY student in that class to turn in their response to this prompt ON TIME will be exempt from Prompt 14!

As always, responses are due absolutely no later than 2:00 p.m. on Friday, May 22nd.

Professor Mac

Be inventive, creative, and—where appropriate—humorous. Responses are due by Friday, May 15th at 2:00 p.m. (2:01 is late! You can, and should, turn this in earlier!)

1. A police detective is assigned to a case involving arson at several Krispy Kreme doughnut shops.
2. A man receives a package with no return address. It contains a pirate-style eye patch and a note.
3. You find an envelope full of money in a parking lot and decide to spend it on an adventure (not things).

Your response to this prompt needs to be at least 300 words. Send your responses to classjournal@gmail.com. Make sure your subject lines reads: Prompt 12 – First Name Last Name. All responses must be received by 2:00 p.m. on Friday, May 15th, REGARDLESS OF ABSENCES! Refer to your original instructions (on http://ourclassjournal.wordpress.com) for all of the other assignment details.

Email Journal Prompt 11 – Due Friday, May 1 by 2:00 p.m.

This week there are different prompts for students in English III and English IV classes.Please make sure you respond to the correct prompt for your class.

English IV (2^nd and 3^rd Periods)

Seniors, graduation is rapidly approaching and I know you all are counting it down. This week I want you to think about what needs to be said at the commencement ceremony to wrap up your thirteen years of elementary and high school education. Traditionally, the valedictorian, salutatorian, and class president make speeches at graduation, but let’s pretend that you are making the final commencement address. What would you say? How would you put all you’ve learned and all you want your peers to know into a five minute commencement address? Write your speech (the whole thing) and send it to me for this week’s journal response.

English III (1^st, 4^th, 5^th, and 7^th Periods)

This week you need to write the introductory paragraph to your Culminating Project Proposal. Your introduction should give me a clear idea of what your project is and what the rest of your proposal will say. Check this introduction carefully for spelling and grammar errors. Refer to your project manual for additional information.

This paragraph MUST answer the following questions: 

• What exactly do you plan to do? (Remember this is the introduction to your proposal. It should be a brief description of your project. Remember, introductions should catch the reader’s attention.
• Estimate the length of time to complete your product, service, or design.
• By what date will this project be completed?
• Why are you doing this project? (What motivated you to choose this particular project? List all your reasons.)
• What skills, knowledge, experience, and personal qualities do you have that will help you complete this project? (What do you know and what can you do already that will help you complete this project?)
• What do you expect to learn from this project? (Include both what you will learn in technical knowledge about a topic or area your project covers, and what general skills you will acquire by planning and completing a major undertaking on your own. List everything you will learn.)
• How will you fund or find resources for your project? (Explain in detail how you will pay for the costs of your project. Include a budget if necessary. Remember, you are not required to choose a project that will be costly.)

 (For this week’s prompt, you may attach your response as a Microsoft Word document – use the .doc extension, NOT .docx – as you will want to save this paragraph for use with your full proposal.)

Remember your responses need to be at least 200 words. Send your responses to classjournal@gmail.com. All responses must be received by 2:00 p.m. on Friday, May 1^st, REGARDLESS OF ABSENCES!

The subject of the email must contain the number of the prompt you are responding to and your name as follows: Prompt 11 – Jane Smith

As was the case last quarter, I will not accept “But I don’t have a computer at home” as an excuse for not participating in this assignment. There are computers all over school, including my classroom, and at the local public libraries that are available for your use. It is your responsibility to make time to get this done once a week. A 25% penalty will be imposed on assignments received other than by email

Extra Credit – If you would like to earn some extra points on each of these journal assignments, you may do so by setting up a blog in lieu of emailing each entry. (For more information on blogs, see the Wikipedia entry here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog) For this assignment, you may set up your own blog and post your responses to the journal prompts on the blog in lieu of simply sending me an email. I will simply subscribe to the blog’s feed to make sure you have posted your entries on time.

Refer to your original instructions (on https://ourclassjournal.wordpress.com) for all of the other assignment details.

Download now or preview on posterous

Email Journal Prompt 11.pdf (12 KB)

Download now or preview on posterous

Culminating Project Student Guide.pdf (164 KB)

(There is no school on the 10th. However, I am giving you the entire week to get this one done. Plan accordingly.)

