Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Friday, February 27, 2015
1. Work on Powerpoints. (See the blog for Wednesday, February 24.), (It is due Monday.)
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
1. Pair up. Choose one of the following British writers and create a powerpoint. It must include the following slides:
a. title page with your name,
b. picture of author,
c. brief biographical sketch,
d. interesting fact(s) about the author,
e. your reason(s) for choosing this author,
f. notable works by the author,
g. something unusual or weird or outside the box (appropriate and pertaining to your author.), and
g. citations
2. It may include additional pictures.
3. One of the pair will present, and the other will run the slides.
4. When completed, turn it in to Google Classroom (Author).
5. This will be a test grade.
6. This is due Monday.
List of Authors
Jane Austen
J. M. Barrie
Robert Burns
Geoffrey Chaucer
Agatha Christie
Bernard Cornwell
Roald Dahl
Arthur Conan Doyle
George Eliot
C. S. Forester
Rudyard Kipling
C. S. Lewis
Patrick O'Brian
Beatrix Potter
J. K. Rowling
Walter Scott
Mary Shelley
Robert Louis Stevenson
J. R. R. Tolkien
H. G. Wells
a. title page with your name,
b. picture of author,
c. brief biographical sketch,
d. interesting fact(s) about the author,
e. your reason(s) for choosing this author,
f. notable works by the author,
g. something unusual or weird or outside the box (appropriate and pertaining to your author.), and
g. citations
2. It may include additional pictures.
3. One of the pair will present, and the other will run the slides.
4. When completed, turn it in to Google Classroom (Author).
5. This will be a test grade.
6. This is due Monday.
List of Authors
Jane Austen
J. M. Barrie
Robert Burns
Geoffrey Chaucer
Agatha Christie
Bernard Cornwell
Roald Dahl
Arthur Conan Doyle
George Eliot
C. S. Forester
Rudyard Kipling
C. S. Lewis
Patrick O'Brian
Beatrix Potter
J. K. Rowling
Walter Scott
Mary Shelley
Robert Louis Stevenson
J. R. R. Tolkien
H. G. Wells
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
1. Discuss non-fiction
2. Choose one piece of non-fiction.
3. Read your selection.
4. Write a response.
2. Choose one piece of non-fiction.
3. Read your selection.
4. Write a response.
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Thursday, February 12, 2015
1. Today, on Abraham Lincoln's birthday, in the middle of Black History Month, we are looking at some famous speeches considered landmarks in history. You are to write a 1-2 page essay on one of these speeches below. You may take whatever direction you want... talk about its history or what it means to you or something else that comes to you. Be sure to follow all proper techniques in writing this essay. This will be done on paper.
2. When finished with your essay, turn it in and finish your vocabulary words.
Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
William Wilberforce's 1789 Abolition Speech
When I consider the magnitude of the subject which I am to bring before the House—a subject, in which the interests, not of this country, nor of Europe alone, but of the whole world, and of posterity, are involved: and when I think, at the same time, on the weakness of the advocate who has undertaken this great cause—when these reflections press upon my mind, it is impossible for me not to feel both terrified and concerned at my own inadequacy to such a task. But when I reflect, however, on the encouragement which I have had, through the whole course of a long and laborious examination of this question, and how much candour I have experienced, and how conviction has increased within my own mind, in proportion as I have advanced in my labours;—when I reflect, especially, that however averse any gentleman may now be, yet we shall all be of one opinion in the end;—when I turn myself to these thoughts, I take courage—I determine to forget all my other fears, and I march forward with a firmer step in the full assurance that my cause will bear me out, and that I shall be able to justify upon the clearest principles, every resolution in my hand, the avowed end of which is, the total abolition of the slave trade. I wish exceedingly, in the outset, to guard both myself and the House from entering into the subject with any sort of passion. It is not their passions I shall appeal to—I ask only for their cool and impartial reason; and I wish not to take them by surprise, but to deliberate, point by point, upon every part of this question. I mean not to accuse any one, but to take the shame upon myself, in common, indeed, with the whole parliament of Great Britain, for having suffered this horrid trade to be carried on under their authority. We are all guilty—we ought all to plead guilty, and not to exculpate ourselves by throwing the blame on others; and I therefore deprecate every kind of reflection against the various descriptions of people who are more immediately involved in this wretched business. Having now disposed of the first part of this subject, I must speak of the transit of the slaves in the West Indies. This I confess, in my own opinion, is the most wretched part of the whole subject. So much misery condensed in so little room, is more than the human imagination had ever before conceived. I will not accuse the Liverpool merchants: I will allow them, nay, I will believe them to be men of humanity; and I will therefore believe, if it were not for the enormous magnitude and extent of the evil which distracts their attention from individual cases, and makes them think generally, and therefore less feelingly on the subject, they would never have persisted in the trade. I verily believe therefore, if the William Wilberforce’s 1789 Abolition Speech
"I Have a Dream"
