Get Your War On

I will admit that I am addicted to humorous websites that unabashedly support my view of politics and/or the world in general. Get Your War On is hilarious! Here is a link to the most recent segment: http://www.236.com/video/2008/get_your_war_on_news_cycle_1_9305.php

Today, in my College Prep classes, I modeled how to complete a Dialectical Journal while reading. We just started The House on Mango Street and since the novel is made up of vignettes, I decided it would be a good idea to push my students to quote sentences/passages that really hit at the essential info. readers should take away from each vignette. We read a few vignettes out loud and I modeled how to choose a specific sentence/passage, why I chose it, and then explained its importance. We had time for students to take over and I wrote down their quotes on an overhead. It was a good class - all 4x I taught the lesson today.

The Raw Shark Texts is still keeping me interested. Apparently, the "new" Eric Sanderson meets the "old" Eric Sanderson, who looks flawless at first but then begins to literally melt before his eyes. Weird, but well-written and Steven Hall pulls it off. It only sounds weird when I write about it and summarize it for people who say they're interested in the book. Maybe I should work on my summarizing skills...

Oh, and completely unrelated, but worth mentioning, Robert Hass is my favorite poet. Praise is my favorite book of poetry. If anyone hasn't yet read anything by Robert Hass, look him up or check one of his books out of the library. His book Time and Materials won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. For the same book, you say? Oh, yes, I say. What a beast.