Tuesday, April 5

Today is Tuesday of WEEK 11, and I've re-arranged the Declarations area in D2L so the new week is on top. If you have not done the first reading for this week yet, you need to do that today, and I hope you will enjoy your reading choice for this week! Here is a link to this week's assignments.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Project Stack. I've worked my way through the projects turned in on Saturday and the ones from Sunday morning, and I'll move on to the Sunday afternoon projects today! You can check the stack to make sure I received your assignment.

5 More Weeks! (repeat announcement) Yes, Week 11 has begun, and that means there are just five more weeks of school: Weeks 11-12-13-14-15. I hope you will make a plan for finishing up the class, choosing what assignments you want to work on, deciding on how many stories you want to include in your Portfolio or Storybook, etc. There are 150 points of regular assignments, plus extra credit, with more extra credit in Week 11 and Week 12 than in the last weeks of the semester, so definitely make your plan now!

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Why I Write. Words of wisdom from Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of.

Words to Watch: Today's words to watch out for are MINER and MINOR. For details, see this blog post.

Featured Storybook: How Chaucer Ruined The Canterbury Tales. The vintner is not someone that Chaucer included in his version of the Canterbury Tales . . . but if you want to find out what really happened on that pilgrimage, you need to read the vintner's tale!

Free Book Online: The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde. This blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book; yesterday, I shared House of Pomegranates, and this is Oscar Wilde's other book of fairy tales.

India Featured Book: Ramayan 3392 AD Vol. 1: Mahavinaash Age. This blog post provides additional information about this reading option for Indian Epics which is on Reserve in Bizzell. This is a graphic novel with a futuristic Ramayana, set in the year 3392.

Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is A thousand probabilities do not make one truth (an English proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. Statistics have their uses, of course, but be careful!

Today's Video: The Power of Networks. The tree metaphor is great... but is it enough for the world of today? As a "networked" teacher, this is something I think about a lot!

Growth Mindset: Today's growth mindset cat is planning: Stop for a moment and just think. Details at the blog.

Event on Campus: There will be a showing of "He Named Me Malala" in the Bizzell CLC at 7PM (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

April 5: Pocahontas. Today, April 5, marks the wedding anniversary of Pocahontas, daughter of Chief Powhatan of Virginia, who married the Virginia settler John Rolfe on this day in 1614. If you are curious about the historical account of Pocahontas' very dramatic life (i.e. not the Disney version), take a look at this article in Wikipedia. Below is a portrait of Pocahantas that was done during her lifetime (she was born circa 1595 and died in 1617; the portrait dates to the year 1616):

Note: You can page back through the older blog posts to see any announcements you might have missed, and you can check out the Twitter stream for information and fun stuff during the day.