Some students have asked about online reading and if it can be included in their reading journals.  The answer, of course, is “yes, but”.  Yes, but it needs to follow a formula to be legitimate.  Below you will see an example shown in class.

If a student is say, reading online fan fiction on a site such as Wattpad they can apply a formula to tabulate how many “pages” they have read.  But first, the student needs to establish their reading rate.  To do this, look at the example below.  In this example Suzy read for 30 in one sitting and found that she was reading 25 pages in that 30 min. block of time. So she follows the steps below…

• Take the amount of pages you read divided by the time it took to read them.
  • In this case that is 25/30
• Then take the quotient as your reading rate.
  • In this case the number was 0.83…
  • This means that Suzy reads about 0.83 pages per min.
• Then take the amount of time you were reading on Wattpad
  • Let’s say Suzy reads for 40 min on Wattpad tonight
  • Take the time you read times your reading rate.
    • In this case Suzy then takes 40 X 0.83 = 33.2
      • This means Suzy read the equivalent of 33.2 pages online tonight (or 33 pages)
• Now record that in your reading journal

However, reading novels and other actual “books” MUST be the key focus in your reading journal.  Your goal is to read 20 books this year.  Also, please note that online reading such as Facebook, Snapchat etc. is not “reading time” as it much of it is scrolling, looking at pictures, and does not relate to the focus of reading and understanding literature.  “Reading time” is time spent sitting with fiction or non-fiction books, focusing on the craft of written language.

School is the best thing  to happen in the world to kids that never knew how to write and draw and learn.  https://media2.picsearch.com/is?8Eqc5SVyHl5y9lNRlrzCvP941oqRlrQixaTLOOExN4M&height=221 here is the link  to  my  picture

that is on the  right  bottom  corner and if you want to know more about school go to this web site www.learn about school.ca .

Today we studied a classic short story by Ray Bradbury called “The Veldt” which begs to question the impact of technology on people’s lives, and more importantly, where does imagination end and reality begin?  Click the links below to read the original published story, get the assignment, and watch the television presentation of “The Veldt”

click the link below to get a copy of the story

15.03.16 bradbury_veldt – short story

click the link below

The Veldt story elements

Today we are going out and visiting other Edublogger classrooms around the world.  Click on the link below to find new classrooms of students that have been online just like you.  Be sure to leave comments on blogs that you have read to let them know they have been read.

Be sure to also share a link from your blog and/or our class blog home page to invite them to come interact with our own blogs.

This is a grade 7 class on Vancouver Island in BC

http://huzzah.edublogs.org/

This is Mr. Hope’s Grade 7 class from Australia

http://chrishopesblog.edublogs.org/

This is a grade 8 class from New Zealand

http://rm5ois.edublogs.org/

This is a grade 7 class from Scotland

http://deanburnep.primaryblogger.co.uk/

This is in ELA class in the United States

http://edublogs.eanesisd.net/tkriese/

This is a mystery class blog (still researching where they are from)

http://blog.elanco.org/bcarl/

 

 

Today you will learn the online automatic way to generate a bibliography for your research paper.  Whenever submitting work of your own that uses the ideas of other people you MUST cite your sources to give credit to the original people who did the work first.  Also, by citing direct evidence and quotations of people in your research you are also borrowing from their credibility.  For example: if I said that there are estimated to be more than 200,000 galaxies, each with over 200,000 stars on average that sounds like a pretty big claim for a teacher from Arborg that doesn’t even own a telescope.  But if I quoted this fact from Dr. Stephen Hawking as stated in his book A Brief History of the Universe, then it would sound pretty believable.  I have borrowed his credibility to support my own research!

Here is a link to a great free bibliography website and a video on how to use it.

http://www.easybib.com/

here are some more cites that should work too.  Sometimes after the first bibliography the website asks you to turn off the ad blocker.  If this happens then just use another site for your next citation.

http://www.citationmachine.net/apa/cite-a-book

http://www.bibme.org/apa

http://www.citethisforme.com/citation-generator/mla

https://www.qub.ac.uk/cite2write/harvard3l.html

https://www.citefast.com/?s=MLA