Editing ROCKS!!!

Moneyball by Micheal Lewis -- p 119-288

The second half of Moneyball gets deeper into the A's drafting players that other teams do not really want, and then follows these players' stories as they rise up to the Major Leagues and do very well to everyone else's suprise.

One of these players was Jeremey Brown, who Billy Beane drafted out of Alabama. In most people's eyes, Brown was fat and lazy, and no other team wanted anything to do with him. What Beane and his men saw was that even though Brown didn't look like the greatest baseball player, he got on base much more than anyone else in his conference. Other teams laughed at Beane and the A's for drafting Brown, but he ends up shooting up through the minor leagues as one of the best players drafted in his year.

The end of the book focuses on the A's run to the playoffs, and how even though the team has been successful with their unconventional ways, many people still fail to put any confidence in them. The A's are still doing things in their own way now, and they have made it to the playoffs again.

I would recommend this book to someone who is interested in baseball or business. Other people may be bored by it, but I think it will prove to be one of the most important book written on baseball this generation. Many other teams are already modeling their practices after Beane's ways that are described in Moneyball.

The Renaissance

The Renaissance in Europe was probably the most important period for the Western artistic world. After the black plague killed approximately one-third of Europe's population, the surviving people were ready to move on with a new attitude. If you narrowly escaped a period when one out of every three people died, how would you feel?

Many say the Renaissance began in Italy when the Catholic church began commissioning artists. An example with which you are probably familiar is when Pope Julian II hired Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

The new theories about life, philosophy, religion, and art were strengthened by a group known as the Humanists, who studied Latin and Greek classics to find answers to live better lives. This was the beginning of the Renaissance's turn from the Catholic Church. This turn, better known as The Reformation, was strengthend even furhter with Johannes Guthenberg's invention of the printing press.

The printing press was immediately important because it lowered the cost of books and other printed items. Before the press, monks copied most of the books. This was time consuming and extremely expensive. Once the press was invented, more people could buy books, mostly Bibles, and this helped raise the literacy rate throughout Europe. When people started reading their own Bibles, things started changing quickly. They no longer relied on the Pope to translate the messages in the Bible for them -- this lead to many people doubting the power of the Catholic church, and soon many protestant religions formed to rival the Catholic church.

Another big blow to the church came when England's King Henry VIII broke away from the Catholic church to start the Church of England. He wanted to divorce one of his wives, but the Pope would not allow it. He decided to start his own protestant church instead. He eventually had six wives in all: two he divorced, two he had beheaded, one died on her own, and one outlived him (lucky her). There is an interesting website about his six wives here. My aunt once proved that my mother's family is related to Henry VIII -- enough about me . . .

Things got really interesting once Henry VIII died. At the time of his death, he had three children: Mary, Elizabeth, and Edward, who was nine years old. The succesion laws said that the sons had to be crowned first, so for the next six years, England was ruled by a child (Edward VI)-- actually he ruled in name only; his sisters called the shots. Edward was a sickly boy who died before his sixteenth birthday.

The next ruler of England was Mary, who would rule for five years. Mary's mother was the princess of Spain, and Mary held tight to her Catholic roots. She would come to be known as "bloody Mary" since she set out to rid England of protestants. She had many executed and burned many more alive.

When she died, her younger sister, Elizabeth became queen. She would rule England for the next forty-five years. She never married, and she used the many princes and kings from other countries who wanted to marry her to England's advantage. She restored the Church of England, and was a lover of art. Many historians speculate that she was the one who actually wrote Shakespeare's plays.

When Elizabeth died, the Renaissance was already coming to an end. She was followed by King James, who you might recognize as the person who commissioned the English translation of the Bible that is still popular today. James was a dull man in comparison to Elizabeth -- he did not care for the arts as much as she did, either.

Individual Novel Project

The first thing you need to do is choose a novel from the reading list for novel projects, which you can access here or under "class documents" on the main page.

It is very important that you make a wise decision since this project will count as two grades and it will take you several weeks. Making a good choice of a novel will make this easier for you. Do not choose a book just because you think it is short; this often makes things more difficult. Do not try to get away without reading the book. This is a novel project -- you need to READ a novel.

Step One: Choose a novel from the list, and then talk to me about your choice before you begin. You may want to have several choices since I won't approve everything.

