Last Official School Day

Hello class! Amazingly, we have already reached the end of our freshman year of high school. We clearly accomplished a lot over this year. A few examples:

• We read 8 books this year: Lord of the Flies, Macbeth, a banned book of our choice, Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Little Brother, Romeo and Juliet, and A Whole New Mind
• We created podcasts of ourselves speaking on a topic of our choice, as part of the worldwide This I Believe project
• We composed multi-page essays posted on our individual websites and enhanced with links, videos, pictures, and other online tools
• We learned how to live blog with people outside of the class and apply the ideas presented in our novels to the world
• We talked one-on-one with author Daniel Pink about his book, A Whole New Mind

Today in class, we had our final work day to finish up our TEDx Talks. If you were not able to test your powerpoint on the classroom computer at some point this class, you will want to come into the classroom after finals sometime before Wednesday. Ms. Smith said the room should be open and empty after noon (once all three finals are over), but will probably be in use during all test periods. For the weekend, Ms. Smith recommended we practice, practice, practice. According to her schedule, tonight we should practice and memorize the first four minutes of our presentation. Tomorrow, we should go through the entire five-minute speech. On Sunday, Ms. Smith suggested that we rehearse our entire speech twice, complete with our powerpoint in the background and a small audience (ie. Mom and Dad). Remember, we begin our presentations during the last final on Wednesday and finish them first thing on Friday. Presenters 15-18, approximately, will go on Wednesday, and the rest on Friday. If you do not remember when you present, view the typed list posted below on Thursday's scribe data. Ms. Smith also strongly suggested that we visualize our presentations a few times the night before we give our speech to the class. She said to sit in a quiet room, close our eyes, and envision our speech going perfectly. Other than preparing for the final, though, we have no homework. Good luck with your preparations; I cannot wait to hear from all of you!


Link to Ms. Smith's webpage (here you can find the presentation rubric, tips on presenting, a powerpoint that displays the week's agenda, and links to many of the assignments we have completed throughout the year, if you are feeling nostalgic): http://arapahoe.littletonpublicschools.net/Default.aspx?tabid=1924

If you would like to see some examples of the TEDx Talks done by Christian Long's class, click here: http://www.youtube.com/user/TEDxClassroomProject#p/u