Posted on November 27th, 2011 by
mrlane
On December 29 all of the Harry Potter movies will slowly begin disappearing from store shelves and will be placed on “vacation.” The idea behind this move is to ensure that the “value” of the movies, based on the books by J.K. Rowling, are not watered-down. This simply means that the owner of the movies, Warner Bros., want to make sure that you pay lots of money for the videos while you can or pay a lot more for them when they re-release them sometime in the future.
This got me thinking — do we really need the movies for us to to enjoy this seven-part story? Or can we create movies in our heads based on the words in the story? If you think about it this is why the Warner Bros. created the movies in the first place – millions of people (children and adults) had the imagery created in their heads through the words of the author and they knew they could capitalize on the strength of the story and make lots of money. So today (Tuesday, November 29th) we will see if we can recreate a movie in our head through the written language that first made the series so popular by reading the second book in the series - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
To add some background to the story feel free to use the author’s website to clarify or expand your knowledge of the story-line. You may access it here. You can also have a bit of fun through Scholastic.com’s Harry Potter pages. Warner Bros. has it’s own Harry Potter site here. I have also posted some links to sites of interest here.
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Filed under: Audio Read, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Posted on October 17th, 2011 by
mrlane
As we discussed last week, Opal creates lists in Kate DiCamillo’s Because of Winn-Dixie so she can better explain to herself and others her mama and Winn-Dixie. You can find the list she put together about Winn-Dixie here. While Opal recognizes (sees) the limitations in these lists, she still believes they are a good spot to start.
To put this theory to the test I created a list of ten things about me (and shared it with you) and asked you to create a list of ten things someone should know about of you. Now comes the tricky and/or scary part – sharing the list you created with others.
To do this, please go back to your composition notebook (p. 5) and type the list you created in a Word document, check for spelling and puntucation errors, and then copy and paste the final product with the corrections made below as a comment. Please make sure you include your first name in the entry field so that you receive credit for your work.
I have already posted mine.
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Filed under: Because of Winn-Dixie
Posted on October 1st, 2011 by
mrlane
Over the years I have found that no one likes surprises – students, families – even myself. Therefore, I like to prepare everyone for those assignments that have long-term implications on the final trimester grade. In this case, I am referring to the requirement of passed Accelerated Reader (AR) Quizzes.
Each trimester I require a set amount of AR quizzes to be passed (this is also usually a school-wide goal as well). Rather than waiting until the last day of the trimester to enter the score (and watching the overall grade drop by up to 10%) I prefer to enter scores at regular intervals during the trimester so everyone is aware of what progress has been made. I usually do this at the 6 & 9-week marks, with the final grade being entered at the end-of-the-trimester.
You can find information on how scores are determined and how many AR quizzes are being required for the current trimester here.
Should there be any questions or concerns regarding the scores found in the grade book, please feel free to contact me at: plane@fcusd.org.
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Filed under: Accelerated Reader
