Quill - Interactive Learning Site

Explore Quill.org to practice grammatical and punctual skills and to refine your critical thinking abilities while writing. I will analyze the process, and help you when you need assistance, and we will discuss the benefits or the "cons" of the site, deciding whether or not it is effective and worth exploring in future sessions.

Quill

The Yankees Years

Instruction: Read the first two pages of The Yankees Years, the autobiographical text about former New York Yankees manager Joe Torre, written by himself and with the assistance of the nonfiction writer Tom Verducci. Read through these pages and write a one to two paragraph response taking what you read and thinking about bigger issues than the actual hiring of Torre. What does it mean to be a manager of a professional baseball team? Is there anything within this text that seems interesting or odd to you? IS there something that Torre says that strikes you as revealing something about him or the league that is important? Can you relate in any way to either this text or what Torre says? Think about all of this and put it into a two paragraph response that will address some of these issues.

It is always beneficial to find appropriate sites that will help you navigate through some lessons on English and basic grammar. No one is ever a "professional" when it comes to grammar. It is hard to perfect even your native language, and writing or expressing yourself in your language "perfectly." Instead, we need to work on refining our abilities by constantly working and reminding ourselves about the core roles about grammar and writing.

Use this site to practice some of the rules of grammar and writing, and we will discuss together how this helps, and the progress that you make!

http://www.chompchomp.com/hotpotatoes/commas01.htm

Video Reactions: Critical Thinking

Instructions: Watch these two videos by the inspirational professional baseball player Jackie Robinson who was the first African-American man in the MLB. What do you think these two videos are saying not only about Jackie Robinson as a person, but his experience in an all-white professional baseball league. What were the challenges that he had to overcome? What does this say about America then and now? Are things different or are they the same in society? What does it mean to be an African-American baseball player today?

Jackie Robison Video 1

J.R. Video 2

Analyzing Kate Chopin's "A Pair of Silk Stockings"

http://learnzillion.com/lessonsets/434-close-reading-literature-a-pair-of-silk-stockings


This site provides strategies for middle-school readers to analyze a text. What I want to get from this site is the ability to convey how listening to a text and reading a text can help both understand that text and form original ideas for a critical essay based off of this text. Listening to the text in this format aids the reader in creating her or his own material in response to the text. Sometimes the aid of technology can be extremely beneficial in reading analysis. This site is beneficial for the middle school reader.

What to do with this link:

After reading and listening to the text, what notes would you take on the text? What did you think was important from the text and did you think there was any lesson to be learned from it? Did it seem like a text that should be taken as is (literally) or did it seem like a text with a deeper metaphorical meaning, meaning that the words really represent something else. Let's see what you think!