Class Procedures and Reminders:
Grading. (repeat announcement) The end of the semester is in sight now! You may want to start planning now how you want to finish up the class. For a chart that shows you week by week point totals and other information about the grading system, you can consult this Grading Chart page. You can finish the class with a grade of "C" when you get 320 points or "B" when you get 360 points; for an "A" you need 410 points. When you have reached the the points required for the grade you want to take, just let me know. As soon as you get the points you need, you are done — you do not need to do any more of the class assignments after I record the final grade for you.
Storybook stack. I've updated the stack to include the Storybook assignments people have turned in over the break; you can see the contents of the stack here. I'll be updating that periodically on Sunday since I know a lot of Storybook assignments will be coming in, and then on Monday morning I'll start reading and replying to the assignments in the order they were turned in, starting with the assignments from last Saturday, March 15.
Storybook schedule. (repeat announcement) For those of you who are on the regular Storybook schedule, your Week 9 assignment is a story revision. For those of you on an alternate schedule, you can see exactly what you have due for Week 9 by checking in the Desire2Learn "Progress" item in the Gradebook. If you have any questions about that, let me know!
The following items are for fun and exploration:
Foreign Words in English: Today's foreign word in English is mantra, which comes to English from Sanskrit. For details, see this blog post.
Featured Storybook: The Demon-Slayer Named Sun. This Storybook from last year contains a dramatic re-imagining of the adventures of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King of Chinese legend, hero of "Journey to the West."
FREE Kindle eBook: The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault. Here is a link to the book at Amazon, and this blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book. There are some famous fairy tales in here, like Cinderella and Little Red Riding-Hood, along with some stories you might not be familiar with, such as Blue Beard or Donkey-Skin.
Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is One generation plants the trees; another gets the shade (a Chinese proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. Think for the future!
Mahabharata Image: Today's Mahabharata image shows Bhima fighting Kichaka. Draupadi has escaped Kichaka's clutches (he is in the center), while Bhima has come to her rescue.
March 23: Akira Kurosawa. March 23 marks the birthday in the year 1910 of the great Japanese film director, Akira Kurosawa. You can read about his long career and many cinematic achievements in this Wikipedia article. His most famous film is probably The Seven Samurai. Of all of Kurosawa's films, my personal favorite is Dersu Uzala, a story set in Siberia around the year 1900, when Russian mapmakers rely on the skills of a native Nanai tribal member, Dersu Uzala, to survive the harsh Siberian climate. It's a fantastic movie, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1975. Highly recommended!
Note: You can page back through older blog posts to see any announcements you might have missed.
