English II Goes All 21st Century Literacies

There are several new technologies kicking in English II. If you haven't been participating in the discussions going on in the Sophomore English forum, you are missing out on some very interesting conversations about race and beauty in Midsummer Night's Dream and other Shakespearian plays. If you are a student in English II, you will need to log in to Uni Forums before you will be able to see the Sophomore English forum. Uni Forums are here.

I've been working on a Sophomore English wiki which will be debuting in class tomorrow. I am going to ask you to publish your revised book reviews (the files you emailed me) on the wiki. The anchor page for book reviews already exists, once you create an account on wikispaces, you will be able to add a link to your book review on the anchor page. I would like to keep the anchor page arranged by book titles that link to a new page with the book review on it.

I've also created a page called Vocabulary Pictures that I'm hoping will help you to study for your first quarter exam. To assist in learning vocabulary for their final exam, the class of 2010 created visual tableaus of their vocabulary words. The picture at the top of this entry is the tableau for prodigious (adj. Impressively great in size, force, or extent; enormous). As you prepare for your first quarter exam, I would encourage you to create your own visual tableaus for the vocabulary and post your pictures on corresponding pages on the wiki. I will feature the best tableaus here on the blog. Be sure that you caption your photos with the word, part of speech and definition in context. Thanks to Sinda, Gabe, Loic and Stephanie for their creative idea--last year's English II students got the highest vocab grades on their finals EVER!

Feel free to create your wikispaces account now and explore the Sophomore English wiki. I will be demonstrating how to create an account and post images and text in class tomorrow.