Express yourself

Welcome to Term 4. During this term we will be completing a Text Response Essay on Girl with a Pearl Earring and fine tuning our awareness of language and how it can be used for various purposes. Texts are constructed by writers to achieve certain effects, and you are composers of texts having to make decisions on what words and phrases your intended audience will find most effective. You are also readers and viewers of texts that are constructed to have their effect on you. By being critical readers you will have more choices and more power in your own lives.

 
One habit that it would be good to develop if you haven’t already is to read the front page and the opinion and letters page of your daily newspaper. Think about what you are reading and how the language is selected by the writers. What other words could they have used? Why didn’t they use those other words? What effects do you think the writers were aiming for?

 
Today I would like you to think about language and how you use it for different purposes and audiences. Give examples of how you notice language being used. Can you think of any interesting things you’ve seen or heard over the holidays? Write an entry about your thoughts on language of several paragraphs and either publish it to your blog or print it out and hand up by the end of the lesson. Include at least one hyperlink. Then read other blogs and make comments where you wish, at least two to bloggers who are not in this class and one to a blogger in this class.

One thing that I find interesting about blogging is that you can be whoever you want to be while you are on the blog.  Nobody knows anything about you except what you choose to tell them.  You can try out different personalities and see how people respond to you in a safe way. We are always deciding how we want to show ourselves to the world, by our clothes, by what we say, by the friends we choose, by what we choose to do. In this way, how do you think blogging can help students in the classroom? Do you think that blogging would be good to help in English classes at all year levels? How is it different to MySpace? Let us know what you think about this, or any other questions that are on your mind right now.

Now that it’s close to the end of term, how has your learning journey been so far? Reflect on how you have gone in your various subjects and what you want to do after you have finished. What do you wish you had done better? What plans are you making to make sure it is better next term?

Hello and welcome to a new week! This week the focus of your blog post should be the novel we have begun studying: Tracey Chevalier’s ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring.’ How much of the novel have you read? What are your impressions of the novel so far? What do you think of Griet? Is she the kind of character you imagined the girl in Vermeer’s painting to be? Why/ why not? If there is anything about the novel or the characters that you do not understand, write about that too. When you have written your post, respond to the posts of at least two others on the blog roll. You may be able to clear up a question someone else has asked about the novel!In today’s lesson you will also have some time to explore the author’s website and read about her inspiration for the novel and why she thinks the girl in Vermeer’s painting was a maid – despite the pearl earring she is wearing. Happy blogging!

It’s a new week again. Are you looking forward to anything this week? OR are there some new things you need to learn this week? This lesson it would be great if you finished introducing yourself to your global audience and write about anything that is on your mind right now. Then have a look at some other blogs on the blogroll and see if you can make some comments about ideas they have expressed. Try to make two comments on blogs from this class and a number of comments on blogs not from this class. Read what they have to say and respond to the ideas they are expressing. Ask questions. Make it a conversation if you can. The second half of the lesson is on the Gattaca webquest and on the writing you need to complete for the SAC. Please ask if there are any questions.

You can play around and explore your site. Your blogs are built using Wordpress which is a powerful blogging software. Have a look and see what you can do. Add links to the blogs of your friends, change the look of your blog, add widgets to your sidebar. You can’t break anything so try things and see what happens. If you upload photos, don’t upload any images that you have not taken yourself unless they are copyright free; you need to look for those images specifically. And remember that anything you put on your blog can and will be seen by anybody, including your future boss in ten years time. Write another post about anything you would like to change about the world or society today. How can we make things better?

 Have you commented on anyone else’s blog? Why don’t you leave a few encouraging comments on some blogs that are not written by just your friends. Have a look at some of the Year 7s and 9s that are linked on the blogroll.

Hi Year 11. Welcome to Language and literature: communicating,  an online space which links all your blogs together. A blog, like MySpace, is a place where you can write for an audience whether in the class or around the world. It is a place to express your opinions - keep it clean - about anything that interests you. Your audience will be other students and teachers from anywhere with an internet connection. For your first post write a bit about yourself, your interests and likes and dislikes. Write about things you’re good at, activities you like to do and what you’re looking forward to. Let us know a bit about what makes you tick.