Once upon a time, in a school very much like yours, there were two students. One paid attention in class, did all of their homework, and received the highest marks each semester. The other did none of these things, refused to take school seriously, and barely passed each class. The first won a college scholarship and went away to a university after graduation. The latter graduated by the skin of their teeth and had trouble finding a minimum wage job … and then the pages go blank.

Tell me what happens next in this story.

Remember your responses need to be at least 200 words. Send your responses to classjournal@gmail.com. Make sure your subject line reads: Prompt 9 – First Name Last Name. All responses must be received by 2:00 p.m. on Friday, April 10th, REGARDLESS OF ABSENCES! Refer to your original instructions (on https://ourclassjournal.wordpress.com) for all of the other assignment details.

Tell me the most fascinating thing you learned in any of your classes in the last two weeks. What lesson caught your attention and taught you something new and interesting? Why do you think this lesson was so powerful?

Remember your responses need to be at least 200 words. Send your responses to classjournal@gmail.com. Make sure your subject line reads: Prompt 8 – First Name Last Name. All responses must be received by 2:00 p.m. on Friday, April 3rd, REGARDLESS OF ABSENCES! Refer to your original instructions (on https://ourclassjournal.wordpress.com) for all of the other assignment details.

__________

SUMMARY OF INSTRUCTIONS (For those who have forgotten…)

This quarter you will continue keeping a journal online. You will be required to make seven entries in the journal; each entry is worth 20 points. I will give you a prompt and you will have one week to write a 200 word response. All entries must be made by 2:00 p.m. on the date they are due. (See deadlines below.)

All journal entries MUST BE MADE VIA EMAIL. You will type your response to each week’s prompt in the body of an email (no attachments) and send it to classjournal@gmail.com

The subject of the email must contain the number of the prompt you are responding to and your name as follows: Prompt 8 – Jane Smith

As was the case last quarter, I will not accept “But I don’t have a computer at home” as an excuse for not participating in this assignment. There are computers all over school, including my classroom, and at the local public libraries that are available for your use. It is your responsibility to make time to get this done once a week. A 25% penalty will be imposed on assignments received other than by email

Deadlines for emailing of journal prompts:

• Prompt 8 – Friday, April 3 at 2:00 p.m.
• Prompt 9 – Friday, April 10 at 2:00 p.m.
  (There is no school on the 10th. However, I am giving you the entire week to get this one done. Plan accordingly.)
• Prompt 10 – Friday, April 24 at 2:00 p.m.
• Prompt 11 – Friday, May 1 at 2:00 p.m.
• Prompt 12 – Friday, May 8 at 2:00 p.m.
• Prompt 13 – Friday, May 15 at 2:00 p.m.
• Prompt 14 – Friday, May 22 at 2:00 p.m.

SOME RULES:

• Proper writing rules apply, regardless of the medium. That means no abbreviations, no poor spelling (use spell check AND proofread), and ABSOLUTELY NO TEXTSPEAK! I will not LOL!
• Do not use any profanity in your responses and use slang only as is truly appropriate.
• Put your response in the body of your email; do not attach a separate document.
• You do not have to put your emails in MLA format.

Extra Credit – If you would like to earn some extra points on each of these journal assignments, you may do so by setting up a blog in lieu of emailing each entry. (For more information on blogs, see the Wikipedia entry here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog)

For this assignment, you may set up your own blog and post your responses to the journal prompts on the blog in lieu of simply sending me an email. I will simply subscribe to the blog’s feed to make sure you have posted your entries on time.

PlagiarismReading.pdf (54 KB)

Today I spent several hours reading and grading responses to your journal prompts. This should have been an enjoyable exercise that gave me a bit more insight into your writing and thinking abilities than our short time together in class allows. What I found, however, is that the majority of you are not taking these assignments seriously.

The responses I have received are littered with typos, spelling errors, lack of punctuation, and poor grammar. You are supposed to be treating these assignments as any other formal writing assignment, which means proofreading and attention to detail are necessities. Most of you are not even bothering to make sure your have put the correct subject line on your emails. For those who have forgotten, I deduct 3 points (15%) from your grade for an incorrect subject line. (There is a reason I include it with the instructions every time.)

