This is for Ms. Redden’s 7th grade Language Arts class. We’ll be looking at leadership characteristics in both a modern day setting and in the novel The Girl Who Owned a City.
The first site to look at is the Time Magazine Top 100 Influential People of 2009. You can find the site by clicking here.
Click on a person’s name from the list. Read through the person’s description looking specifically for leadership qualities.
Look at the Venn diagram side of your handout. In the middle of the diagram, write down qualities that Lisa and your person share.
On the left-hand side of the diagram, write down qualities that Lisa has as a leader that your person does not have.
On the right-hand side of the diagram, write down qualities that your person has that Lisa does not have.
The next site you’ll look at is the Top 10 Leadership Qualities from HR World. You can get to the site by clicking here.
On your own, answer the three questions on your handout in complete sentences.
This is proof that I can and do read books that don’t have giant monsters and/or helicopter chases.
Girl to the Core is a simple story of Molly, a high schooler from a strong Irish family. Her mom passed away when she was little, so she has been raised by her dad and her uncles. Molly must stand up to a controlling boyfriend and a pushy best friend and figure out who she is.
This is a similar plot for many books.
But what makes this one stand out is that her boyfriend pushes her too far at the beginning of the book. Most books have this towards the middle to end of the plot arc. By having Trevor be a jerk up front, we now follow Molly on a journey of how to continually stand up to someone (more realistic than a single confrontation) while she redefines herself.
Another perk is Molly’s Irish family. Many different personalities try to give her differing advice on life with the common theme that they care for her. The family members are written in such a way that you want to be a part of their family.
An added bonus to the book is the collection of journal questions at the end of the book. Molly starts to journal and learn more about what she truly believes. Goldblatt gives readers questions to get their journal writing processes started.
This book is a sleeper hit. You won’t see big publicity for it but Girl to the Core is a necessary read for junior high libraries in modeling how to peacefully/respectfully stand up for yourself.
It’s great to see authors like Marilyn Johnson delve into the world of what a modern library actually looks like. Here’s an excerpt from This Book is Overdue that summarizes it pretty well:
Somewhere between Jeanette Moodie’s frontiers and Lena Kjellar’s is the story of a profession in the midst of an occasionally mind-blowing transition. A library is a place to go for a reality check, a bracing dose of literature, or a “true reflection of our history,” whether it’s a brick-and-mortar building constructed a century ago or a fanciful arrangement of computer codes. The librarian is the organizer, the animating spirit behind it, and the navigator. Her job is to create order out of the confusion of the past, even as she enables us to blast into the future.
I also appreciate the acknowledgment that a librarian helps you find your information efficiently, as well as the nod to libraries as a community center. Our local public library is offering business and network classes and helping people with their job applications. In a time where the majority of our population is being hit hard economically, a hub with free access to information is crucial.
Here’s a link to the article from NPR.
When I taught Language Arts we had a chart where you cross-referenced the grade level score from the STAR test with how many points a student’s goal should be.
The calculator found here does that. It also factors in how much practice time a student has for independent reading in addition to how long the goal period is.
You can create a roster from the web page. The nicer feature would be to include the source code for this directly in your Reading Renaissance account where your rosters were already created.
On June 14 the DS will have a “game” called 100 Classic Books that will let you read public domain classic books. The $19 price tag is cheap when compared to other DS games but expensive when compared to Kindle-ish apps for phones. A plus, though, is the ability to download new content via the Nintendo WFC.
If you’ve been here the whole time, let’s continue.
Open up the Flash file we’ve been working on.
Edit your hero movieclip.
Add a textbox above the hero’s head.
Change the textbox from ‘Static’ to ‘Dynamic’.
For the instance name, type scarytimer.
For the Var:, type _root.scarytimer. (_root lets us know that the variable exists on the main level of the stage and not just privately with the movieclip).
If you don’t want the timer text to be selectable by a mouse, make sure the ‘Ab’ button is not selected.
A variation on this would be to create a new tile with the timer on it and spread those tiles throughout your maze.
Your dynamic text settings should look something like this:
Rick Riordan posted on Twitter last night that he just finished his draft of a new Camp Half-Blood book and was sending it off to his editor. It is on schedule to be released this Fall.
It provides a listing of required and optional items to include on a student’s IEP. This could prove very handy, both for parents to know their rights and for teachers to speed up their workflows.
Yet another reason why we should all have iPod Touches on campus, like this school.
