November 2, 2007

Homework:
None

Today:
**MrBoZ.com is being revised and moved. The new site will be located here for a while. You can listen to the vocab recordings from there.**

We reviewed the Choosing the Right Word from the vocab book.

Today's Photography Friday focused on making a choice. After looking at each picture, the students divided into groups based on the picture they chose. This way they could answer the questions together and see why each person chose that picture. Since there were 12 pictures to choose from, being together with someone else who chose your same picture should have been interesting. Not many chose the picture I liked. I found that curious. The objective behind this activity is to teach students to be aware of their thoughts as they view photography as art. We discuss the intentions of the photographer as well. The whole exercise involves reflective, critical thinking.

I believe students' writing suffers, not from a weakness in organizing their thoughts, but from a lack of deep thought about a topic. If you get a child talking about a topic that interests them, he can go on and on. I find students don't know how to explore a topic deep enough to really have something intelligent to say. That is why my writing topics are so different from the typical writing prompt. Those prompts are so boring! I would like to think I am teaching students how to explore those plain topics and make them interesting. I am teaching the students how to think, not just how to write. We don't always appreciate an artist for his ability. Many times we admire how he has thought about life and how he presents it to us. I am teaching appreciation: for writing, photography, and for life. "The unexamined life is not worth living."-Socrates Furthermore, I would say the unexamined life is not worth writing about!