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
2. When finished with your essay, turn it in and finish your vocabulary words.
Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
William Wilberforce's 1789 Abolition Speech
When I consider the magnitude of the subject which I am to bring before the House—a subject, in which the interests, not of this country, nor of Europe alone, but of the whole world, and of posterity, are involved: and when I think, at the same time, on the weakness of the advocate who has undertaken this great cause—when these reflections press upon my mind, it is impossible for me not to feel both terrified and concerned at my own inadequacy to such a task. But when I reflect, however, on the encouragement which I have had, through the whole course of a long and laborious examination of this question, and how much candour I have experienced, and how conviction has increased within my own mind, in proportion as I have advanced in my labours;—when I reflect, especially, that however averse any gentleman may now be, yet we shall all be of one opinion in the end;—when I turn myself to these thoughts, I take courage—I determine to forget all my other fears, and I march forward with a firmer step in the full assurance that my cause will bear me out, and that I shall be able to justify upon the clearest principles, every resolution in my hand, the avowed end of which is, the total abolition of the slave trade. I wish exceedingly, in the outset, to guard both myself and the House from entering into the subject with any sort of passion. It is not their passions I shall appeal to—I ask only for their cool and impartial reason; and I wish not to take them by surprise, but to deliberate, point by point, upon every part of this question. I mean not to accuse any one, but to take the shame upon myself, in common, indeed, with the whole parliament of Great Britain, for having suffered this horrid trade to be carried on under their authority. We are all guilty—we ought all to plead guilty, and not to exculpate ourselves by throwing the blame on others; and I therefore deprecate every kind of reflection against the various descriptions of people who are more immediately involved in this wretched business. Having now disposed of the first part of this subject, I must speak of the transit of the slaves in the West Indies. This I confess, in my own opinion, is the most wretched part of the whole subject. So much misery condensed in so little room, is more than the human imagination had ever before conceived. I will not accuse the Liverpool merchants: I will allow them, nay, I will believe them to be men of humanity; and I will therefore believe, if it were not for the enormous magnitude and extent of the evil which distracts their attention from individual cases, and makes them think generally, and therefore less feelingly on the subject, they would never have persisted in the trade. I verily believe therefore, if the William Wilberforce’s 1789 Abolition Speech
Fellow citizens, pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions. Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the "lame man leap as an hart."
But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you, that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation (Babylon) whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin.
Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!"
To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world.
My subject, then, fellow citizens, is "American Slavery." I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. Standing here, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July.
Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity, which is outraged, in the name of liberty, which is fettered, in the name of the Constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery -- the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate - I will not excuse." I will use the severest language I can command, and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slave-holder, shall not confess to be right and just.
But I fancy I hear some of my audience say it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother Abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more and denounce less, would you persuade more and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slave-holders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of these same crimes will subject a white man to like punishment.
What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments, forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read and write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then I will argue with you that the slave is a man!
For the present it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver, and gold; that while we are reading, writing, and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; that we are engaged in all the enterprises common to other men -- digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave -- we are called upon to prove that we are men?
Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to understand? How should I look today in the presence of Americans, dividing and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom, speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively? To do so would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong for him.
What! Am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood and stained with pollution is wrong? No - I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.
What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman cannot be divine. Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may - I cannot. The time for such argument is past.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be denounced.
What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.
Go search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
Frederick Douglass - July 4, 1852
"I Have a Dream"
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Worthy Excerpt:
"I Have a Dream" Full TextI have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification – one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.I have a dream today.I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.This will be the day, this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father’s died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!”