Step Two: Read your novel. You will be able to add this reading to your independent reading record. Once again, trying to complete this project without reading your novel is foolish. I expect you to post three separate responses to your novel as you read. These responses need to be at least four complete paragraphs. You should not wait until the end to do this (keep in mind that Blogger puts a date on all your work). You may want to look over your book and plan where you will write your responses before you begin. The completion of these three responses accounts for 25% of your total grade.

Step Three: When you finish your novel, you should do some research on the author. Go beyond the regular information like where they were born, where they died, etc. Get interesting information about their life experiences, and try to make a connection between the author's life and the novel they created. Maybe you can find the author's purpose for writing the novel the way he or she did. When you are finished with your research, post a 4-5 paragraph biography with your findings. Please remember that you agreed to submit only original work. The completion of this biography will be graded according to the rubric for weblog posts, and will account for 25% of your grade.

Step Four: What is the historical significance of the novel you chose? What makes it worthy of study in a literature class? You should search the Internet for some critical essays about your novel for some of this information. Use the information you find to prove how the novel you chose is an important piece of literature. This should be the most intense part of this project, and your final product should be an essay that proves the importance of your novel that includes evidence from the critical essays you have read, as well as evidence from the novel itself. This essay should be written in the same format as your other essays. You will receive an additional three writing grades for this part of your project (rough draft, editing, final draft). ROUGH DRAFTS WILL BE DUE NOVEMBER 16, 2006.
The final draft of this essay will be graded according to the writing rubric, and will account for 50% of your grade on this project.

Moneyball by Michael Lewis p 1-118

Moneyball is one of the most popular sports books of the past ten years or so. If you are a baseball fan, you may have heard the title already. Since this book's publication "moneyball" has been a term that people use for how some baseball teams with very small budgets can hang with teams with much bigger payrolls. For instance, this year the Florida Marlins are close to making it to the playoffs with a team that gets paid less than three individual New York Yankees.

So far this book has focused on two people: Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A's, and Bill James, a freelance baseball staistician.

Billy Beane grew up as one of the top prospects in Major League Baseball. He was drafted straight out of highschool, but never did much once he reached the Majors. This ruined his beliefs about how new ballplayers should be chosen for the Majors. Beane eventully quit playing baseball and asked to be a scout for the team. Within years he was the general manager of the A's.

Bill James was not hired by any professional team. He used to compile his stats from box scores in newspapers (there was no Internet then), and publish a book called Baseball Abstract every year. He would advertise his book in classified ads across the country. In his first year he would sell under 50 copies. His abstract took into question the way baseball records were kept. He also suggested new ways of keeping stats and records. Not many people took him seriously -- then.

The last chapter I read was about the 2001 Major League Basball draft. Beane, using James-like information has just chosen 20 players that nobody else wanted. Most of the other teams are laughing at him at this point. From memory, I know the A's did pretty well that year, and Beane got many people's attention that year. I also know that the A's, with Beane as their G.M. is about to win their division this year, so something must be working.

I am not sure how I would rate this book at this point. I think I would reccomend Buzz Bissenger's and Tony LaRussa'a Three Nights in August over this one.

Writing Three

You will receive three grades for each of your writings, which should give you the best opportunity to produce the best work. You should have your rough draft completed at the beginning of class on September 28, 2006.

The topic of this piece of writing is a little different, and it could earn you some MONEY, CASH, CHEESE, MOOLAH, DOUGH, BREAD, etc.

All you have to do is write an essay that explains how Communities in Schools (the company that makes schools like Classic City Performance Learning Center possible) has made a difference in your life. You should focus on one big reason and then back it up with several examples.

If you really aren't into winning money, let me know and we can decide an alternative topic.

You need to have a two-page, double-spaced (12pt. Times New Roman) draft at the beginning of class on the date above to be able to edit.


Last Year's State Written Expression Winner

Transcendentalism

Opening: Call me over to your work area so you can answer the following questions.

a. What is original sin?
b. How did the Puritans feel about original sin?
c. How did the Rationalists differ from the Puritans?
d. What are the main themes of Romanticism? Georgia Performance Standard ELAALRL2 states that you should be able to identify themes and support them with evidence. I will expect that you can do this at this point.

That should have been easy.

Now we are going to investigate the central themes of another group of Romantics called the Transcendentalists.

You will continue to address the following Georgia Performance Standard:

ELAALRL2 The student identifies, analyzes, and applies knowledge of theme in a work of American literature and provides evidence from the work to support understanding.

Mini-Lesson:
By the mid-1800s, the United States was still in search of its literary identity. America had popular writers like Washington Irving, but they still did not have the heavy hitters to match up with some of Englands poets and essayists. The Unites States wanted to declare literary independence from Enlgand, much like the political separation that happened almost one hundred years earlier.

