I rearranged the room this afternoon. I don't know if it's my imagination or if it is really a bit more spacious. I'll let you be the judges. In any case, I removed all the large desks and replaced them with smaller lighter ones from next door.

Today students read an article from Skyways magazine about thinking outside of the cage--hamster cage, that is. After reading the article, students then introduced themselves to a classmate and shared.

We spoke about the class materials and the email I sent many students but not all. Hopefully, students have rectified this and added email addresses to their Peralta contact information. I wasn't able to drop anyone, so Permission Numbers are how we'll handle those who want to add the class.

There was no homework other than reading the syllabus and the letter I sent out this weekend. There are two assignments connected to the syllabus: one is an email to me, the other a response to the syllabus.

Make sure you use a heading when posting anything to the blog. Sign-in as anonymous. The heading is: Your complete name, my name plus title "Professor," the class name spelled out, and on the last line (4) the date: day month and year.

Joe Blow
Professor Wanda Sabir
English 1A
23 January 2012

Tomorrow we will review the syllabus, talk a bit about the class, take an exam if we have time, talk about the President's final State of the Union Address that evening. We will see if we can apply a template from They Say, I Say to respond to it. We'll talk about this more on Wednesday.

Thursday we will watch the film or most of the film, Pray the Devil Back to Hell. There will be a cyber-writing assignment attached to the film. We start reading the book this weekend as well. It's a fast read. We will assign literature circles for discussion on Monday. Don't forget to keep a reading and vocabulary log for the assigned books this semester. Type your notes. You will turn them in with the essay.