Flex Day

Monday, August 24th - Regular chapel schedule

Flex

• Introduce the Flex objective (Flex Protocol for Teachers) and share with your students their protocol. Emphasize your goal to get to know them and establish relationships.
• Show this video and/or this video to your students and talk about how God calls us to act - especially in relationship to our digital lives (digital footprint). You are welcome to talk about specific scenarios (sexting, bullying, etc.) and how best to respond.

Chapel

• Regular Chapel schedule (after Flex: 9-10 to lunch and 11-12 to chapel).
• Attend the chapel (9/10 or 11/12) based on your GOMUSTANGS class assignment.
• Please sit in and among our kids and not in the back or with your peers.

Monday, 8/24/15

* Open

• Copy: 
• "Behavior that's admired is the path to power among people everywhere."
• "With this stone for a throne, I look down on my pond,
  But I cannot look down on the places beyond."
• What kind of sentence is each?  How do you know?

* Discussion

* Group Work

HW: Finish Slides

Recommendations Through Naviance

The guidance office wants you to visit your counselor (rather than coming in for a class tutorial).

For those who need help with recommendation requests, there are two videos:

• 1
• 2

Note that our school may have different specific policies for unusual cases (such as more recommenders than recommendations allowed)...so, again, please see your counselor.

Now, please go see your counselor.

Enjoy,

Mr. S

Star Instructions

*Star Testing

• Open app.
• If you need to put in the Ren Address before you can enter your name, here it is:

MVCS-13YR

• Now enter your MV user name, usually 1st letter of 1st name + 4 letters of last.
• ex/ "MSCHW" for Marcus Schwager
• Resident students use birth name.
• If there are fewer than four letters in last name, then you will use the first letter(s) of your first.
• Some student names match, so they create a difference by adding a 1 to the end.  Have your teacher check the list if you cannot remember your user name. 
• Enter the password as "password"
• Select "Star Reading"
• Tap next and start.
• If you lose connection or are otherwise prompted for the monitor password: Te@ch13

Block Day, Week 1

* Open

• Grammar
• Compose one simple sentence and share it with your neighbor. 
• Pray and Recite

* Let's Talk about College Essays: Part I: How Colleges Read Applications

• WWII
• The essay became a regular part of admissions after the WWII enrollment explosion.
• How Colleges Read Essays
• They seek to build a scholarly community.   
• "Precision Guesswork" (Princeton)
•  Recommendations
• Go to your recommenders
• Suggestion: Waive your right to access

• Interviews
• A two-way street (thing of some good questions for your interviewer)
• Roll with the punches

• The Essay
• Can you write?  Can you think?  What do you care about?
• For some schools, the essay is the most important part of the application, for others the essay may rank 2nd or 3rd (some may have no essay).  
• Organization, analysis, interpretation (same skills you've been honing elsewhere)
• The strange part is, you are analyzing your own experience. 

• Really, can you THINK?
• Do they hear YOU, or will they mark it DDI (Daddy did it)?

• Planning
• School CEEB Code: 053705
• Can you visit, interview, check in with, find on Facebook...faculty, students, or alumni?
• Who will recommend?  How many do you need?
• DI or DII sports?  File your NCAA Eligibility form. 
• Preregister for CSS/Financial Ad PROFILE
• Naviance
• Early action or early decision?  Time to move. 
• Oct. SAT?

* STAR Time

* The Great Divorce

• Discussion 
• TGD and Music
• Work in Groups on Your Project

HW: Slides Due Tuesday

Wednesday, 8/18

* Open

• Copy down the simple sentence and explain why it is simple:
• a. Because Sarah Smith eats dragons, she has scales. 
• b. Sarah Smith has scales because she eats dragons. 
• c. Sarah Smith has scales, for she eats dragons. 
• d. Dragon-eating, Death-cheating, sweetly beating Sarah Smith ate ten tasty dragons.
• e. This is an evil trick.  None of these are simple, silly. 

* Pray and Recite

* Terms and Vocabulary (see above)

• Please work whilst I check your summer reading. 

* The Book Prop. (see the Outside Reading link under Reading)

* The Great Divorce

• Discussion
• Work on Your Project

HW:

• Finish Your Terms and Vocabulary; find a good book to read.  
• Get the STAR App for you iPad. 
• Make sure your that your iOS is up to date. 

Tuesday, 8/18/15

This is my dog:

Æ

* Opening

• Grammar: Simple Sentences
• Copy: A simple sentence has only one independent clause (also known as a main clause) and no dependent/subordinate clauses.
• Now provide as many examples as you need from the following in your notes:
  
  Though a simple sentence doesn't contain any subordinate clauses, it isn't always short. A simple sentence often contains modifiers. In addition, subjects, verbs, and objects in simple sentences may be coordinated.
• Examples:
• John hit the ball. Simple sentence.
• John hit the gargantuan earth ball with a bat. 
• Still a simple sentence; I added modifiers and and a phrase (but didn't add a clause). 
• John and Larry and Sarah (but not Kim) hit and smacked and whacked the earth ball yesterday. 
• Still a simple sentence; I added coordinated subjects and verbs. 

•  So, what are counterexamples?
• John hit the ball while I drank iced tea. (This is complex because "while I drank tea" is a dependent clause.) 
• John hit the ball, and Jill caught it midair. ("and Jill caught it midair" is an independent clause...so the two make it a compound sentence.)

• More examples of deceptively simple sentences.
• "Your future is assured. You will live, secure and safe, Wilbur. Nothing can harm you now. These autumn days will shorten and grow cold. The leaves will shake loose from the trees and fall."
  (E.B. White, Charlotte's Web. Harper & Row, 1952)
• "They shot the six cabinet ministers at half-past six in the morning against the wall of a hospital. There were pools of water in the courtyard. There were wet dead leaves on the paving of the courtyard. It rained hard. All the shutters of the hospital were nailed shut. One of the ministers was sick with typhoid. Two soldiers carried him downstairs and out into the rain."
  (Ernest Hemingway, Chapter Five of In Our Time. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925)

• Thought for Food
• 'God made mankind,' is a simple sentence.
•  'On the sixth day God made man of the dust of the earth after his own image,' is also a simple sentence...but that doesn't make the meaning simple, just the structure. 

* The Lord's Prayer

*  Cædmon's Hymn 

• Copy the poem onto paper. 
• That letter (æ) is an ash.  You may us it or "ae" when writing his name.  

* The Great Divorce Group Project

• Review your Project and Chapter

 HW: Begin Slides, Read Over Your Project

Schedules for a Regular Week

Monday, 8/17 - Introductions

St. George - Patron Saint of Angle-land

* Welcome!
Today we begin our journey with the question, "Quo vadimus?" or "Where are we going?" We will spend the first two weeks of school beginning to answer this question. In May we will end the course asking, "Quo vadis?" or "Where am I going?" as God leads most of you separately into the four corners of the earth.  So consider this senior course a community, a fellowship to help you prepare for what is written in the chapters of your life beyond this final year at Monte Vista Christian School. 


* Opening

• Grammar (see board)

* Pray


* Quo Vadimus?

• This Week
• This Year

* Summer Rejoicings 

HW: 

1. Summer Reading Journal

 

Friday - New Student Orientation

English 400 - British Literature

Today is an orientation day for new students.
Let's talk for a few minutes.  Let me know if you have any questions.  

Enjoy,

Your Teacher 

HW

• Read C. S. Lewis' The Great Divorce and see summer reading assignment