Welcome 8 White! It's nice to meet you!!

 

I am very excited to be your 8th grade English teacher!! It is my job to guide you through your final year in middle school and get ready for high school and what lies ahead!  We'll be using many different tools in our English class to start discussions, analyze, write, respond, and research.  You'll find some great resources here on our class blog.  I hope that by having these resources here at your fingertips, you'll feel like you have your own Miss Enos at home to help when you need it!  If you have trouble finding something here on the blog, just let me know and I will help you find it!  If you ever have suggestions for a great resource/topic to add to the class blog, just let me know!!

Here is a video tour that I created to show you around the blog. 

In fact, let me know if you have any questions at all (any time at all!).  You can ask during class, before/after-school, through an e-mail.  I don't care how you ask but ask!!!  I want to help you.  You are my number one priority!

One thing you will hear me mention about a million times is my hope for you to have a Spirit of Excellence! I recently heard a quote "Keep working until you are proud!"  Make that your motto for your final year at DMS and many more after!

My goal is to help you strengthen your reading and writing skills this year, but I also want to teach you skills to help you be successful as you grow into the amazing adult you are meant to be.  I want to help you grow by collaborating, creating, and communicating.  I also want to see you become champions! Just like these boys! 

Check out their story and think about what you can accomplish if you set your mind to it!  Add a comment here on the blog to say something we can learn from these boys that will help us succeed this year or tell us about one of your goals and your plans to reach them.  Offer up any advice or tips you have! 

Are you up for the challenge?  Because I know I am!


Let's enjoy the year!!

Go, White Team!!!

TED Talk #4: Don't Eat the Marshmallow

Money, connections, luck, a rocket-high IQ, sure, these are all helpful things to have in life, but there is one distinct factor behind most success stories: self-discipline.  Self-discipline, or the desire to work hard today in order to reach a goal tomorrow, is a crucial part of succeeding in life.  We may know this, but it sure is hard to remember sometimes!  That extra piece of pizza smells amazing!  That purse would look so good with those new shoes!  That essay can wait until tomorrow! The coach won't mind if I miss a couple of practices!  Our problem usually is that we want what feels good today, without considering tomorrow.

Do you really need another purse??

Let's take all that money you earned by shoveling snow this winter. Did you.... A) save it for something really special and fantastic?! or B) spend it the minute you got it on candy and soda?  If you chose option A then you not only are probably playing with a great new X-box (or something even cooler), but you should also feel very proud of yourself!  In the scientific world, they call this waiting- delayed gratification.  Basically, delay of gratification refers to the ability to put off getting an immediate reward in order to gain a better reward later.

Our TED Talk today deals with just that topic.  Joachim de Posada shares his experiment about delayed gratification and how it can be used to predict success.  Joachim focuses his study on 4-year-olds.  He give the kids one marshmallow and tells them that if they wait 15 minutes without eating their marshmallow they will get two marshmallows!!.  Easy, right? Why eat one, when you can get two??  Well, it's not so easy if you are 4!!  Check out the link here to view this adorable talk.

That marshmallow looks sooooo good! 

Too often people want the reward now, instead of waiting for something better! When something good comes their way, they don't bother to think about the effect it might have on tomorrow.  Learning the secret to delayed gratification, or working towards a big reward instead of settling for an immediate smaller reward, makes a huge impact on how successful we are.  Instead of spending your money on little things, save for something big!  Instead of blowing off practice or training, work hard so you can succeed on the field.  Instead of flunking classes and limiting your future choices, be excellent and watch the opportunities open up!

Don't get caught up in just the immediate "marshmallows" in front of you now.  Wait for the bigger prize!

Enjoy the talk and don't eat the marshmallow!!!

TED Talk #3: Why Videos Go Viral

When I grow up, I want to be a doctor, photographer, policeman, fireman, teacher, veterinarian, YouTuber!  Wait, what?!  A YouTuber?!

If any child mentioned YouTuber on a list of dream jobs ten years ago, people wouldn't have had a clue what he was talking about.  Boy, have things changed.

