Presentations

Your presentations on your New York City neighborhoods are due. Each presentation must have five slides:

1) A title slide including your name and the name of the neighborhood

2) A fact, stated in your own words, with a citation (a statement explaining where you got the fact from) and a real, historical picture that illustrates that fact

3) A second fact, stated in your own words, with a citation (a statement explaining where you got the fact from) and a real, historical picture that illustrates that fact

4) A third fact, stated in your own words, with a citation (a statement explaining where you got the fact from) and a real, historical picture that illustrates that fact

5) A concluding slide in which you state what you feel you have learned from your research.

We will be showing them tomorrow. I will save them to my flash drive. Please name them with your name plus the neighborhood. My presentation would be CamillaUpperWestSide, for instance. When you are ready for your work to be saved, raise your hand and I will come over to you and copy your Powerpoint onto my flash drive so we can display it tomorrow. Be prepared to talk about what you learned as we show the slides.

You must also have THREE WEB SITE PARAPHRASE FORMS in your folder, to prove that the words on your slide are actually your words, and not plagiarized. Those three forms are essential in order to receive credit.

What Learning Looks Like: Reading, Comprehending, Interpreting, Expressing

Learning is a process of development. You start with a skill, and then build on it. You all now know, or at least have had some experience - finding interesting material about the neighborhood on which you've chosen to focus. It is not enough to just find that material. You must read it carefully, and then interpret it: translate it into your own words and express it to an audience.

There is a purpose in all this: learning is not simply copying information from one source to another. Maybe when you are in elementary school it helps to write "A" "A" "A" over and over again, but as you grow older you need to develop another skill: that of understanding the material that you have read and making it your own by describing it to others using your own words.

If I was simply satisfied by your copying a paragraph from a website into your PowerPoint presentations I would not be teaching you anything. You would not be learning anything. This is a bad habit that a lot of schoolchildren have been allowed to get away with for years, but it is plagiarism, and it is not allowed in my class.

The reason that you have to fill out the Web Site Paraphrase Form is because you need to be able to take information in, understand it, and describe what you know. It is possible to simply copy something down and have no idea what you are writing or talking about. That is not learning. That is faking. I am not interested in what you can fake. I am interested in what you can understand.

Do not use a source from the internet that is too confusing or full of technical terms you do not understand. Use information from web sites that are clear to you. Read the information they give you and then describe what you have learned - as if you are explaining it to another student. Put it in your own style. Describe the history of the place as you understand it.

The stages of learning here are:
reading
comprehending
interpreting
expressing

You read, you figure out what each word means, you figure out the whole meaning and message of what you have read, and then you express your thoughts about what you have read, either verbally or through your own writing. That is what learning looks and feels like.

Using What You've Learned: Creating a Presentation

You will use the three pictures that you have found in a PowerPoint presentation that you will create. You will also have to explain to the class what you have learned about your neighborhood in the 70's, or earlier (you may choose any historical information, as long as it is from before 1980).

Read the material that you find on web sites that contain the pictures. Look further, using google's regular web search engine, to find more information about your exact neighborhood 40, 50, 60, etc. years ago. When you find something you like, bookmark the page and read it carefully. Copy the section that you want to use into the box on the form, and then, next to it, write the same information using your own words. This may be tricky, but you must do it. Copying words directly from someone else is plagiarism. If will get your work disqualified in any arena: work or academia.

In your presentation you'll need to include material from appropriate websites. What have you learned about your neighborhood based on what you've read? Use the Web Site Paraphrase Form to record those passages that are relevant and describe what you've learned in your own words. Once you've put the information on the form you can put it into your PowerPoint slides. You'll need a "Web Site Paraphrase Form" for each piece of information you use. Although you must put your own words into your PowerPoint slides, you must always give credit as to where you got the information.

Your Neighborhood Story

Assignment:
Choose a neighborhood somewhere within the boundaries of New York City. Find three images from the 1970's, or earlier, on the internet. The pictures cannot be from a film or television show. They must be authentic. How do you know if a picture is really from the 70's or earlier? Check out the technology and clothing of the people. One student mentioned that photographic film also has a different look than digital photography. If you can discern that, use that as well. Make sure you've logged in to your own school account (not the generic "Student" account), and save the images to your desktop.

