Friday 29th June

Today is your last day for the term because next week you are out for Peak Adventure. If you are not doing Peak Adventure you need to do the alternative task.

The general theories behind doing Peak Adventure are to take responsibility for yourself (ie feeding yourself etc), to learn some new skills, to experience a different environment and be aware of your impact on it, to challenge yourself or extend yourself beyond your comfort level and ultimately, to have fun.

I want you to think particularly about the part where you will be challenged and respond to the following questions in well structured sentence and paraphraph form.

1. What Peak Adventure activity are you doing next week?
2. Why did you choose that activity?
3. What do you think you will find most challenging about the particular activity that you are doing?
4. What do you think you will find most challenging about the trip, not including the activity?
5. What do you think will be the best part about Peak Adventure?
6. Why do you think it is important to challenge yourself and work beyond your own comfort zone?

Alternative task

1. If you were able to go on Peak Adventure, which activity would you choose and why?
2. What will you be doing next week instead?
3. What is something that you might do over the next three weeks that would help you to practice some of the independent living skills that the other boys will experience on Peak Adventure?
4. What is something that you might do over the next three weeks that would challenge you and require you to work beyond your comfort level?
5. Why do you think it is important to challenge yourself and work beyond your own comfort zone?

Congratulations

I wanted to take the opportunity to let you all know how much I have enjoyed reading your blog post this term

I know that some of you are disappointed in the marks that you recieved for this assessment piece, but you need to keep in mind that it was a combination of all your posts and comments that contributed to the grade. For many of you this form of writing was a new experience and your marks increased through the term the more you practiced. Some of you need to acknowledge that some of your posts were rushed and were really your best effort.

I particualarly enjoyed reading the blogs where people had really thought about the task and recorded some original ideas. The whole purpose of this task is to a) get you writing and b) get you thinking.

I believe that now you all know how this works, you know that both the posts and the comments are important and you know that I am looking for evidence of some decent thinking, that during next term you will be able to easily earn fantastic marks for the blogging task.

Friday 15th June

This week we began looking at poet and playwrite, William Shakespeare. I want to to reflect on your exposure to Shakespeare up until this point. You need to reflect based on what you knew before the lesson on Thursday. Write your response based on the points below.

Have you read any poetry of Shakespeare's?
Have you seen any Shakespearean plays?
Have you read any play of Shakewpeare's?
Have you seen any modern versions of Shakespeare's work, such as the movie 'Ten things I hate about you'?
What do you know about Shakespeare's work?
Mr S is putting on Macbeth next term. Would you be interested in being a part of this play?

Research question:
Why is it bad luck to mention the play Macbeth?

Friday 8th June

For today's blog entry I would like you to go to the following link and read some of the blog that you find there: http://booksandboys.blogspot.com/

Check out the various posts that you find there. You may read as much as you like but you need only respond to one entry. If you would like to leave a comment on this blog you may, but please be respectful and only leave something that is insightful for the author or other readers.

You need to comment on the following things in your blog entry for today:

1. Why do you think the author has started this blog?
2. There is a slogan at the top of the blog that says "readers are the leaders others follow"; what do you think this means?
3. Who do you think would be interested in reading this blog?
4. Which entry did you read?
5. What was it about?
6. Was there a fact/opinion/piece of information that you found particularly interesting? Why?
7. Did you feel inclined to post a comment? Why?