“Joseph Guillotin, Henry Shrapnel and Jules Leotard became immortal — by entering the English language. But when your entire life is reduced to a single definition, the results are sometimes upsetting.”
Read and hear more on NPR.
People Who Became Nouns Photo Gallery
“The news of possible faster-than-light particles, Einstein’s ideas are again in the spotlight. Although the results are probably premature, they offer a great opportunity to examine how science works, or how it should work…Although we must question to advance, we must also be careful before we blow the trumpets announcing the upcoming revolution.”
My budding scientists, read more here on NPR:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2011/09/28/140839445/is-einstein-wrong?sc=fb&cc=fp
8th Graders: Questions to keep in mind as you read the “Foreward” by Chaim Potok and as you work on the Butterfly Project.
1. Is Anne Frank Remembered a primary or secondary source? How do you know?
2. Is “Foreword” by Chaim Potok a primary source or secondary source? How do you know?
3. Are the poems and drawings in I Never Saw Another Butterfly primary or secondary sources? How do you know?
What happens when the world we know collides with the world down below? The answer will rock the very foundations of both the Topside, and the strange, secret world below it.
8th grade — If you need the text to complete the dialectical journal, here’s the online text.
In our AFR/Holocaust unit, we’ve discussed the importance of names and the ideas of being a perpetrator, a bystander, and an upstander.
“It began as an argument between two poets, so it’s about words, about whether using words helps our planet or hurts…’language comes between us and things, and that as soon as we had NAMES for what we saw, we experienced a certain degree of removal from the world’.”
View the video and read the short article from NPR: In your compositon notebooks, respond to the following SSW: Defend or challenge the idea that words hurt the planet and humanity. Be sure to include evidence from this source, but you are not limited to only this source.
I look forward to reading your writing!
How many times have your heard your English teacher ask you to show me in your writing, don’t tell me what happened? Take a look at this example from our beloved Grammar Girl: http://blog.quickanddirtytips.com/2011/09/12/how-to-show-instead-of-tell/?WT.mc_id=0#more-1248
Let me just say that I am guilty of having misquoted a few famous people. I love telling my students and friends to follow the words of Henry David Thoreau, “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.” Unfortunately, he never said that…exactly. I should have known better after having studied this author for an entire semester and having eaten gruel in his honor.
Here’s an opinion-editorial about perpetuating misinformation: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/opinion/falser-words-were-never-spoken.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
Here’s another article highlighting other great misquotations: http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/life/great-misquotations-the-famous-things-they-never-actually-said-2543520#photoViewer=1