Action List: 3.22.11

My dog Smokey.

Participation News: Grades are updated now, unless your display name is Reach for the Moon--I have misplaced your real name, so you need to let me know if that is your online alias.

Congratulations to Artemis, Mariah Hamil, lyssa, and Count Chocula--these four were consistently the most engaged and thoughtful contributors to our ongoing poetry commentary, providing insights that were well grounded in the poems themselves. Great work. 1% extra credit for the quarter to all of you.

A picture of my friend David on a puzzle he put together.

First, a slight change to the blogging requirements: Our page quotas are going to stay the same, but your blogging requirements are a little bit lighter. From now on, it doesn't matter if you are reading popular fiction or literary fiction--you only need to log your reading three times a week. This is only a change for popular fiction readers, but it should make things a little bit easier to keep up with and still allow you time to be outside more, selling lemonade and catching frogs, now that the weather is turning nicer.

Second: I'm giving you a free week for blogging. Blogs due today are now due next Tuesday, and blogs due next Tuesday are due the week after (the week after Spring Break, btw). Only two weeks of reading and logging will be due, though you will have had three weeks to complete it. Remember, you can't get credit in this class for any books that have been assigned, in any class, any time, at Homestead. So, sorry, but no Frankenstein, David Copperfield, Lord of the Flies. Those are for other classes, right.

A picture of rain that I have been liking a lot lately.

To do today: Pick 2 of the following 3 assignments.
1. Create a personal blog post that looks back at your reading from this past quarter. What was the best reading you did? What writers did you discover? What did you discover about your own taste in reading? What did you not like? What are your plans for your 4th quarter reading? Please Double-check your pages read over the course of the first quarter and update it at the top of this post--tell us how many pages total you've read, and, if you are up to it, break it down by pop and lit sub-totals, too.

2. Best poem of the Quarter. Please make a brief post that identifies what you think of as your favorite poem from the first quarter and what you like about it.

3. Visit this site: 1000 Awesome Things. Read a bunch of them and make a post about awesome things--the ones you agree with from this site, and then name and discuss at least one thing that would be on your personal list.

4. When you are done with these things, read yer book and/or conference with me about your ATW essay.