Pytash: Chapter 4

This chapter was alright, I didn't like how the author spent the first page talking about how the average language arts teacher is doing things the wrong way, and that she is perfect ,and expects nothing but the best from her students, aparently she has never had an off day or ever setteled, she's never been complacent or satisfied, she siply strives to be the best. However, I don't see any new ideas in this chapter about how to teach the elements of literature to students. The list of most commonly used literary elements was what I would have expected. I like that the author used The Call Of the Wild to show the differences between first and thrid person points of view, I was taught the differnce using Jack London, and I hope to one day teach the difference using Jack London. I agree with the authors thinking regarding the notion that students rember what they think about- the teaher demands harder thinking about complicated texts- therefore studetns will rember these complicated stories that they were assigned because they invested their thinking into the text. I, like the author, want a student of mine to remeber the classics rather than meaningless assignments that don't challenge the students. I wonder what percent of language arts teachers teach literary elements by giving a defintion matching quiz with words and their definitons, that is how I leanerd the literary elements and I know them all very well, but it seems so dated and against what I have been learning in my education classes. However, I belive students today will be a bit more motivated to learn some of these literary deivces, like figurative language, 99% of the hip hop/rap that they play on the tv and radio today is figurative language, Lil Wayne is strickly metphors in most of his songs (not that I would ever listen to him).

Pytash: Chapter 2

I really enjoyed this chapter; all of the information in chapoter 2 I will use when I get my chance in the classroom. During my time at Firestone last semseter and tutoring this semseter I saw how vocabulary acquisition was so crucial for students to be able to read, comprehend and express themselves. I always took vocabulary acquistion for granted, my dad stressed my learning new words all the time, he would come home and throw out these new words and expect me to know them. Today I love to learn new words and use them as soon as I get a chance to, I have noticed that in comedys they now use outdated vocaulary that most peopel don't know to get laughs. I believe that people who value learning are inately intruiged to learn new words in their lanugage. So when I teach I am going to need to motivate my students to see the benifits of having large vocabulary, this will enable them to intruiged by new words, because the students belive they will benifit at some level for learning these new words. The work done by Stahl and Shiel done in 1992 points out what I believe are the keys for an individual to be able to acquire new vocabulary when one incounter a word they have never seen before. They found that vocabulary instruction must be productive for the learner by stressing the following: teaching prefixies, suffixes, and roots; teachign students to derive meaning from the context; and teaching words as part of semanitc groupings. I'm not claiming to be as bright as Stahl and Shiel, but before I ever read this I was teching my student to decipher new word by noticing prefixes, suffixes and roots, and telling him to derive meaning of the new word by understandign the context it is being used in. I told my student to do this becasue this is how I have always figured out what new worsd mean, I feel fro mmy own experiences that this is the best wayto learn vocabulary, but this doesn't cover all words some words have roots that an average person wold not have a clue aout, so students do at one point need to be introduced to these words strait up and told what they mean. I was really proud of myself for beign able to comprehend that passage from "The Fall of the House of Usher", but I know that there are a lot of students out there that would not know where to start with this passage. I was insipred by the author's idea that this passage was all about setting the mood for the restof the story, so the students ought to investigate what words are meant to set the mood, adn then investigate those words. When the author posed the question"what vocabulary words should we teach?", I was a bit confused becuse I thought that teachers were probably assigned vocabulary lists from the department head or the state. I would probably teach vocabulary words that we will run into throguhout the semester in literature, but not only in my class, I would talk to other teahers of studnets in my classand see what advanced vocabulary they have been using and try to work it into my class to show the students that learning new words will positivly impact them in life. Lastly, I will probably keep this book becuase of the great ideas it has in it, one in particular is the vocabulary activity the author uses with Julius Caesar . Going in-depth into four new voaculary words that describe human characteristics, have the students apply these desciptive words to people they know(not other stuents unless positive), then write about how they display one of these new words, then have a scale for ecah of the new words and have the student place themselves on each scale. This activity will creat understanding of new words,and has students apply these new words to their lives.