Additionally, several of you have not taken my warnings about plagiarism to heart. Today I entered failing marks for 12 students who plagiarized their responses. This is distressing for several reasons, not the least of which is that once you have been caught cheating once in a nine weeks, you risk failing the entire quarter over something as simple as sharing homework (a practice you all know I DO NOT condone).

These assignments are designed to allow you to express YOUR opinions and YOUR creativity. As there is no right or wrong answer, there is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON that any of you should be using other people’s words rather than your own.

Finish the following statement. (Tell me what you are going to do and how. Convince me you are a powerhouse of self-discipline and inspired motivation.)

Today I am finally going to …

Remember your responses need to be at least 200 words. Send your responses to classjournal@gmail.com. Make sure your subject lines reads: Prompt 7 – First Name Last Name. All responses must be received by 2:00 p.m. on Friday, March 20th, REGARDLESS OF ABSENCES! Refer to your original instructions (on http://ourclassjournal.wordpress.com) for all of the other assignment details.

In the interest of spurring you to action, I will be awarding those who turn in responses early. Responses received Monday will earn 4 extra points. Tuesday gets you 3 points, Wednesday 2 points, and Thursday 1 point.

You have been selected by NBC to produce a PSA (Public Service Announcement) for their “The More You Know” series on the importance of reading. (You can Google this if you are looking for examples.) It is to be directed to your peers (high-school students) and should stress why teenagers should take more time to read. Write the script for your advertisement.

*** A Note About Email Responses: Several of you have fallen victim to the seeming informality of email and are not spell-checking or proofreading your responses. Be cognizant of the fact that I am grading these responses for mechanics (grammar and spelling) as well as content. Please make sure there are no typographical errors in your work before you hit “send.” ***

Remember your responses need to be at least 200 words. Send your responses to classjournal@gmail.com. Make sure your subject lines reads: Prompt 6 – First Name Last Name. All responses must be received by 2:00 p.m. on Friday, March 13th, REGARDLESS OF ABSENCES! Refer to your original instructions (on http://ourclassjournal.wordpress.com) for all of the other assignment details.

Toni Morrison (author of The Bluest Eye, Beloved, and Song of Solomon, among others) has been quoted as saying “If there’s a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”

What book do you really want to read that has not yet been written? What story still needs to be told? You’re the author; what are you going to write?

*** A Note About Email Responses: Several of you have fallen victim to the seeming informality of email and are not spell-checking or proofreading your responses. Be cognizant of the fact that I am grading these responses for mechanics (grammar and spelling) as well as content. Please make sure there are no typographical errors in your work before you hit “send.” ***

Remember your responses need to be at least 200 words. Send your responses to classjournal@gmail.com. Make sure your subject lines reads: Prompt 5 – First Name Last Name. All responses must be received by 2:00 p.m. on Friday, March 6th, REGARDLESS OF ABSENCES! Refer to your original instructions (on http://ourclassjournal.wordpress.com) for all of the other assignment details.

In your opinion, what is the biggest problem society faces today and how would you propose solving it? (You must offer a solution in order to receive full credit.)

Remember your responses need to be at least 200 words. Send your responses to classjournal@gmail.com. Make sure your subject lines reads: Prompt 3 – Your Full Name. Refer to your original instructions for all of the other assignment details.

The following are ten of my favorite lines from various movies. Pick one and write a short story using that line as your opening sentence. Your story can be about anything, but it needs to make sense with the movie quote you start with.

1. “He wants you back,” he screamed into the night air like a fireman going to a window that has no fire… except the passion of his heart. (from So I Married An Axe Murderer)
2. I don’t know how to put this but I’m kind of a big deal. (from Anchorman)
3. I want my two dollars! (from Better Off Dead)
4. Nobody puts Baby in the corner. (from Dirty Dancing)
5. Strange women lyin’ in ponds distributin’ swords is no basis for a system of government. (from Monty Python and the Holy Grail)
6. Sweep the leg! (from The Karate Kid)
7. The human torch was denied a bank loan. (from Anchorman)
8. These go to eleven. (from This is Spinal Tap)
9. When someone asks you if you’re a god, you say “YES”! (from GhostBusters)
10. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles. (from The Princess Bride)

(I’ll give you bonus points if you can work five or more of these lines into your story in a manner that actually makes sense.)