Media has changed.  Communication has changed.  No longer is the Internet a place for professionals and computer geniuses only.  Every day people are creating and jumping in the deep side of the Web.  It's the ultimate technological power-to-the-people movement.  In this case, the power to create a video.  

The pool of video online is wide and deep!  Sometimes funny.  Sometimes sweet.  Some well-made.  Some very well made, but, honestly, most are really, really, really bad.



What fascinates me is that even a horrendously horrible video can still score hundreds of thousands of views. That's right, hundreds of thousands.  It's crazy!

Why do some videos go viral and some fizzle out?  What is the key to getting a large audience for that video of your cat playing the piano?

This guy knows.  I bring you this week's TED Talk from Kevin Allocca.

Kevin Allocca is YouTube's trends manager.  That means he gets paid to watch YouTube videos all day!  He's got some deep thoughts about web video today.  In this talk from TEDYouth, he shares the 4 reasons a video goes viral.

Here's the link.

Enjoy the video and keep those cameras running when you, your friends, your cat, your parakeet, your dog, your grandpa, or your brother does something interesting.  You never know who will be the next trend in YouTube videos.

TED Talk #2: Underwater Astonishments

Do you dream of boldly going where no man has gone before?  To explore?  Discover?  It is not too late! Contrary to what we often think, there are still a lot of undiscovered astonishments out there in the world.  Just when we think we understand the world around us, we discover some new animal, place, wonder, and we are blown away all over again. As our speaker, David Gallo, explains, we only know about 3% of what is out there in the ocean.  That leaves 97% left to explore and learn!  Plenty of room for wonder!

Our second TED talk of the year explores a handful of the amazing creatures living deep below the ocean. These little guys may be hidden away in the dark, but their beauty and resourcefulness outshines our expectations.

Whoa!!!!

Click here to hear the TED Talk Underwater Astonishments
David Gallo shows jaw-dropping footage of amazing sea creatures, including a color-shifting cuttlefish, a perfectly camouflaged octopus, and a Times Square's worth of neon light displays from fish who live in the blackest depths of the ocean. This short talk celebrates the pioneering work of ocean explorers like Edith Widder and Roger Hanlon.

Let David Gallo's TED talk inspire you to dig deep and explore the fascinating world of nature.  Do you have an interest in animals?  The Amazon?  Insect Kingdoms? Deep Space? Birds? Monkeys? The Arctic?  The Earth's core?  Dive deep and dig in!  Let your chromebook be a doorway to the world!   Who knows, maybe you will be the next person to discover a brand new species?

TED Talk #1: The Cockroach Beat Box

In class, we've been talking a lot about the word genius.  What do we mean when we say genius?  What does a genius look like?  How does someone become a genius?  We've discussed that being a genius has no age requirement.  A genius can be a kid as well as a grown-up.  We've talked about how different people are good at different things.   When people are compared to others they may feel bad about themselves... they may feel that they are not smart or talented.  Geniuses come in many shapes and sizes.  And so do ideas.  Passions.  Talents.  Interests. We may not be able to explain them.  We may not always understand them, but one thing's for sure- all of our ideas, genius ideas or not, come from our brains.

Everybody dance now! 

The first TED talk in our TED talk series focuses on just that very subject-- the very place where the magic happens!  It's hiding there under our skin, cozy in our skulls, like an electric mass of muscle, humming silently away.  Where our ideas grow, passions are discovered, questions are formed.  That gooey, squishy, mysterious, ball of gray stuff.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our brain.  

Only muuuuuuuch smaller.

Neuroscientist (someone who studies the brain) Greg Gage gives us a glimpse into the workings of our brains by, wait for it, dissecting a cockroach... yes, right in front of us!   It turns out that cockroach brains are really similar to human brains, so they are handy to study.  Check out this amazing (and kind of freaky) TED talk to learn about how the brain receives and sends out electric messages and how our bodies respond and even dance to a beat.  

Here's the talk! 

Enjoy!