Blog Choice

Please check out the link to the "Top 20 Blog Posts" Web page (in the sidebar). The site provides 20 different types of blogs that you can create. You may choose one of the types of blogs and discuss any topic you wish. The main criteria for this blog is that it must be completed by the end of this class. It is an impromptu piece of writing (in preparation for the provincial exam). Please be as creative, or informative as possible. Use the highest level of vocabulary, and written expression that you can.

Poetic Novels

Your challenge today is to combine the novel and poetry units. You must find a poem that links to your novel and discuss how the two works are related. Use the ideas and topics that you have been focusing on for your novel essay (theme, character traits, symbols, and conflicts) and use them to refine your Internet search. Once you have found a suitable poem, you need to explain how the ideas in both the novel and the poem are related to one another. You must incorporate 2 direct quotes from your poem into your blog. Direct quotes from the novel are optional, but you must make specific references to the book itself.

Steps to follow:

a) Find a poem that relates to a theme, character, conflict, or symbol in your novel
b) Brainstorm all the ways that the two are related
c) Choose 2 key quotes from the poem that you are going to incorporate into your blog
d) Write a formal paragraph describing how the ideas in the poem and the novel reflect one another. You may include any of your own personal insights as well (though this is formal writing, you may choose to write in first person)
3) Please create a link in your blog to to a site that contains your entire poem (or cut and paste it into the blog itself)

Novel Study: Journal Entry

I only assign 2 journal entries for the novel unit, and I usually find this one of the most interesting assignments as I get to have a bit of a dialogue with you about your novel. Please keep the following in mind when it comes to journal writing:

1. Writing in response to reading without a goal of deeper understanding is a waste of time (yours and mine)
2. Your goals are to:

a) personalize the story (make it more meaningful for you)
b) gain insights about characters
c) see the world in a different way

3. The main point of journal writing is to clarify your thoughts by committing your thinking to paper.

Please choose a quote or a passage from your novel (include page number) and explain the connection you have made to it. How does the connection you have made help you understand more about the book?

Today you need to post your own journal entry, and respond to two other people in your LIT circle group. As always, proper grammar, spelling, punctuation etc. applies. Finally, make sure you are linked to everyone else who is reading the same novel.

Please include your novel title in your blog title. Example: Journal #1: The Kite Runner

Writing a Review

Your blog topic today is to write a review for a book, movie, television series, song, album, video game,website, or for the performance of your favourite sports team this season. Below are some tips on how to approach your review. For more details you can go to the sites that these ideas were taken from. Links to both sites are on this blog under "helpful websites". You are allowed to write a positive or a negative review.

1. Know what a review is. A review is not a recap of a TV episode or the plot of a book. It isn't just listing the different features in a PC game or what songs are on a new CD. Those things might be included in your review, but they are not the main event. Writing critically means you must tell people what is good or bad about your subject matter, and you need to provide specific evidence to back up your opinion.

2. As yourself "what does the reader want to know"? Think of the questions that a reader is likely to ask themselves about a movie, book, or song.


3. Decide on the overall point that you want to get across to the reader. Decide on an overall basic opinion of the product, such as "A hilarious, if overly long movie. Just don't expect anything groundbreaking"...and use this as a frame for your review. Hang everything else off this one idea. How does the movie's acting influence this opinion? Why isn't the plot that groundbreaking?

4. Don't write about yourself; the review is about the band, book, movie, or whatever you're reviewing.

5. Ask yourself, "what makes my review unique?" What is your unique selling point for this particular "product"?

6. Compare to other similar products, but not too much!

7. Be specific. What is unique about the experience of watching this movie, cheering for this team, reading this novel, or listening to this band?

8. Don't be afraid to state the obvious. Your readers might not be as familiar with your subject as you are. Don't be afraid to give a little extra description about things that you already know.

9. Be honest.

The Perils of Indifference

Read "The Perils of Indifference" by Elie Wiesel on page 443 of "Echoes 12". (and if you have not read "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson you need to read that as well).