It was a good time for Americans to want to assert themselves in the literary world. Learning was very popular at the time. Most Americans wanted to improve their minds in one way or the other. Some of the most popular things to do were attending lectures on topics from astronomy to botany to physics to philosophy. Groups pushing for the abolition of slavery and increased rights for women were also forming during this time.

This strive for independence began for the most part during a hiking trip and dinner with a guestlist that would include some of the United States' most famous literary figures: Nethaniel Hawthorne, Herman Mellville, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. It was at this outing that these men decided that the United States should have writers as good as England's William Shakespeare, and that this would never happen unless they made an effort to do so. These men's dreams would soon be realized in two separate groups -- The Transcendentalists and the Dark Romantics, sometimes known as "anti-transcendentalists".

The Transcendentalists:

The Transcendentalists were Romantics who adopted philosophies from many other places and cultures. They believed that the individual human mind was one of the most powerful instruments in the world, and that the individual mind was connected to all others through what was known as the "oversoul", a collection of everyone's soul that we all share.

Transcendentalists believed that God spoke through people's minds and their hard work. Since they believed this, they also believed that every human was absolutely good and pure. They did not believe that the origianl sin committed by Adam and Eve made the rest of us sinners. Why would God communicate through an impure mind? They also believed that God could communicate to people through nature and a persons intuition.

Since God spoke through individuals, Transcendentalists did not belive that institutions like the governemnet or organized religion were effective. They believed that if a person was truly in touch with their surroundings, they could transcend these physical and man-made things to connect with God. The Transcendentalists' optimism and overall trust in the goodness of all people made them popular with outsiders who would often enjoy their lectures.

Please read the following (all of these can be found in the red anthology):

from "Nature" by Ralph Waldo Emerson
from "Self-Reliance" by Ralph Waldo Emerson


5. When you are through reading, post a 1-2 paragraph response to each piece of writing to your blog. Be sure to concentrate more on what you thought of each piece of writing. Try to include at least one piece of direct evidence with each response (remember standard #1). This should be something that stuck out to you about the particular piece of writing.

6. Next, write explain how each piece is a good example of Transcendentalism by identifying the central themes I described earlier in the post. Use what you read above, and prove that each piece is a good example with a paragraph supported with direct evidence (one paragraph each).

NEXT!!

Check this guy out. If you do not see the video here, you can find it in my assignments folder. I have called it Wilderness:

7. How can you apply Transcendental philosophy to the man in this video? I'm sure you could easily spend a couple paragraphs telling me how. I also know it would be easy for you to back up whatever you say with direct evidence from the texts you have already read. If you are really into it, you might read a little of Henry David Thoreau's Walden. Just choose a couple sections you think you would like.

Self-Evaluate Your Work!!

Once you are finished, leave me a comment so I know to view your work.

Awesome Work!

I would once again like to congratulate everyone on their efforts so far. Below are some great examples of descriptive writing that I have had the pleasure to read this week.

KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK!

'64 Caprice by Josh Duke

A Walk in the Woods by LaDreika Kelly

The Beach by Myles Shepley

A Typical Day in My Neighborhood by Michelle Nash

Christmas by Kaneelvis Smith

Independence Day by Ravente Nowell

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami -- pgs 102 -- 299

I finished this book last night, and I still say it was not as good as Kafka on the Shore, which I would highly reccomend to other people. I still like the way Murakami writes, and I kind of wish I could read his books in Japanese since I'm sure I'm missing a lot reading a translation.

This book is titled A Wild Sheep Chase because the main character has to track down a special sheep in the mountains of Japan to save the company he and a friend of his started. This sheep is magical in that it can inhabit people's bodies for years at a time. The political boss that has the main character on this search needs to find the special sheep because it has left his body, and now he is very ill. We also find out that the main character's best friend, a guy named The Rat was also inhabited by this special sheep.

There is a sequel to this book called Dance, Dance, Dance, and I will probably read that one too -- just not right away. Come to think of it, Kafka on the Shore was originally published as two books in Japan, and later turned into one for American markets.

Research Paper RUBRIC

RESEARCH PAPER RUBRIC
This is how your final product will be graded. You should pay close attention to this and self-evaluate your work as you go. There is another version of this in your Senior Project Handbook that may be easier to use. Each section lists the possible points you can earn.


