The Mind of an English Teacher

Rantings of a Crazy Teacher

If you are reading this, than you are obviously a member of the Tribal Tribune staff. I have come to the conclusion that since there is an obvious interest in writing about yourself on the world wide web, I will use that as a "teachable moment." Your blog will be graded periodically and there are times when I will leave comments on them as well. This will be counted as a daily grade and I want you to use this as a good time to acquaint yourselves with each other. There is a certain amount of freedom on this blog, but I do have some requirements.
1. This blog cannot contain any profanity or things that are inappropriate according to school policy. This will be looked at by me and any other teacher that might want to look at it.
2. Do not put any personal information on your blog. This blog will be on the Internet, therefore anyone can look at it. We don't want anyone getting information about you that could be used later on for something more sinister in nature.
3. Decide what your focus is going to be for this blog. The sections that you can use to jump from are: national, international, education, economics, movies, music, etc. Your blog is going to be used to show the issues that are important to you and the reason that you think this way. I will be looking at your responses and checking for actual thought.
4. You should have a minimum of two posts a week. I also want you to look at each others blogs and leave comments on their posts sharing with them your opinions and recommendations on how they can improve their writing skills. Grammar and spelling should be looked at.
These are the following questions that you should look at to start your first blog: 1. What do you know about this topic? 2. What do you think about this story? 3. How might the information provided by this news affect your life, someone in your life, or your community? 4. Who might be interested in this story? Why? 5. What different opinions exist about this topic? 6. Who is affected by this topic? 7. How might expressing your opinions affect what is happening?
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/lessons/20060526friday.html

As you can see, I have also cited where some of this information came from. You will need to do this as well. I can help you when the time comes to do this. When you are not working on articles or research for the press conference you should be working on this. Creativity is a plus and I encourage you to have fun with this. Eventually, the school newspaper will no longer be paper. Many of you are looking at college and I want you to work on those publishing skills ahead of time. A blog is also something that you can place on a college application as well as resumes. Many companies and schools are looking for students that display strong knowledge of the Internet. What better way to show journalism in action?

posted by ChristaG @ 4:00 PM