Mr. Moshé’s Critically Thinking . . . Are You?

DEVELOPED FROM THE “Student Code of Academic Integrity” OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PHOENIX (2007).

Student Code of Academic Integrity

“Mr. Moshe’s class” is an academic community whose fundamental mission is the pursuit of emotional, spiritual, and intellectual growth – physical growth will take care of itself. Achievement of this mission is dependent upon the development of autonomous thought and respect for the ideas of others. Academic dishonesty threatens the integrity of individual students as well as Mr. Moshe’s academic community (the classroom). By virtue of membership in Mr. Moshe’s academic community, students accept a responsibility to abide by this Student Code of Academic Integrity, which is a part of the Student Code of Conduct for his classes.

Academic integrity violations include all forms of academic dishonesty, including but not limited to:

a. Plagiarism – Intentional or unintentional representation of another’s words or ideas as one’s own in an academic exercise.

Examples of plagiarism include but are not limited to:

● The exact copy of information from a source without proper citation and without use of quotation marks or block quotation formatting. If any words or ideas used in a class posting or assignment submission do not represent the student’s original words or ideas, the student must distinguish them with quotation marks or a freestanding, indented block quotation (for a quotation of 40 or more words), followed by the appropriate citation in accordance with the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. When a student copies information from a source, he or she must acknowledge the source with quotation marks or block quotes irrespective of whether or not the source has been formally published.

● Paraphrasing statements, paragraphs, or other bodies of work without proper citation using someone else’s ideas, data, language, and/or arguments without acknowledgement.

● Presenting work as the student’s own that has been prepared in whole or part by someone other than that particular student. This includes the purchase and/or sharing of work.

● Failure to properly cite and reference statistics, data, or other sources of information that are used in one’s submission.

b. Self-plagiarism, double dipping, or dovetailing – Submission of work that has been prepared for a different course without fair citation of the original work and prior approval of faculty.

Students who submit assignments that were previously submitted in another course are subject to the same consequences they would face if they plagiarized these assignments. The use of one’s previous work in an assignment requires prior approval from the current faculty member and citation of the previous work.

c. Fabrication – Falsification or invention of any information, citation, data, or document.

This includes the invention or alteration of data or results, or relying on another source’s results in any assignment without proper acknowledgement of that source. Fabrication includes citing sources that the student has not actually used or consulted.

This sort of plagiarism may be allowed in practice writing situations as explained by Mr.Moshe.

d. Unauthorized Assistance – Use of materials or information not authorized by Mr. Moshe to complete an academic exercise, or the completion of an academic exercise by someone other than the student.

Students must rely upon their own abilities and refrain from obtaining assistance in any manner that faculty does not explicitly allow. This includes but is not limited to providing or receiving answers to an exam, use of faculty materials or answer keys, or a student having someone take his or her exam.

e. Copyright infringement – Acquisition or use of copyrighted works without appropriate legal license or permission. Read about copyright as related to blog posts here.

f. Misrepresentation – Falsely representing the student’s situation to faculty when (1) justifying an absence or the need for an incomplete grade; or (2) requesting a makeup exam, a special due date, or extension of a syllabus or class deadline for submitting a course requirement.

g. Collusion – Helping or allowing another student to commit any act of academic dishonesty.

July 19th, 2009

The following excerpt sums up in one of many ways the reason this book is so incredible. I’m reading the e-book from Project Gutenberg and listening to the audio book so page numbers are of little import to me right now. I can tell you it is from Chapter 7:

At times the mist cleared, and the sea for some distance could be seen in the glare of the lightning, which came thick and fast, followed by such peals of thunder that the whole sky overhead seemed trembling under the shock of the footsteps of the storm.

AWESOME !!!

July 12th, 2009
I am pushed as it happens to tell you what I am doing while I listen to Dracula by Bram Stoker as read by Alexander Spencer and Susan Adams.

researching images I can find of the Castle Dracula.

wondering about the Carpathians, and searching on this curiosity. And in so searching I found my way to a lesser novel written by Jules Verne which was published (1891) The Castle in the Carpathians It was published in France before Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) was published in Ireland. It was called in his own time, Le Chateau des Carpathes (French) – which, if you read French, you can read for free from Project Gutenberg.