AREA I: Format

Front page

3

Internal documentation

10

Pagination

2

Bibliography

15

AREA II: Organization


Beginning (thesis statement)

10

Middle (well-developed support)

25

End (thoughtful conclusion)

5

AREA III: Grammar


Sentence Structure
10

Use of tense
5

Capitalization
5

Spelling
5

Punctuation
5

TOTAL

100

The YES test

Use this guide when writing your research paper. I will not accept drafts that do not pass all of these requirements.

Minimum length (not including Title Page and Bibliography)

Typed

Correct format

Internal documentation

Title page with title, name, date, and teacher’s name

Bibliography

Minimum required sources

Correct format

Pages numbered

Citing your Sources

When you write your research paper, it is important to cite every source you use. This insures that you give the people from whom you got your information get credit for their ideas. Failure to give this credit results in plagiarism.

This is where copying down all the bibliogroaphical information from your sources will come in handy. If you have neglected this important step, this is where you will really start to regret doing so.

EXAMPLE – Many Major League Baseball players in the 1940s and 50s took years out of their careers to serve in the military (Jones 345). One well known example is Ted Williams who took time out of his career with the Boston Red Sox to serve in World War II and the Korean War. “Williams said he owed it to his country to serve, and that the bats and balls would be waiting for him upon his return” (Thomas 194).

In this example it should be clear that the first bit of paraphrased evidence came from an author named Jones, and the direct quote came from an author named Thomas. If a reader wanted to know more about these sources, the entire entry will be listed alphabetically in my bibliography.

EXAMPLE -- Negro League players faced many problems once they joined Major Leagur teams. Many were the only African-Americans on their teams, and in many cases they were forced to use different showers, and they were not permitted to wash their uniforms with the rest of the team's clothes. These troubles were not only in the clubhouse and dugout. In many cities, these players received death threats and were taunted by racist fans (Negro League Baseball Museum).

In this example it should be clear that all this information was taken from the Negro League Baseball Museum. Since this was from a website, no page number is necessary. Look at the difference between the first and second examples. The first has two sources in the same paragraph, so I put the citation after the information from that source ends. In the second example, I just put it at the end of the paragraph.

In most cases, your citation will include the last name of the author, or the origanization responsible for a website plus the page number, if necessary. The period always goes outside the citation.

EXAMPLES -- (Siegmund 74). (Jones 1). (National Association of Negro League Players).

Sometimes these citations are a little different if you name the author at the beginning of the paragraph. In that case, all you need is the page number.

EXAMPLE -- In his autobiography, Ready to Play Cool Pappa Bell describes his first time traveling with a major league team. "First off, I had to stay in a different hotel on the colored side of town. I was late to the stadium because the team bus wouldn't drive over there to pick one player up. My manager was angry about that, but when I stole three bases and hit a double in the game, he seemed to forget pretty fast" (34).

Outlining Your Research Paper

Writing a research paper is a major task, and one that should not be done without some planning. It would not be wise to take on this kind of task without an outline. I know how some people may feel about outlines, and believe me, I have felt the same. An outline does not have to be a fancy document with numbers, letters, and subsections. If you can make a list, you can write an outline. People with good outlines have their entire paper mapped out for them before they start writing.

If you have taken good notes from around ten sources, you are ready to begin outlining your paper. This is when you move from collection mode into writing mode, though you may still need to collect a few more sources. An outline can also help you see which sections of your paper need more sources.

Let's continue with the example I started with. I am writing a research paper on Negro League Baseball. I have collected notes from twelve sources from the Internet and from print sources. The first thing I want to do is to catagorize what I have found. After reviewing my notes, I see that I have the following catagories of information:

1. History of the Negro Leagues
2. Negro League Players
3. Negro League Stadiums
4. Negro League Teams
5. Integration into the Major Leagues

All I have done so far is make a list. Anyone can do this. If your list is very short, then you know you should look for different types of information. Once I have this, it is time to stretch this list out, and list some of the details I will include about these subjects.

1. History of the Negro Leagues
a. How did it start?
b. Where did it start?
c. What prevented African-Americans from playing in the Major Leagues?
d. How long did the league last?

2. Negro League Players
a. Well-known players
b. Records
c. Negro League Hall of Fame

3. Negro League Stadiums
a. Kansas City
b. Homestead
c. New York
d. Atlanta
e. Which stadiums are still there?
f. attendence

4. Negro League Teams
a. Kansas City Monarchs
b. Homestead Greys
c. New York Cubans
d. Atlanta Black Crackers
e. What became of these teams
f. Championships, etc.

