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Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Holden High School David Shringley Imitation

Grade Level: High School
Objective: To practice imitation in preparation for our upcoming paper

by David Shringley
Tools:
Hands
Screwdriver
Cleverness


Playthings:
Skis
Forklift
Welder

Jewelry:
Pianos
Pocket Protectors
Head-gear

Themes:
Zombies
Apocalypse
Algebra 2

Currency:
Paintings
Canadians
Elephants

Ailments:
Writing
Boredom
Scarlet Fever

Frivolities:
Computers
Video Games
Methane

Essentials:
Oxygen
Twinkies
Hip-Hop 

Monday, November 25, 2013

Last week I learned...

-Lava is too dense to sink into--it's 3 times denser than the human body and between 100,000 to 1,100,000 times more viscous than water.

-The kangaroo rat is so well adapted to living in the desert it can go its whole life without drinking water.

-During the outbreak of World War II, London Zoo killed all their venomous animals in case the zoo was bombed and the animals escaped

-The word "nerd" was first used by Dr. Seuss

Rhetorical Strategies/Devices

Grade Level: High School
(Elements creators of text use to put forth their arguments)

Diction/Word Choice/ Repetition of certain words: Why, with all the words at his or her disposal, does a writer choose to use or repeat particular words? (Questions to consider: What could they mean or symbolize? What effect do they have on the tone of the piece? On the sound of the piece?)

Imagery: Language that evokes one or all of the five senses: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching. (Questions to consider: Where is the language the most vivid? Why? The author will usually slow down to describe things he/she considers important for a reason? What do the images contribute to his or her argument?)

Assignment 1: Environmental Literature: Rhetorical Analysis

Grade Level: High School

Assignment 1: Rhetorical Analysis

Rough Draft Due-Imitation: Monday November 25th
Rough Draft Due-Analysis: Wednesday November 27th

While the term "rhetorical analysis" is, at first, rather intimidating for many people, it is easily understood (at least at its most basic) when broken down and defined.

Rhetoric: The art of persuasion
Analysis: The breaking down of something into its parts and interpreting how those parts fit together.

A rhetorical analysis examines how a text works—how its words, its structure, its ideas connect—or don't connect—with a given audience. For this assignment I want you to choose one of the readings you’ve encountered this semester and to break it down to its structural components. Rather than merely summarizing what the author is saying a rhetorical analysis analyzes how the author conveys his or her thesis through specific structural decisions.

Instead of a traditional rhetorical analysis you will be writing an imitation of a piece we’ve read in this class then writing a two page analysis of your imitation. You will need to include both your thesis and the thesis of the original work. You will need to write about which of the author’s strategies you employed to imitate their writing style and you will need to exhibit an understanding of how those strategies furthered both your thesis and the thesis of the original text.

Ice: Exploring a frozen waterfall

Grade Level: High School
Objective: To explore the way water crystallizes into ice through watching a series of BBC videos on the "Secret Life of Ice" and hiking to a frozen waterfall.

Looking at Ice Crystals:




Thursday, November 21, 2013

Facts for Pie

Geography Week Facts 
(given to us by members of our community in exchange for apple pie):


-Washington State has more glaciers than the other 47 contiguous states combined. (Linda)
-Equatorial Guinea is the only country in Africa to have Spanish as its official language (Hunter)
-The Mariana Trench is the deepest spot in the ocean, 35,760 feet below sea level (Nate)
-“Home on Range” is the official state song of Kansas (Eva)
- Azkaban (the prison in Harry Potter) is named for a small lake in Russia (Abbey)
-Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United State.  At one point it was a 14,000+ foot mountain, which imploded into itself (Lisa)
-The reason they know that the earth’s magnetic poles flip is that they’re able to look at minerals within an ocean trench to see evidence of the change (Andrew L)
-In the 1800s the New Madrid fault line caused an earthquake in the Midwest that was felt in New York (Andrew L)
-The Red River in Minnesota flows North.  You can travel from Minnesota to Hudson Bay on it. (Andrew K)
-Northeast Iowa is called the “driftless” region because the glaciers scraped the rest of Iowa flat but missed the driftless region leaving it forested and rolling (Peter)
-Harney Peak in South Dakota is 7,244 feet—it is the highest peak in the U.S east of the Rockies (Dale)
-There’s a town in Quebec, Canada called La Tuque named after a hill that looks like a Tuque (James)
-The first place you can see the sunrise in the United States is on the top of Cadillac Mountain on Mount Desert Island in Arcadia National Park (Andy)
-In Northern Minnesota there’s a lake called Cass Lake—it has an island called Star island—it’s the only freshwater lake with an island with a freshwater lake inside of it (Claire)
-Vatican City is the smallest country (Sharon)
-48 of Montana’s 52 counties are considered frontier counties, which means that there are less than 6 people per square mile (Tressa)
-In 1888 Helena, Montana had more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the U.S. (Tressa)
-The lowest point on land you can stand on is the beach of the Dead Sea—it’s about 1,500 feet below sea level (David)
-A device for remembering coastal countries in Africa from Egypt, around the west coast of the country, ending with Equatorial Guinea: Every Lotto Ticket a moron wins my sister guzzles great glasses of slurpy leaving ice globs tightly bonded near the crystal’s edge. (Rosa)
-If you drained Lake Chelan it would cover Washington at a depth of 4 inches (Chris)
-In North Central Mauritania, there’s something called a Richat structure that’s 31 miles in diameter—it’s a symmetrical uplift made by erosion that you can see from space (Lisa)
-In Papua New Guinea there are over 800 languages and dialects (Janine)
-The Northernmost point of the continental United States is in Minnesota.  However you can’t get there by car—you either have to boat or by way of Canada (Ellen)
-The two cities I lived in before coming here were on the Mississippi River (Ellen)
-The hottest temp ever to be recorded in the world is believed to be 134 degrees F in Furnace Creek Ranch, CA recorded on 10/7/1913 (Bonnie)
-The shortest river in North America is the Chelan River (Rosa)
-It’s 550 miles to hike from Oregon to Canada on the PCT (Natalie)
-If you drilled a hole through the middle of the world straight through (from where we are now) you would end up in the Indian Ocean, right off the coast of Madagascar (Cindy)

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

The average American's food travels 1,500-2,500 miles before reaching his/her table

Learning where our food comes from:

Places we import (some of) our food from:
Chelan, WA-0 miles (apples, lettuce)
Stehekin, WA-0 miles (by car) (kale)
Tonasket, WA-80 miles (beef)
Eugene, OR-174 miles (coffee)
Roy, WA-213 miles (eggs)
Palouse, WA-213 miles (flour, lentils, garbanzo beans)
Euphrata, WA-61.2 miles (cod, salmon)
Brewster, WA-27.2 miles (potatoes)
Seattle, WA-180 miles (cream, milk, cheese)
Twisp, WA-52.3 miles (whole wheat flour)
Pendleton, OR-238 miles (pork)
California (Sysco Central)-aprox. 872 miles (lettuce, oranges, cream of wheat, kale)
Guatemala-aprox. 3,551 miles (coffee)
Alaska-aprox. 2,281 miles (cod, salmon)

What ratio of the food we researched comes from Washington?
9:14 or 9 of 14 or 9/14 

What percentage is that?
64%

What ratio of the food we researched comes from California?
4:14 or 4 of 14 or 4/14

What percentage is that?
28%

What is the mean (average) distance our food travels?
547.48 miles