Some of my favorite quotes so far:

• “These companions - . . . – have been good friends to me”
• “We are in Transylvania, and Transylvania is not England. Our ways are not your ways. And they shall be to you many strange things. . .”
• “I myself am of an old family, and to live in a new house would kill me.”
  • This made me immediately question. . . Aren’t we all of old families? Just how much of our families old histories do we know? How much of my family do I know about? What do I know about where we come from? who we are? how we’ve ended up (or are starting off) where we are?

Trains of Thought

• Castle Dracula
• Carpathians
• Castle of the Carpathians
• Jules Verne
• The castle is a prison, YIKES!
• footsteps of the storm – NICE!!!!

What do you have to say about endings? Share your hopeful thoughts with us here.

Check out this playlist -  New Year’s Day – Songs for New Beginnings.

When I think about what Literature Circles are to a teacher I entertain ideas of manageability, juggling, productivity, real life discussion, life. Literature Circles allow for that real level of deep inquiry that all people bring to bear in their real lives. THey are alive and evolving, growing and changing, progressive and insatiable for a group involved who are really there to get the most out of it.

I saw a lot of that today in class when I shuttled around the room and witnessed the way students were, while in the midst of getting familiar with the job at hand, forcefully working hte process offered them.

If I could congradulate all of you by name with the space allowed I would, you were all truly admirable in your fervent honest desire to grasp and hold tight to the world of knowledge your group mates had to share.

As far as what is important for you all to know about class Friday, here it is:

• In Class
  • All Blocks were working in Literature Circles
  • Most groups went through the first Cycle.
  • Here are the cycle breakdowns for the various group sizes

• At Home this weekend, remember:
  • You have a stem test on Monday, so STUDY!
    • You can get practice with the list (LIST 4) by following the links found at the Word Within the Word Resources Page.
  • 1st & 2nd Blocks – Your FIRST Approach Papers are DUE MONDAY. Here’s how you’ll be graded – SCORE LA Rubric. Lose 10 points for every day late.

Have a great weekend. See you all Monday. If you have any questions, post them to this discussion. Just scroll down, fill in the appropriate fields and click submit. Cheerio!!

The Approach Paper Requirements

An approach paper that is longer than 1.25 pages long is too long.

Here’s how you’ll be graded – SCORE LA Rubric.

Lose 10 points for every day late.

Use the following Font etc. – Times New Roman, 12 pt, Single Space.

SECTIONS

•I. Proper Heading: Your Full Name, The Date, The Class/Block, The Book Title, The Author’s Name, The Genre.

•II. Summary Paragraph: A four or five sentence paragraph which explains the ENTIRE book or play using as much detail as you can manage. To encourage your writing style, you may not use semi-colons or colons in this paragraph, and every sentence must start out in a different way. This helps make your writing more interesting to read. This is often the most difficult section of the approach paper to write. It will take some time to condense the happenings of the book/play into these few sentences which all start differently.

•III. Character Descriptions: Choose three or four main characters in your book or play. For each character, supply: Character’s Name, Four or Five words which describe the character distinctly. This is a good time to think about vivid vocabulary words we use in class, check the dictionary, thesaurus. If you use a particular word to describe one character, you may not use that same word to describe another character.

•IV.                 Discussion/Essay Questions: Write three questions that a teacher might ask you about the book or play either in class or for an essay. These questions should be high level and thought-provoking. They almost always take more than one line to type because they ask readers to combine more than one idea. Just writing these types of questions helps you to anticipate what questions might be asked of you in class discussions or on a test and encourages you to think more insightfully about the book or play.

•V.                   Key Passage: Choose the most important passage in the book or play (in your opinion). Type it up word-for-word in the approach paper. Make sure to identify the speakers.

•VI.                 Key Passage Explanation: In a fully-developed paragraph, explain why your chosen passage is important to understanding the book or play. In your explanation, make sure you integrate quotes (actual words or phrases from the book or play) from the key passage to strengthen your explanation. Often, this selected passage will offer clues to the book or play’s themes. Explain any mentioned or inferred themes connected to the key passage.

•VII.               Your Opinion: In two to three paragraphs, write about what you liked/disliked most OR least about this book. This can be about the author’s style, characters, themes, settings, literary devices, etc. Be sure to explain by using details to support your response. Tell why you would or wouldn’t recommend this book to someone.

Due Dates

1st & 2nd Blocks: November  24th , December 5^th, 19^th, January 11^th, 25^th, February 8^th, 22^nd, March 7^th, 21^st, April 11^th, 25^th, May 9^th

4th Block: December 19^th, January 18^th, February 8^th, 29^th,  March 21^st, April 11^th, May 2nd

Today, we had a practice run of literature circles.

