Friday, June 25, 2010

Today we corrected our speeches. We each traded so that we could correct others. I corrected Jeffrey's, but he kept on asking me to hand it back. William corrected mine and said he couldn't understand which side I was on. Then we read stories about a family who were going to prepare for Christmas and the father showed her daughter a room about the news articles he wrote to them and every day, he would cut out his article from their newspaper because the wife was embarrassed that he would fail.
As we went on Peter kept on asking questions to see if we were paying attention to his class. I don't know why he had to keep on asking questions. He called on some of us to read the speech. After that, then we started correcting essasy. Carl gave William an F+ for writing reasons instead of an essay and then William asked Carl what side I was on. I thought that was a stupid question because I was originallly for animal testing depending on the situation. For example, you could test some medicine drugs but if you test some dangerous chemical, than no.
When we started to do our speeches, I did Jeffery's speech.I did all the hand motions and everything else. I read some things from the paper, but there was not enough paper. Carl said that was fantastic. When William read mines, he said he couldn't do it because it wasn't readable. Carl had him make it up and after that, when William sat down, he looked as if he were crying. His eyes were watering and everything and they were red. In all today's class was fun because we only had to correct our speeches.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Today in class we talked about rhetorical devices. There was a whole list of of rhetorical."Today's class was as slow as a snail". For example, this simile about my opinion on today. It's exaggerating that today's class was as slow as a snail's pace. Then after that, we read a letter from a famous man with the first 30 minute news broadcast. He talked about how that man named "......" made some broadcasts from football and memorized 30 to 40 player's names, their age, what position, what number, and their characteristics. It took them about 3 to 4 days cramming all of this info down.
The next story was about a boy with a disease at age 7. His mom asked what he wanted to be when he grew up and the boy said a fireman. His mom called the fire department and asked if they could come over. The fireman told them that they could do better and so they would come on Wednesday to visit the boy and go on all the calls. The boy was filled with joy. After all the excitement that happened, he lived 3 months longer than anyone expected. On his last day, the boy was weak and tired. The nurse called the family and the fire department for them to come. The department said that they could do better than that and brought so many more than just one fireman. They brought I think 15 and hugged him and told how much they loved him. The boy closed his eye for the last time.
After that, we did a speech by Ronald Regan after the Challenger explosion. Carl said it was fantastic, but I messed up so many times. For some random reason and thought of another rhetorical device to use and it was an analogy. I think it was "bird is to fly as dog is to pant." That was the only one I thought of. I couldn't think of anything else. In all, today's class was pretty good except for Blair stealing the last piece of bakery food without asking.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Today in class, Carl and Peter taught us on writing outlines. Carl said, " You need a hook to start your paragraph and then a thesis statement."
He told us that you shouldn't state facts but your opinion and it should be arguable against and for it. I didn't know that, but I knew what a hook and thesis was.
Peter then spoke," You need an intro and a body to prove your thesis. You would just keep on proving your thesis for your body paragraph. The conclusion would be to repeat your topic sentence."
Then Carl's new assistance who's name I forgot found a story and Carl read it to us. It was called 'Abraham Lincoln didn't Quit'. I think it was called that, but he told us that Abraham started from poverty, face debt and bankruptcy twice and when running for legislature and government, he failed many times till he succeeded.
Then we moved on to public speaking. We learned that when you mess up, just keep on going and pretend it was part of what you were going to say. Also confidence is the number 1 thing in speaking. You can also take a drink of water and for that 3 or 4 seconds think of what you are going to say. We were all going to do a speech from Winston Churchill. It was called 'We Shall Fight On The Beaches' I think. When it was my turn I emphasized the words like Carl told me to, but I emphasized I think one to many. I thought it would be horrible, but Carl said it was okay. I wasn't trying to make some laughs but doing what Carl had exampled and showed to all of us. In all, today's class was pretty well.


Saturday, June 19, 2010

On Friday, we learned about taking notes.
"I'm going to teach you about taking notes," Peter explained. "When taking notes, you have to know what to write and what not to write. When you take notes, you need to write down the important notes. Okay. We write notes to remember information and to store it for later use. If you need to ask questions, go ahead. Don't be afraid. If you don't understand it, you have to ask. Some people might have the same question as you do."
Peter asked," Why do you think you don't write everything when you take notes? That's write, you won't have time to write everything down and you won't have time. Try to rephrase it into something that you would understand. You should try to summarize what the topic is. You can use italics, underlines, and emphasizing words. You can abbreviate words, too. You can also use pictures too. There are two times to take notes. One is when you listen to the complete idea then you take the notes. Another one is to write as it keeps on going."
Peter finished," You should write short sentences of what is said. You have to write down every single detail for a definition. Finally, you can use your own way of taking notes and it takes practice to see which way of taking notes is better for you."

Thursday, June 17, 2010

3 paragraph dialogue

I had just started class today. Our teachers, Carl and Peter asked us to sign in.
"Has everyone done their home," Carl asked. "Okay. Today we are going to be learning about sentence dialogue. What is sentence dialogue, William," Carl questioned.
William answered.
"Correct," Carl said. Sentence dialogue is when you talk. You put quotation marks around what you and the other person, thing, or something else has said. You also add commas. Where? After the sentence that person has said. It has to be inside the quotation. Also if you say "Hi", you put an exclamation point inside what that person has said," Carl explained.
Peter added," but if you're talking and you say for example "Hi," said bob., then you just put a period.

"Next, we are going to learn to speak right off the spot," Carl said. "That means that you are going to come up with a speech about the topic that you don't know about. For example, you can tell me to talk about an apple and I have to think of a speech without rehearsing or anything. You will each have to come up, I will give you a subject to talk about and I will give you a minute to write down what you need to try to memorize, but you can not use any paper. You just have to say it. That is called ........."