5. Integration into the Major Leagues
a. How many players integrated
b. How did the African-American players do in the major leagues
c. What struggles did the new players have?

Now that I have catoragized my information and stretched each of those sections out, it is time for me to get more detailed about what is actually going to appear in my paper. If I do this part well, my paper will almost write itself off of this outline. This is where I am going to specify where I am going to use all the information I've taken from my sources. It may be helpful to number your notes at this point.

1. History of the Negro Leagues
a. How did it start?
1. Original Baseball Leagues had black players (note 25)
2. Segrigation Laws (note 13)
3. School Teams (note 9)
4. Military Teams (note 16)
b. Where did it start?
1. Texas (note 12)
2. Ohio (note 2)
3. New York (note 5)
c. What prevented African-Americans from playing in the Major Leagues?
1. Segrigation Laws (note 23)
2. Burger vs. New York (note 8)
3. Players arrested for playing baseball (notes 13, 43)
d. How long did the league last?
1. New York League (note ?)
2. Ohio League (note 32)
3. Major Negro League (note 8)
4. Post-Integration (notes 7, 23, 14)

2. Negro League Players
a. Well-known players
1. Jackie Robinson (notes 2, 4, 56)
2. Josh Gibson (notes 18, 2, 43)
3. Satchel Paige (notes 34, 23, 19)
4. Cool Papa Bell (notes 1, 56, 7)
b. Records
1. Home Runs (note 34)
2. Hits (note 43)
3. Stolen Bases (note 8)
4. RBI (note 29)
5. Strikeouts (note 32)
c. Negro League Hall of Fame
1. Kansas City (note 5)
2. Exhibits (note 18)

3. Negro League Stadiums
a. Kansas City
1. Dates (note 26)
2. Capacity (note 17)
3. Now (note 11)
b. Homestead
1. Dates (note 26)
2. Capacity (note 17)
3. Now (note 11)
c. New York
1. Dates (note 26)
2. Capacity (note 17)
3. Now (note 11)
d. Atlanta
1. Dates (note 26)
2. Capacity (note 17)
3. Now (note 11)
e. Which stadiums are still there?
1. How are they used? (note ??)
f. attendence
1. How did it compare to MLB? (note ??)
2. Did white people attend? (note ??)

You should be able to see that if I had continued stretching out my entire outline, I would have a map of my paper. This work will make it simple for me to begin my first draft of my research paper since I have a list of everything that will go into it, right down to the notes I will use. Keep in mind that each of these green sections are likely to be paragraphs including the paraphrased and directly quoted material you have collected. Creating an outline like this takes time, but it will make the writing easier in the long run.

Writing Rubric

Rubric for Minor Writings and Quizzes (Version 2.0)

A score of five (5) will be awarded to writings that: demonstrates the writer’s choice of an engaging topic, clearly state the writer’s personal views with support from anecdotal evidence or direct and paraphrased textual evidence; have little or so few grammatical and mechanical errors that the writer’s intentions are not clouded; are organized in a manner that guides the reader through the piece, and are deep and insightful commentary on the texts we have read or the topic the writer has chosen.

A score of four (4) will be awarded to writings that: demonstrate the writer’s choice of a somewhat engaging topic, state some of the writer’s views with some support from anecdotal evidence or paraphrased textual evidence, but direct evidence may be missing; have some grammatical and mechanical errors that may cloud the writer’s intentions; are organized well, but could benefit from more careful organization, and are somewhat original commentary on the texts we have read or the topic the writer has chosen.

A score of three (3) will be awarded to writings that: demonstrate the writer’s choice of a mundane or overused topic, and may or may not state the writer’s views with minimal support from anecdotal evidence or direct and paraphrased textual evidence. A score of three (3) will be awarded to papers that are entirely composed of factual or summative information without any evidence of the writer’s views, are poorly organized, have grammatical and mechanical errors that cloud the writer’s intentions, and are unoriginal or merely surface commentary on the texts we have read or the topic the writer has chosen.

A score of two (2) will be awarded to writings that: demonstrate the writer’s choice of a mundane or overused topic, may not have a clear focus, or claim; have very limited or no evidence or support, have so many grammatical and mechanical errors that the writers intentions are clouded, are too brief to adequately address the topic, are very poorly organized, and make very little commentary on the texts we have read or the topic the writer has chosen.