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
1. Vocabulary-- in groups of four, write the definitions of the vocabulary words.
1. Abjure
2. Abrogate
3. Acerbic
4. Acrimony
5. Acumen
6. Adumbrate
7. Alacrity
8. Anathema
9. Antipathy
10. Approbation
11. Arrogate
12. Ascetic
13. Aspersion
14. Assiduous
15. Blandish
16. Boon
17. Brusque
18. Buffet
19. Burnish
20. Buttress
21. Cacophony
22. Cajole
23. Calumny
24. Capricious
25. Clemency
26. Cogent
27. Concomitant
28. Conflagration
29. Contrite
30. Conundrum
31. Credulity
32. Cupidity
33. Cursory
34. Decry
35. Defile
36. Deleterious
37. Demure
38. Deprecate
39. Deride
40. Desecrate
41. Desiccated
42. Diaphanous
43. Diffident
44. Discursive
45. Dissemble
46. Dither
47. Ebullient
48. Effrontery
49. Effulgent
50. Egregious
51. Enervate
52. Ephemeral
53. Eschew
54. Evanescent
55. Evince
56. Exculpate
57. Execrable
58. Exigent
59. Expiate
60. Expunge
61. Extant
62. Extol
63. Fallacious
64. Fastidious
65. Fatuous
66. Fecund
67. Feral
68. Fetid
69. Florid
70. Fractious
71. Garrulous
72. Grandiloquence
73. Gregarious
74. Hackneyed
75. Hapless
76. Harangue
77. Hegemony
78. Iconoclast
79. Ignominious
80. Impassive
81. Imperious
82. Impertinent
83. Impervious
84. Impetuous
85. Impinge
86. Implacable
87. Impudent
88. Inchoate
89. Incontrovertible
90. Indefatigable
91. Ineffable
92. Inexorable
93. Ingenuous
94. Inimical
95. Iniquity
96. Insidious
97. Intransigent
98. Inure
99. Invective
1. Inveterate
2. Jubilant
3. Juxtaposition
4. Laconic
5. Languid
6. Largess
7. Legerdemain
8. Licentious
9. Limpid
10. Maelstrom
11. Magnanimous
12. Malediction
13. Malevolent
14. Manifold
15. Maudlin
16. Mawkish
17. Mendacious
18. Mercurial
19. Modicum
20. Morass
21. Multifarious
22. Munificence
23. Myriad
24. Nadir
25. Nascent
26. Nefarious
27. Neophyte
28. Obdurate
29. Obfuscate
30. Oblique
31. Obsequious
32. Obstreperous
33. Obtuse
34. Odious
35. Officious
36. Opulent
37. Ostensible
38. Palliate
39. Pallid
40. Panacea
41. Paragon
42. Pariah
43. Parsimony
44. Paucity
45. Pejorative
46. Pellucid
47. Penurious
48. Perfidious
49. Perfunctory
50. Pernicious
51. Perspicacity
52. Pertinacious
53. Petulance
54. Pithy
55. Platitude
56. Plethora
57. Polemic
58. Portent
59. Precocious
60. Prescient
61. Primeval
62. Probity
63. Proclivity
64. Promulgate
65. Propensity
66. Propitious
67. Prosaic
68. Proscribe
69. Protean
70. Prurient
71. Puerile
72. Pugnacious
73. Pulchritude
74. Punctilious
75. Quagmire
76. Querulous
77. Quixotic
78. Rancor
79. Rebuke
80. Recalcitrant
81. Rectitude
82. Replete
83. Reprobate
84. Reprove
85. Repudiate
86. Rescind
87. Restive
88. Ribald
89. Rife
90. Ruse
91. Sacrosanct
92. Sagacity
93. Salient
94. Sanctimonious
95. Sanguine
96. Scurrilous
97. Serendipity
98. Servile
99. Solicitous
1. Solipsistic
2. Somnolent
3. Spurious
4. Staid
5. Stolid
6. Stupefy
7. Surfeit
8. Surmise
9. Surreptitious
10. Sycophant
11. Tacit
12. Taciturn
13. Tantamount
14. Temerity
15. Tenuous
16. Timorous
17. Torpid
18. Tractable
19. Transient
20. Transmute
21. Trenchant
22. Truculent
23. Turgid
24. Turpitude
25. Ubiquitous
26. Umbrage
27. Unctuous
28. Undulate
29. Upbraid
30. Usurp
31. Vacillate
32. Vacuous
33. Vapid
34. Variegated
35. Venerate
36. Veracity
37. Verdant
38. Vex
39. Vicarious
40. Vicissitude
41. Vilify
42. Viscous
43. Vitriolic
44. Vituperate
45. Wanton
46. Winsome
47. Wistful
48. Wizened
49. Zenith
50. Zephyr
Monday, February 9, 2015
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Friday, February 6, 2015
1. Work on Meeting of the Minds project.
ENGLISH IV CLASS RULES
1. FOLLOW ALL TEACHER INSTRUCTIONS THE
FIRST TIME GIVEN.
2. DO YOUR WORK WHEN ASSIGNED. FINISH IT
AND TURN IT IN BY THE DUE DATE.
3. SIT IN ASSIGNED PLACE UNLESS GIVEN
PERMISSION TO MOVE TEMPORARILY.
4. DO NOT USE PHONES UNLESS GIVEN PERMISSION
TO USE THEM. LEAVE THEM UP AND OUT OF SIGHT.
5. DO NOT PLAY GAMES ON CHROMEBOOKS.
6. GET UP OR TALK ONLY WITH PERMISSION.
AMONG THE CONSEQUENCES:
1. PHONE TURNED INTO THE OFFICE
2. CHROMEBOOK TAKEN UP FOR THE PERIOD
3. REFERRAL
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
1. Present projects
2. Meeting of the Minds project
2. Meeting of the Minds project
MEETING OF THE MINDS
PROJECT
A moderator
on a television program has a job to interview and discuss issues with the
guests.
Choose three
real persons from history. They are to be the guests on the show. Script a
program in which the moderator and the three figures discuss an issue.
The guests
should represent different or opposing views on the issue.
You will be
graded on the thoroughness in which the issue is discussed, the proper views of
the guests as they would have seen it, attention to detail, and time. It must
be a minimum of five minutes long.
You will act
this out in class.
There will
be four people in each group.
This is due
on Monday, February 9, 2015.
They will be
presented on Monday and Tuesday, February 9 and 10.
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