Discuss the following questions in paragraph form:

1. Re-write the title "The Perils of Indifference" in your own words to show that you understand the vocabulary.

2. The ending of "The Lottery" is shocking for most readers. The graphic violence of the stoning seems completely bizarre for the members of a community that at first appeared so "normal" and passive. Please connect the events in this story to any other situation you have learned about in real life, or a movie or a book.

3. How does Elie Wiesel's speech relate to "The Lottery"? Please connect the townspeople in the story to the warnings that Elie gives, or make any other link between the two texts.

Ignorance Is Bliss

We have read a number of texts over the past few weeks that involved social issues. Some of the topics discussed in class included: Canada's role in Afghanistan, the role that police and doctors play in dealing with mentally ill patients, and conditions in slaughterhouses in the U.S.

The question for your blog is this:

Once you have become aware of a certain problem in society, are you morally responsible for now dealing with that issue? In other words, once you become aware of another person's (or other people's) suffering, can you ignore it? When you explain your answer, feel free to comment on any of the articles or stories we have referred to in class, or comment on a different issue that you now look at differently (or you now feel guilty about ignoring). You will be made aware of many different issues during your lifetime. How do you respond to them? How will it affect how you live your life from that point on? What issues are the most important? What if someone else has chosen to make you aware of that issue (such as a teacher :-)) and you would not have pursued that topic on your own?

What to blog about?

Your blog entry today is on the subject of blogging itself. In general, blogging was a positive experience for the students in my first semester English class. When the students evaluated the blogs however, the number one complaint was that there was not enough choice in topics to write about. This is your chance to let me know what it is that you would like to use your blog for the most. Keep in mind that we will have blog entries on novels and short stories and pieces of non-fiction that we read in class, but there will also be many opportunities to use the blogs for other things. So your task is this: In paragraph form, you must explain what you would like to use the blogs for the most, and justify your choice. You must support your ideas with logical reasoning as this information will have an impact on the course that your blogging assignments take. Let me know what topics you are interested in. You might also add any websites that would provide good discussion for an English 12 class. We can use the blogs for anything from creative writing to research to writing reviews for music, books and movies. We can also have the odd "open forum" where people present random, thought provoking questions and others respond as they like.

One last thing that you need to include in this entry is how you think the blogs should be evaluated. Should you get marked for each blog? Should you get an overall mark at the end of each term? How can someone show that they are deserving of a high mark?

First Blog Entry!

Welcome to the world of blogging. We will use our blogs throughout the semester for various purposes. Please remember to consider the internet as public space. Anything you write will be viewed by others, so do not disclose any personal information or opinions that you would be uncomfortable with other people reading. Also, please respect the rights and opinions of others as you will be having "conversations" in writing with your classmates. No offensive or inappropriate material on your blogs please.

Students often find it difficult to write "formally" (proper spelling, punctuation etc.) when they enter an internet environment. Please follow the regular expectations for writing in English 12. When you create a blog you are not emailing or text messaging your friends.

You have a choice for your first blog entry.

Option number one is a creative one:

If you could have any superpower in the world, what would it be? You should then explain why you have chosen this particular power over all the others. Don't forget to proofread your work, and to make it interesting, as it will be viewed by others in the class.

Option Number 2:
Respond to the following email sent to UBC students three days ago. If you were a student would you attend school? How should the police deal with this sort of threat? How do we respond to this type of violence as a society?

Here is the email:
Broadcast E-mail to All UBC Vancouver Students, Faculty and Staff from President Stephen J. Toope:

For the second time in a week, our Vancouver campus community has received a threatening message.

In this second case, an unspecific threat has been made for Wednesday. The threat does not specify a time, a location within the UBC Point Grey campus or the method of doing harm.

We must take such threats seriously, and we are working closely with senior RCMP personnel to address this new threat.

What can we all do when faced with such a threat? We are taking the advice of the RCMP to treat the non-specific nature of the threat with a higher level of community vigilance but to otherwise continue our normal activities.

However, because of the specific mention of the Biosciences building in the threatening message received last week, and the traumatic experience of the occupants who endured a full lockdown of the building at that time, classes will be cancelled tomorrow (Wednesday) in the Biosciences Building.

For details, see the RCMP news release at: www.rcmp-bcmedia.ca

And please continue to look at www.ubc.ca for the latest information.