A score of one (1) will be awarded to writings that: demonstrate the writer’s choice of a mundane or overused topic do not have a clear focus or claim, have no textual evidence, have so many grammatical or mechanical errors that the writer’s intentions are difficult to discern, are too brief to adequately address the topic, are written as a single paragraph, and make no commentary on the texts we have read or the topic the writer has chosen.

Short Story #3 -- Theme

"Theme" is the central idea of a work of literature. This does not mean "theme" is the same as the subject of a piece of writing. The subject of a piece of writing can be described in a word or two, "baseball", "farming", or "The Holocaust" to list a few examples. The theme is what the author wishes to reveal about the subject.

Some Examples:

Romeo and Juliet:
Subject: Young Love
Theme: Young love is often more important than family

Boyz in tha Hood:
Subject: Life in South-Central Los Angeles
Theme: Gang life is dangerous even for those who do not actively engage in it.

Back to the Future:
Subject: Time Travel
Theme: Though many people would like to change their pasts, their lives may end up worse if they did.

For this project, you will need to select a short story to read. Below are some suggestions of stories that are good for discussing theme:

Blues Ain't No Mockin Bird by Toni Cade Bambara -- page 266 in gold anthology
Independence by Ruth Sasaki -- page 278 in gold anthology
American History by Judith Ortiz Cofer -- page 290 in gold anthology
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson -- page 34 in green McGraw Hill anthology
A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor -- page 86 in green McGraw Hill anthology

If you would like to read another story that is not on this list, show it to me before you begin.

When you are finished reading, post the following to your weblog:

1. Write a 2-3 paragraph response to the story you read. Please focus more on how you felt about the story than writing a summary.

2. What was the subject of the story? What was the theme? Look at the examples above if you need to. What do you think about what the author was trying to reveal about the subject? Do you agree with the author? Answer these questions in a short paragraph.

3. How does the author's words support the theme they are trying to convey. In other words, how can you tell what the author thought about the subject, and how can you tell what the author was hoping you would think when you finished the story. Make sure you provide some direct evidence from the story to support you r response.

4. Think of your favorite movie. Explain the subject of that movie, and then the theme. How does the person who created this movie deliver the theme? Describe the themes that let you know how the author feels about the subject and convinces viewers to feel the same.

When you are through, self-evaluate your work with the help of the Rubric for Weblog Posts, and then leave me a comment to this message telling me you are through.

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami -- Pages 1 -- 101

I checked this book out of the Athens public library this week because this summer I very much enjoyed another one of Murakami's books, Kafka on the Shore. Murakami is one of the most popular authors in Japan, and his books have been translated into English since 1981. A Wild Sheep Chase was the first of his books to be translated and sold in the United States.

I am enjoying this book so far, but maybe not as much as Kafka on the Shore. The main character is a thirty-year-old man who has just gotten a divorce from his wife. He is pretty depressed and drinks too much until he meets a new girl who is an ear model. He enjoys the time he spends with his new girlfriend, and it seems to me that she will have some sort of magical powers before long. Murakami always uses plenty of magic and fantasy (for lack of better words; I really do not care for fantasy ficiton like The Lord of the Rings, etc.) in his other books. For instance, Kafka on the Shore had many talking cats.

The main character runs an advertising agency with one of his friends. In the last chapters I've read, a political boss is asking that they stop printing one of the pamphlets they produce. This is worrying the main character and his friend since this pamphlet is the biggest money-maker for their small company. The political boss wants them to stop publishing the pamphlet because of a picture of sheep. The picture seems to have some sort of magical powers . . . I'm sure I'll find out more about that later.

Rubric for Weblog Posts

A score of 90 – 100 will be awarded to posts that: are original, complete, and contain the required direct textual evidence. Posts scoring in this range illustrate students’ opinions and responses to the text that are supported by facts that the student has fully analyzed.

A score of 80 – 89 will be awarded to posts that: are mostly original, complete, and contain most of the direct textual evidence required by the instructions. Posts scoring in this range illustrate students’ opinions and responses to the texts, but may rely too much on facts from another source with no further analysis of those facts.

A score of 70 – 79 will be awarded to posts that are: somewhat original, barely complete, and contain some of the direct textual evidence required by the instructions. Posts scoring in this range illustrate the student’s willingness to complete only the bare minimum. These posts may have some illustration of the student’s opinion and response to the text, but most of the post relies on facts from other sources with little analysis.

A score of 0 – 69 will be awarded to posts that: are not original work, incomplete, or not containing any evidence from the texts. These posts rely too much on facts from another source, contain no analysis, and may be plagiarized.