WORD OF THE DAY IS BACK!

It's been a long couple of weeks and we are all in need of some laughter. It's Friday! That means that it's time to use our Words of the Day in a sentence. We are combining the 4 words from last week with the three words from this week.

Here are the words and definitions:

Validate: to declare legally valid; legalize
Voracious: an insatiable appetite
Exonerate: to free from accusation or blame
Maritime: near the sea; concerned with shipping or navigation
Carrion: dead or rotting flesh
Maladroit: clumsy; inept
Tome: a large book

There are a lot of words, so we will accept 2 related sentences.
LET THE GAMES BEGIN!!!

LEagen:
After being lost at sea for three months, the crew felt validated in relieving their voracious appetite by feasting on the carrion of the maladroit deck-hand who had died. They justified the act based on the code in the Maritime Tome, which stated that in a life and death situation, sailors would be exonerated for any activity deemed absolutely necessary for survival of the crew.

LKubik
A page from a pirate's diary:

The maladroit pirate tossed the prisoner's carrion overboard to hide his voracious need to murder and also exonerate his vindictive image before returning to the captain's cabin to validate the maritime tome of treasure maps discovered there.

JHavlicek
In order to validate my voracious longing for the maritime wars of the last century, I took to the tome of "Victory at Sea".
In my maladroit way, I could not conceive of the destruction of human carrion sacrificed to exonerate the enemy who began this war.

CBelcastro
Noticing a carrion smell coming from the refrigerator in Student Services, the maladroit Counselor immediately lost her voracious appetite. She threw her tome to the floor in a rage and demanded to validate whomever caused this to not be exonerated before they left for their maritime vacation.

BWilliams
The maladroit cruise ship agent was refusing the validate the ticket of the voracious man with the rotting carcass, but after searching the tome of maritime regulations the man was exonerated, as there was nothing that prohibited him from bringing a carrion aboard the ship.

MNeugebauer
I was called to room 1903 as a student had thrown a large Tome at a teacher's head. The student asked me to validate that the teacher had a Voracious appetite and enjoyed eating Carrion squirrels. Hearing this statement, I all of a sudden became Maladroit and had to Validate the student's statement. The teacher could not Exonerate themselves from the statement and was thus taken away to the dean's office! The dean then told the teacher to find a house located next to the Maritime and buy it and never come back to PSHS

MHarring
A voracious vulture boarded a plane with two dead raccoons, and was reprimanded by the maladroit flight attendant, who claimed that FAA regulations allow only one carry-on per passenger; the vulture was then exonerated when he pulled out his own TSA regulations tome, which validated his claim that one carry-on and one personal item - in this case his carrion - are allowed when flying to his maritime destination.

Magnetic Poetry

Here is a fun idea for encouraging kids to write. Magnetic Poetry is an online version of the refridgerator magnets that you may have seen that allow you to make up your own sentences, phrases, poetry, slogans or whatever else you can think of.
There are four versions at this site and inspite of the names sounding "elementary", there are great words and phrases in all of the online "kits". The creators also have a TEACHER tab with lots of ideas. The online "kit" allows users to SAVE to their online gallery-but there would be no reason why something that is created in class couldn't be printed to turn in as an assignment.
Finally, this would be a GREAT activity on a SMARTboard because of the interactivity-
How about a class project to create a poem, a slogan, a protest, song lyrics--the mind reels...
Lots and lots of ideas.

ENJOY!

Back from hiatus!

The combination of 2 days of SAC and 2 days of IHSA State Bowling(Congrats Cougars girls!!) took me out of the loop last week.





This week's information is kind of cool-- How 'bout a "Doodle for Google" contest?!!
I imagine that this will mosly appeal to the artists among our students-but none the less it is a cool contest- and ---everyone doodles!

A little history:
"Google doodles, the drawings that are designed on, around and through the Google logo on their home page, have long been part of Google's history. As a Google intern in 2000, Google Webmaster Dennis Hwang began celebrating and marking worldwide events and holidays with doodles. Since then, the work of the doodle team has been seen by millions and reached cult status, with fans waiting with bated breath to see the next creation on the Google homepage."


Here's the deal:
Have students play around with the GOOGLE homepage logo and see what new designs you can come up with. The theme is: "What I Wish for the World."

Entries need to include:
A doodle
A title for the doodle
A supporting statement explaining how the doodle relates to the "What I Wish for the World" theme .
I have registered PSHS. We can only supmit 6 entries as a school - so if you are interested in doing this as a class project- we will need to do some judging as a school.

Here are some doodle examples.

Here is contest specifics

Let's have some entries from PSHS!!

Word of the Day - Week 2

Once again, sentences using the 5 words of the week.
1. Tenacious
2. Incontrovertible
3. Prehensile
4. Winnow
5. Commodious

Fsmith
The prehensile CEOs of AIG and Wells Fargo should be winnowed out of their jobs because they are sitting in their commodious homes and offices, tenaciously justifying their bonuses and lavish surroundings in the face of incontrovertible evidence they were responsible for the downfall of their own companies.

PAldis
The monkeys with the prehensile tails were being very tenacious about their commodious zoo environment ever since theincontrovertible aggression ensued when all the monkeys became upset and the keepers had to winnow out most of the artificial
components of their exhibit that were causing the upsetting behavior.

METesten
We have incontrovertible evidence that it was the monkey who used her prehensile tail to winnow the wheat and not the elephant, because the winnowing room is not sufficiently commodious for the elephant.

T Smith- (meant for fun and with NO MALICE toward anyone)
Unable to adjust to no longer living in a commodious home, Michael J cries himself to sleep every night; however, one night, his nose, which incontrovertibly had been winnowed away to next to nothing, fell off while he was blowing it, and unable to find it through his tears, Michael's new pet chimpanzee had to use his wonderfully prehensile hands to pick it up so it could be reattached.

JJarot
The tenacious man found that the money he had winnowed in the commodious room by using his prehensile hands was incontrovertible after all

GeekBrief 020309 - Newseum and Today's Front Pages

The Newseum is museum of news located in Washington DC — it offers visitors an experience that blends five centuries of news history with up-to-the-second technology and hands-on exhibits. It also has a terrific web site. Today's Front Pages is a part of that web site.It accesses the front page stories as they appear in the papers of the US and the world. The "dots" on the map indicate cities and a click gives you the front page. It is interesting to see what is important enought to appear on the the front page of newspapers in different US cities as well as all parts of the world. The site even has an archive of front pages. As an example, it is interesting to take a look at papers from around the world as written September 12, 2001.

(As an aside, it was also very interesting to see the country's take on last week's Blago stories!)


Application in the classroom:

English:Compare and contrast writing/reporting on specific events
ESL: Find a newspaper from a country/region of student's origin/language; write in English about the front page stories.
History: Take a look at historical events and how they were covered in different parts of the country/world.