Foot:Pleasure Reading

This spring break me and five of my friends went down to Eden, North Carolina and went on a 4 day/ 3 night canoeing/camping trip. We covered 60 miles altogether over the 4 days, it was an amazing experience, I've done this twice before on the Green River in Kentucky and the Shoal Run in Tennessee, I love going into the wilderness for a couple days, it makes you really appreciate how good we have it nowadays. Whenever I go on one of thee trips I always bring some litterateur to read, always short stories. This year I brought "The Best American Short Stories of 2008", and the store I read as I floated down the river and lay in my canoe was "The Year of Silence", by Kevin Brockmeier. It was about how busy the city was and how everyone was in a hurry, and then one day every one fell silent for a moment, and the people of the city realized they loved the peace and serenity, then these bouts of silence kept coming over the city, and the people would rejoice whenever they occurred. Eventually, the people tried to artificially create these bouts of silence by planning them, but they never work, someone is always making noise. The story was an interesting narrative about how we all seek rest, and I really appreciated this story after being in the woods for 4 days, getting a a bed with cushions and pillows was seriously one of the best feelings ever, we always go and stuff our faces at Cracker Barrel when we get out of the woods too, the food you eat once you get back into civilization after camping is always amazing.

Foot: Cleveland International Film Festival Film Review

On Monday night I went to see "Whirligig", it was directed by Chaz Thorne, and stars Gregory Smith (Small Solders, Everwood) as the main character. Overall, I was satisfied with this movie, I probably won't remember it in a year, but for Monday night it sufficiently satisfied my mind. The personal issues in the movie were interesting, the most prominent issue was the main character, Nicholas, being 25 years old and going nowhere in life, he has failed at everything he has attempted in life, and returns to his parents home to try to find himself. Most college age people can relate to this because of the stress that comes with going into the job market. The story is actually supposed to be a representation of the director's own fall to rock bottom and rise up. It also deals with the issue of adultery, as Nicholas beings to have an affair with the wife of the only neighbors within miles. The technique was unique, it followed the same structure as most independent films do. the music was all instrumental using the same instruments, I can't recall what instruments were used, but all the scores were united. The acting was pretty good. I didn't realize till after the movie that there were only 6 actors in the entire movie. Gregory Smith was convincing as a 'loser', the neighbor that Gregory smith was cuckolding was my favorite character, he was a self-obsessed actor who had retired to the nearly remote shores of Nova Scotia. The plot was as follows: Nicholas is a 25 year old male who returns to his parents house on the shore of Nova Scotia, Nicholas is considered a failure, he has failed at his two former jobs, his parents don't want him in the house, so they allow him to stay with them for one month. Nicholas meets this family's only neighbors when he crashes into their mail box while learning to drive. The two families becomes friends, Nicholas begins having an affair with neighbor's wife. The two families remain friends with the underlying tension created by the affair. Nicholas befriends the neighbor's child, and they have adventures with archery and growing cannabis sativa (the 10 year old kids is the one growing it and experiments the finished product on Nicholas, it's hilarious and done quite classy). However, the 10 year old discovers that Nicholas has been having an affair with his mother, and then Nicholas gets a call from an old girlfriend he had at his last job, he moves away back to his old job to try and raise a child, the end. It was all good until the end, I thought it was the writer taking the easy way out. The themes that I picked up were the idea that one can always start over, one must forget the past and move forward, friends are temporary but family is forever. The genre was definitely independent film, it was a life struggles movie trying to be a comedy. The film represented families that are successful but have offspring that rent successful, so the family has to take care of the offspring. Both rich and poor were represented, however the film only dealt with 6 characters who were the only residents within miles of the shore, so only the 6 characters were representing. I did not see any ideology in the film, as it was a story of the director's own experience with hitting rock bottom. There was no trailer for this movie, but here is the website that has a lot of info on the movie Here is a trailer for the only othe movie that Chaz Thorne has made, it has a lot of the same actors from "Whirligig"