The 1980's VS Today

What was it like for Christopher Sorrentino and his friends in New York City in the 1980's? How was teenage life both the same and different thirty years ago? We discussed the article in depth.

Would you bring up your own children the way Chris' parents brought him up? Do you think they had a good approach to parenting? What limits should parents set for their kids, and should they let their kids know about things they did when they were young? In what way was New York City better, and in what way was it worse in the 1980's? What difficulties did they have then that we don't have as much today, and what things are difficult for us that were easier then? We discussed how things were freer then, but on the other hand people did a lot of crazy things and that kind of behavior was more generally accepted. Similarly, we saw how it was easier to survive because rents were cheaper, but New York City was a more dangerous place to live.

Create Your Own Story from Chris Sorrentino's Vocabulary

The words below come from the Chris Sorrentino article. Choose any ten words from this list:

Adolescence
Earnest
Serendipitous
Assemble
Animosity
Existence
Exhilarating
Equation
Critical
Shift
Inherent
Situate
Arbitrary
Persuade
Dubious
Reassuring
Curfew
Restrictions
Encourage
Designate(d)
Liberated
Confess Arrangement
Fodder
Hilarity
Acknowledge
Violating
Inflexible
Impinged
Shrug
Nebulous
Immoderate
Encounters
Hormonal
Core
Consume
Perspective
Geezer
Lawless
Bankrupt
Anarchic
Heady
Archives
Heterodoxy
Disorder
Revolution
Reinvigorate
Thriving
Crimp
Banishment
Relegation
Abrupt (ly)
Criminalize
Honored
Breach
Concomitant
Enforcement
Lament
Legitimacy
Bestow
“verboten”
Sanctioned
Homogenized
Fertile
Post-mortem

1. Choose any ten words from the above list. You may use any form of the words you choose. In other words, “homogenized” is also “homogenize” in the present tense. “Relegation” can be “relegate” or “relegated.” “Enforcement” can be “enforce.” Look the words up and make sure you know what they mean. If you already have ten words from yesterday’s assignment, you do not have to look up ten new words. Use the ones from your work on Thursday.

2. Write a short story one page long in which you use your ten chosen words correctly. The story must MAKE SENSE, and hang together as a story. It can be about anything, as long as it is appropriate for school. Have fun! ☺

ESSENTIAL NOTE: The story must be one 8.5 x 11 lined page, single-spaced and with normally sized handwriting. Hand the stories in to the teacher when they are completed.

Defining Chris Sorrentino's Words

We read the Chris Sorrentino article, "When I Was Seventeen." The assignment was as follows:

1.) Read the article

2.) Find at least ten vocabulary words in the Christopher Sorrentino article. That means look for ten words in the article that you, personally, do not know. If you know all the words, then pick ten that you think would qualify as high school level vocabulary words.
3.) Using the skills we discussed last week, try to figure out the meaning of the words BEFORE you look the meaning up. Use the form available here to list your words and definitions. The skills we discussed yesterday were to use contextual clues, break the word into parts (prefix, root word, and suffix), or draw on your knowledge of a Latin-based language (like Spanish) to help you guess the meaning of the word. Put YOUR OWN DEFINITION in column B,
4.) Find a good, understandable dictionary definition online, and write it into column C. Do this for all ten vocabulary words.

Rules: Look up those words by going to an online dictionary or by using a dictionary in the classroom AFTER you’ve written down your own possible definition in Column B. DO NOT use a definition that you do not understand. If you go to a website and find the definitions are not clear, try another dictionary website. Here is a list of some of my favorite dictionary websites, and you can also find others on your own:

http://dictionary.com
http://www.merriam-webster.com/
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/
http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
http://oxforddictionaries.com/?attempted=true

Example of Word List:

Column A	Column B	Column C
Vocabulary Words	What You Think They Mean	Dictionary Definitions

The form that was distributed in class is available here.

Welcome to Cycle 4, Spring 2011 Semester

Our first assignment is a writing assessment.

Read Langston Hughes' poem "Mother to Son" and write an essay of at least a page and a half explaining what you think the poem is about, and how you relate to it. What is the true meaning of the poem, and how is its message true in real life?


Mother to Son

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor --
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now --
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.