8 Caffo J WIR Blog Post

     Last Friday, we finished our travel brochures, the 1:1 movement came back to our school, and took our second quiz on the Art of Communication over the weekend.  The travel brochure covered the similarities of all of the colonial regions, North, Middle, and South.  It could only be one slide, 6 bullet points and 6 words per bullet point. The 1:1 movement organization went through our bags with us to see what was recyclable, what was we could use less of, what was reusable, and what needed to go to the landfill.  The quiz focused primarily on the regions of the colonies.  Mr. Snedden said that he was going to keep putting a question about civic republicanism until every single person got it right.
     On Monday we started the day off by roasting our Patriots Pen essays.We helped each other with our essays by giving constructive criticism.  Many people realized when they were reading their essay out loud that it didn't even make sense. Others had bad content, and overall we decided that most of us needed to work harder on our essays.  After this we had time to work on them in class.
     On Tuesday, we did an Analyze That warm up.  We analyzed the political cartoons, "Unite or Die", and "Paying the Excise Man".  We analyzed them using SOAP, and additional questions aimed for the specific cartoon.  SOAP is identifying the Speaker, Occasion, Audience, and Purpose. This took up most of our day because an assembly took away our class time.
     On Wednesday, we went over our plastic bag assignment.  At our table, we discussed what our articles were about, without putting our opinions in the discussion.  As a class, we discussed the environmental, social, and economical impacts.  After this, we wrote a business letter to the council member of the district we live in. The letter was about our opinions on the idea of banning plastic bags in grocery and retail stores in San Diego, and why our opinion actually matters.
     On Thursday, we had a checklist of assignments to do.  Firstly, we analyzed another political cartoon, Miss Ame-Stamp.  Again we had to SOAP the cartoon.  Next, we worked on our Patriots Pen essay by putting some of the final touches on it.  Then we made turkeys to put all over the school to remind people to raise money for the Turkey Trot.  Finally, since Troy Fountas made a weird turkey noise, he had to get on the table and do a turkey dance he hadn't seen before, and Josh Ball made it rain.
     Our homework this week was to complete our final draft of the Patriots Pen essay.  this meant to complete this checklist:

Task	Yes/No	Day of the week
Complete final draft of essay		Right before printing
Essay is for a target audience		Monday
Thesis is at the end of the introduction and in the conclusion		Monday
There is supporting evidence		Monday
Concluding statement offers closure		Monday
Read essay out loud to make sure it makes sense		Monday
Knowledge of theme, theme development, clarity of ideas		Mon/Tue/Wed
2 people other than partner to proof read		Monday
Spelling and grammar		Right before printing
entry form printed and filled out		Monday
Confirm essay is 300-400 words		Right before printing
No name on essay		Monday
Print 2 copies of essay		Wednesday
Envelope and stamp		Monday