Foot: Cleveland International Film Festival Experience

I really enjoyed going to the Cleveland International Film Festival, I had never been to a film festival before Monday night. It was a great experience, I would gladly do it again, maybe take a girl to the film fest a on a date to get her to think I am artistic. I loved that it was in Tower City, as a child my dad brought me to Tower City before Indian's, Cav's, and Brown's games, when I went into the office with dad we would always go through Tower City, when I use to cut class in high school I would take the rapid transit down to Tower City, I got a lot of memories there. So right after I parked and got onto the elevator and saw Tower City again I was overcome with sensory memories from my past, the sights of how enormous the inside of the building was, the smell of the different foods, the sound of chatter, footsteps, and the water running of the fountains, unfortunately I didn't get to taste any of the food. I was pumped to see my movie, I felt like a high rolling adult, coming down to Cleveland, going to Tower City, and taking part in a artistic endeavour. I got my ticket from the will-call stand, the elderly man who gave me my ticket sang me an old Broadway tune about someone named Sam, he kept singing "Sam, you made the pants to long", does anybody know this song? Then I walked around Tower City for about 20 minutes taking in the scenery, until it was time to line up, I got a decent seat, and before the movie began, a Canadian diplomat talked to the crowd about how important Ohio and Canada are to each other because of how much we trade. The movie I went to see, "Whirligig", is a Canadian film.

Foot:Publish or Perish / Video Games in the Classroom

These articles were both very pro-technology, I am not. If I were having high school students read these articles, then I would tell them to identify the various instances of author bias. It is always important to know the authors motives for writing before reading that author. In the case of the "Publish or Perish" article the article wasn't biased towards Amazon or Mac, but rather biased towards the notion that books becoming more prevalent in electronic form is a good thing. The author went as far to infer that publishers of physical books will eventually become obsolete because of the electronic book craze, "Asked about publishers’ efforts to raise prices, a skeptical literary agent said, “You can try to put on wings and defy gravity, but eventually you will be pulled down”". I like electronic books because it makes books more accessible, this is the only aspect of electronic books I like, poor kids dont get access to electronic books, you don't have the sense of ownership that you get from buying a physical book and carrying it around and keeping it with you, you don't get that new (or old) book smell form electronic books. Lastly, I hate to see computer people profit from the hard work of literary people. The "Video Games in the Classroom" article was such a far stretch, unless you are teaching a class specifically on how to design video game software (which they were in the class in the article). The author completely ignored the most important question pertaining to video games in the classroom "how would a video game help a student become a better reader and writer?", The educational merit I have seen in video games throughout my life is that video games help the player foster some problem solving skills. But to have students come into school and play video games instead of doing academic work is ludicrous. The teacher who started this class made himself sound like an idiot (at least to me) " He talked about all the wasted energy that goes into teaching things that students don’t need so much anymore, thanks to the tools now available to them. Why memorize the 50 states and their capitals? Why, in the age of Google and pocket computers, memorize anything? “Handwriting?” Doyle said. “That’s a 20th-century skill.”" I apprecate this guy thinking of new ways to help teach students, but when the New York Times tries to present his ideas as something that could be implemented in any classroom it is misleading the reader.

Foot: Great Films and How to Teach Them

I went into this book thinking that I would most likely already know what the author had to say, I was wrong. Personally, I think Costanzo is putting too much emphasis on the importance on the act of students viewing movies, at least for the average high school English classroom. I honestly think there is a lot of chapters in here that I won't ever teach (unless I'm teaching some Special topic class dealing with film adaptation of literature). I had to sift through the first nine chapters to find theories and information that I will use when I teach. When I think back to the film adaptations of litterateur I viewed in high school I think of the modern day version of Romeo & Juliet with leo, Hamlet with Kenneth Branagh, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the Simpson's adaptations of literature, and of course To Kill a Mockingbird with Gregory Peck as Atticus ( I have always wanted to name my children after characters from literature, and Atticus is at the top of list for a boy). From skimming through the upcoming chapters I see Costanzo and I have similar taste in media, but it would be naive to think it is just Costanzo's own personal opinion of these movies that is the reason they were selected for this book. These movies were selected because they are the bet film adaptions of litterateur created to date, these movies have transcended time and are still played on the television today, and will be watched for generations to come, hopefully. Personally i only found the theories and information fro chapters 1 and 7-9 to be 'real' concepts that I will use in the classroom, but I am really looking forward to seeing how Costanzo would approach each of these 14 classics in the coming chapters. Check out this list of 100 best film adaptations This is my favorite scene in my favorite film adaption of a book