After reading the story, “A Mother in Manville” which yo can access at  – http://www.classzone.com/eservices/ -, the class did a practice run of a literature circle.

Each block had its own issues with its first practice try at it.

Most of the day, the biggest issue was that groups were getting too loud.

Also, there was some confusion about how to actually do some of the jobs/roles. Review your notes about the different jobs each day before you begin reading a section. Make sure you know what your responsibility is to the group. Know your job description. Please refer to the page devoted to job descriptions. You cna get to it by following this link – Literature Circle Resources.

Mrs. Bowden’s 9th block class is having a can drive for the Loaves and Fishes food bank.  please bring in canned food so a needy family can eat a good meal on Thanksgiving.  If every student could bring in one can of food, we can provide dinner for tons of families. 

So please!

Bring in some cans to your homeroom teacher, and we will come by and collect the cans.

Thank you,

Ms. Bowden’s 9th block Class

Today in class you got introduced to the novels you will have to choose from for your literature circles.

You should rate the novels from 1 – 10:

• “1” means “I would most like to read this book”, and
• “10” means “I would least like to read this book“

I will be creating Literature Circle groups based on your preferences. Click the titles below to read some reviews. When you get to the page where the reviews should be, you may have to scroll down a bit. Reviews are on Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

Here are the titles for you to choose from:

• ______ – The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
• ______ – Scorpions by Walter Dean Myers
• ______ – To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• ______ – Night by Ellie Wiesel
• ______ – Tunes for Bears to Dance To by Robert Cormier
• ______ – Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston
• ______ – Nothing But the Truth by Avi
• ______ – Monster by Walter Dean Myers

After you give me your preferences (1-10), I will determine the literature circle groups.

Tomorrow, we will be talking about the Unit 5 Menu Options, and possible get into the first piece from Unit 5. I look forward to seeing you all in class.

In case you didn’t feel like showing up to class on Monday, or couldn’t, we took a bunch of notes on literature circles.

You can find the notes if you search for “literature circles” in the search bar at the upper right corner of the screen. Oh, the wonder of the search function.

You can also get all the notes by going to either of the folliwng links:

• Literature Circles Document used for notes – you can download these notes and print this.
• Literature Circles Post for reading – I wouldn’t print this. This is for reading on the screen.

We went over the following upcoming events on November 7th:

1. Unit 5 Menu Options – Menu Option Projects are DUE December 5th
2. Units 2 & 3 Poetry Unit – Poetry Portfolios are DUE January 16th
3. Approach Papers – You can turn these in whenever you get them done. Here’s how you’ll be graded – SCORE LA Rubric. Lose 10 points for every day late. Your first Final Drafts are DUE:
   • Standard Plus – DUE December 19th,
   • Honors – DUE November 21st.
4. Author Study (2nd Quarter) – Rough Drafts are DUE January 9th, Final Drafts are DUE January 16th.
5. Literature Circles – We went over how they work, and how you’ll work with and within them.

————————————–

For our Literature Circles, you will have to choose to read one the novels below.

Rate your top 3 titles in order of preference:

• 1 – “I’d love to read this title.”
• 2 – “I’d like to read this title.”
• 3 – “I’d settle for reading this title.”

Here are the titles:

• To Kill a Mockingbird
• The Outsiders
• Scorpions
• Nothing But the Truth
• Farewell to Manzanar
• Tunes for Bears
• Night

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For our study of Unit 5 – Just or Unjust? – we will be reading all of the following literature in the Language of Literature (use Classzone eServices to read up)

• Paul Revere’s Ride
• From Undaunted Courage
• The Flower Fed Buffaloes
• Bike a Historic Trail
• War Party
• The Other Pioneers
• from Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad
• from Lincoln: a photography
• O Captain! My Captain! & Civil War Journal
• From Roughing It (Author’s Study) Mark Twain
• The Million Pound Bank Note
• Comedy Knight

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For our Poetry Unit (Units 2 & 3), we will be reading all of the following literature in the Language of Literature (use Classzone eServices to read up):

• Mother to Son
• Speech to the Young
• Father to Son (handout in resource packet)
• The Charge of the Light Brigade
• Simile- Willow and Ginko
• A Loaf of Poetry
• Old age sticks
• The lesson of the moth
• Fear and Identity
• Stopping by the Woods
• Mending Wall
• Knoxville Tennessee
• A Journey
• Leagues
• The drum
• Choices