DigitalPenny

I haven't blogged about my WRT 205 students in a while. I think they deserve some attention.

At the end of our last class meeting, I returned to those students present their unit 2 essays. This essay involved researching forms of "cartooning" whether they looked into the life of the artist or a particular cartoon. They were instructed not to write about "how cartoons are made."

Many of the students really delved into this assignment, and found many interesting factoids. I was impressed. There were also those students who slacked. For those of you who are teaching professionals, I don't have to explain. Right? So this leads me to the question for the day:

When a student has a research assignment, where the required length of the essay is 8-10 pages, how many sources do you or would you require for the assignment?

If you don't place a limit on the number of sources, how many sources do you think students should use in order to get you to believe that: one, they've done the research; two, they know what they are talking about; and three, they clearly understood what their sources were saying?

Posted by Digitalpenny at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Today after arriving home, I paid a few bills, read through one student paper, and watched my girls play outside while I cleaned the kitchen from this morning's catastrophe, and cooked dinner. After eating, I decided that I was going to take a moment for myself, which really turned out to be a moment with the family.

Little Marcus' school had open house, and I was talked into going. In a discussion with my significant other, I said that I wanted to go outside for a walk with the girls. "The school has a track, and you can walk outside with them there," he says. So I slip on my sneakers, and jump in the car.

When we got there, it was starting to cool down outside; it was just right for a walk. I start walking toward the school's entrance because you've gotta go that way in order to get to the court. As we neared the front door, he says to me, "Aren't you goin' in?" So, reluctantly, I walk into the school. I'm kinda glad I did because I got a chance to see exactly what Little Marcus has been working on, and some of those things were homework assignments that I helped him with. It was neat to see all of the needle work, art work, teacher postings, and writings (more than one or two paragraphs that made sense as I read a few of them) on the walls. In the center of the room, they had placed all of their treasure boxes. How colorful!

In addition to this, they had put together small movies on the computers, that were situated on a few of the desks. They made the movies by first drawing and then coloring on sheets of drawing paper. They then scanned them into the computer. From there, Mrs. O. (Marcus' teacher) dropped the drawings into Flash(TM). And with the aid of a few of the students, who narrated stories they had written, Mrs. O. made small movies. They were fun to watch. I was proud to be a mom.

Marcus even showed me his desk, which was surprisingly not junky. At all! I guess I expected it to be because his room is full of junk, which never gets anything put away, even when he says it's clean.

On the way home, we had to stop by the grocery store because we've gone for two days too long without milk and a few other necessities. So we arrive home around 8:30, and I've still got to make sure the girls get ready for bed. If I don't they will try and stay up just as long as I do, walking over to my desk requesting hugs, kisses, good nights, and whatever else they can think of to stay up.

And even as, I type this post, I am asked to help with homework. Posting tonight is my way of settling into my readings. I don't know when I will really have a moment to myself. It surely wasn't this evening. And it won't happen when I'm reading either. Not with all those other voices in my head. So, I'm off.

Posted by Digitalpenny at 08:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

As a child, I never lived in a cookie-cutter neighborhood where there were latch-key kids or where children played in the street, riding bikes. My house was part dry cleaners, part house. On one side of the building, there lived an old, angry extremely dark skinned man, and his wife who could pass as a white woman, if she so pleased. On the other side, there was a dirt road, which lead to a set of shotgun houses behind the cleaners. And next to the dirt road, there was an open area (which my sisters claimed as our playground) that opened up to a field of grass where plum trees, and wild berries grew. Often, we'd play out there for hours.

One day, that very old, angry extremely dark skinned man, who owned the road, our play area, and the field of grass decided to dump trash in our play area, which he covered with dirt. The following morning, we went out to play with our brand new radio flyer wagon that my parents had bought for us. A friend who was visiting her grandmother came by to play with us.

As we ran outside, we were extremely excited about playing in the sand, which wasn't there the night before. I sat in the wagon, and our friend pulled. As she pulled, we were all laughing and having fun with the wagon. Suddenly, the wagon hit a rock (or something hard), and I flew out of the wagon, my legs hit the ground, and I felt a rip in my right knee. As I turned over to sit up, I saw lots of blood. One of my sisters ran over to see what was wrong. I had cut my knee on a large piece of glass that had been uncovered as we played.

My sisters picked me up and got me inside as fast as they could. We were all afraid to tell our mom because she whipped us about everything, whether we took part in an activity or not. They sat me on the couch, wrapped my leg in several towels, and we all remained quiet the rest of that afternoon.

My mom had taken her normal break from running the store. As she walked to the back of our living room (where I sat on the couch), she saw me sitting. Leg still bleeding. I write this lightly, but she was furious. First because no one told her what had happened, and second because that mean man had dumped trash where he knew we played; and he had covered our playground, and his trash with dirt. My mom didn't take me to the hospital; instead, she used one of her home remedies to fix my leg. To this day, it looks like I had stitches.

Anyway, my mom told my dad what happened. My dad was outraged; he went to see the old man. I could hear my dad telling the old man a good bit of his mind. I thought he was going to beat that man up, but there was no fight, just exchanged words. After that confrontation, we didn't have problems with that angry old man again. He was much nicer to us. He even had some men to go over and clean the trash out of our playground.

Posted by Digitalpenny at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My daughter just asked me whether I remember how to play the game called "Concentration." Yea, I remember.

My children often remind me of the fun I had as a child.

My daughter began by demonstrating how one of her school buddies introduced the game to her. (My how games have changed.) The rhythm was certainly different from the game I had learned. There was not really any rhythm in what she was showing me. With another person, you are supposed to stand, extend arms, and pat or slap the other person's hands; clap your hands together once, then clap three additional times (clap, clap, clap). After this, she didn't know what to do.

So, I said, "When we played back in the day, this game had a bit more rhythm, and we sat in chairs. Let me show you." Then I demonstrated. The motions are ("Follow me," I said.): with both hands, pat your legs once, clap your hands once, and then snap, snap your fingers one at a time. You do this rhythmically for a few seconds then you add (while performing the hand rhythm) a kind of poetry by almost singing these words: Concentration, on the beat, get ready, lets go. Naming "cars." Corvette.

In the “cars” quote, the object is to create a topic. As starter of the game, you can make the topic as broad or as specific as you want.

Another more important object of this game was to remember the naming of the “cars” in the order in which they were stated, and then to add your own “car” after you’ve named the others. If you couldn’t remember, you were eliminated.

Concentration is a game that is much more fun with three or more people, and libation. But kids don’t know about the libation. (I mean as an adult, you have libation. **he,he**) Children just like the rhythmic game of memory.

What school games do you remember?

Posted by Digitalpenny at 03:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I do know that Bob Marley is dead, and has been for some time. However, a reporter who works with the BBC doesn't know it.
Read for yourself:

"BBC asks long-dead Bob Marley for Interview"

Posted by Digitalpenny at 03:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)