Send your responses to classjournal@gmail.com. Refer to your original instructions for all of the other assignment details.

Click here to send your response to me now.

200 words is the exact word count of this sample response. 200 words are not shorter than this response. It is not one or two sentences, but rather fills an entire paragraph. On average, a response of 200 words typing into an email will be 8 to 13 lines long. Of course, this is only an estimate and your results may differ. You are more than welcome to write more than the minimum required 200 words. If you find yourself with a lot to say about the topic presented, you may find yourself far exceeding the 200 word floor.

Did you know that all I have to do to figure out how many words you typed is drop your email into Microsoft Word and hit ALT-T and W? The program will tell me exactly how many words are in your email. (This is also a tip you should tuck away for when you are writing papers for my or any other class; it saves you the trouble of actually counting words.)

But I digress… The point of all of this is to show you what 200 words exactly looks like in an email – and now I have done just that.

This quarter you will be keeping a journal online. You will be required to make seven entries in the journal; each entry is worth 20 points. I will give you a prompt and you will have one week to write a 200 word response. All entries must be made by 2:00 p.m. on the date they are due. (See deadlines below.)

HERE’S THE CATCH! All journal entries MUST BE MADE VIA EMAIL. You will type your response to each week’s prompt in the body of an email (no attachments) and send it to classjournal@gmail.com

The subject of the email must contain the number of the prompt you are responding to and your name as follows:

If you do not presently have an email account, you must get one. You may sign up for an email account at www.gmail.com, www.yahoo.com, or www.hotmail.com. (All of these provide free email accounts that you can access from anywhere in the world.)

Additionally, I will not accept “But I don’t have a computer at home” as an excuse for not participating in this assignment. There are computers all over school, including my classroom, and at the local public libraries that are available for your use. It is your responsibility to make time to get this done once a week.

Deadlines for emailing of journal prompts:

Your first prompt is provided. All others will be posted in class and online after the expiration of each deadline.

•    Prompt 1 – Friday, February 6 at 2:00 p.m.
•    Prompt 2 – Friday, February 13 at 2:00 p.m.
•    Prompt 3 – Friday, February 20 at 2:00 p.m.
•    Prompt 4 – Friday, February 27 at 2:00 p.m.
•    Prompt 5 – Friday, March 6 at 2:00 p.m.
•    Prompt 6 – Friday, March 13 at 2:00 p.m.
•    Prompt 7 – Friday, March 20 at 2:00 p.m.

(I will be posting the best responses each week on this website, anonymously, of course, for you and your classmates to read.)

SOME RULES:

• Proper writing rules apply, regardless of the medium. That means no abbreviations, no poor spelling (use spell check AND proofread), and ABSOLUTELY NO TEXTSPEAK! I will not LOL!
• Do not use any profanity in your responses and use slang only as is truly appropriate.
• Put your response in the body of your email; do not attach a separate document.
• You do not have to put your emails in MLA format.

Extra Credit

If you would like to earn some extra points on each of these journal assignments, you may do so by setting up a blog in lieu of emailing each entry. A blog is a contraction of the phrase web log. It is a website on which commentary is given by the site owner and displayed in reverse-chronological order. Our class website is a blog.

For more information on blogs, see the Wikipedia entry here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

For this assignment, you may set up your own blog and post your responses to the journal prompts on the blog in lieu of simply sending me an email. I will simply subscribe to the blog’s feed to make sure you have posted your entries on time.

Why would you want to do this? If you are an aspiring writing, or want to share your thoughts with the world, this is a good option for you. It will provide you with a place to publicly display your writing for others to see. You may of course use the blog you set up for additional purposes; for instance, if your write poetry or short stories, you may post them when you are not posting journal responses.

I recommend either wordpress.com or blogger.com if you are interested in setting one up. Both of these sites offer free services. There are other sites to choose from, livejournal.com and blogdrive.com among them; you may want to research the features on a few before deciding which to use.

Of course, I know many of you have no experience with blogging or website design. That is okay. It is rather easy to learn and a very valuable skill to have. If you would like to talk to me individually about setting something up, please come see me at lunch or after school.