Oscar Challenge 2011

Hello Bloggers,

It's that time again! The Academy Awards (also known as The Oscars) are on Sunday, which means it's time for us to make our Oscar predictions. To add a little healthy competition to the mix, I've decided to make this a little contest. Below, I've listed the major categories for this year's awards. Your mission: predict as many winners as possible! I've assigned each award category a points value, and it's up to you to collect as many points as possible. The more, the better. Next week, after the awards ceremony has taken place, we will calculate the points collected by each and every participant. The participant with the most points will be the winner of a fantastic super-awesome surprise prize! All you have to do is post your predictions on your blog, and then come back here and comment to let me know you've decided to participate. Happy voting!

5 POINT CATEGORIES

Best Picture: Black Swan, The Fighter, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The King's Speech, 127 Hours, The Social Network, Toy Story 3, True Grit, Winter's Bone

Best Actor: Javier Bardem (in Bieutiful), Jeff Bridges (in True Grit), Jesse Eisenberg (in The Social Network),  Colin Firth (in The King's Speech), and James Franco (in 127 Hours)

Best Actress: Annette Benning (in The Kids Are All Right), Jennifer Lawrence (in Winter's Bone), Natalie Portman (in Black Swan), and Michelle Williams (in Blue Valentine)

3 POINT CATEGORIES

Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale (in The Fighter), John Hawkes (in Winter's Bone), Jeremy Renner (in The Town), Mark Ruffalo (in The Kids Are All Right), and Geoffrey Rush (in The King's Speech)

Best Supporting Actress:  Amy Adams (in The Fighter), Helena Bonham Carter (in The King's Speech), Melissa Leo (in The Fighter), Hailee Steinfeld (in True Grit), and Jacki Weaver (in Animal Kingdom)

Best Animated Feature Film: Toy Story 3, The Illusionist, How To Train Your Dragon

Best Directing: Black Swan, The Fighter, The King's Speech, The Social Network, True Grit

2 POINT CATEGORIES

Best Original Screenplay: Another Year, The Fighter, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The King's Speech

Visual Effects: Alice In Wonderland, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 1, Hereafter, Inception, Iron Man 2

Music (Original Song): Country Strong, Tangled, 127 Hours, Toy Story 3

Music (Original Score): How To Train Your Dragon, The Social Network, Inception, The King's Speech, 127 Hours

Best Makeup: Barney`s Vision, The Way Back, The Wolfman

1 POINT CATEGORIES

Best Foreign Language Film: Biutiful (Mexico), Dogtooth (Greece), In A Better World (Denmark), Incendies (Canada), Outside The Law (Algeria)

Best Adapted Screenplay: The Social Network, 127 Hours, Toy Story 3, True Grit, Winter`s Bone

Digital Lit Circle Discussion # 3

Attention Digital Literature Circlers: The third set of discussion posts are now available on the following blogs...

Sketches discussion is available on Karran's Blog.
Wave discussion is available on Kaitlin's Blog.
Wounded discussion is available on Skylar's Blog.
Shaken discussion is available on Max's Blog.
We All Fall Down discussion is available on Brandon's Blog.
Black and White discussion is available on Jenna's Blog.
Branded discussion is available on Matt's Blog.

Looking forward to seeing how these discussions progress. Don't forget: Get involved early!

Group Reminder

Hello Bloggers,

I've noticed that some members of our Digital Lit Circles groups aren't quite sure who their group members are. To fix this problem, I'm just going to quickly post the members of each novel group. They are listed below!

Branded - Hannah S., Matt M., Qavi, Jeffrey, Shahad, Aaisha, Amrita

Shaken - Max, Tanisha, Tara, Tyler, Jumanh

Sketches - Andrianna, Arianna, Karran, Melissa, Haneen, Hannah, Sara

Wave - Jess, Kaitlin, Breah, Zak, Connor, Ishka

Black and White - Sam, Jenna, Noah, Amy, Claire, Walid

We All Fall Down - Kelly, Brandon, Aaron, Will, Zuhair, Jatinder

Wounded - Skylar, Michelle, Kyle,  Reshad, Mateen, Charlotte

Lit Circle Discussion # 2

Hello Bloggers,

It's time for our 2nd round of Lit Circle discussions. Ms. Pollock's students have been busy formulating interesting questions to share with us, and have begun to post them for us to respond to.
So far, the Sketches discussion has begun on Melissa's Blog, the We All Fall Down discussion topic is posted on Will's Blog, and the Shaken discussion is posted on Tara's Blog. The rest of the discussion posts will be up shortly, and I will link to them as soon as they are available!

Reminder: As group members, you have some specific criteria to fulfill when participating in the discussions

•  be sure that you've finished reading the assigned section before posting your response (and if you've read ahead, double check what is included in the reading for this discussion so that you don't give away any details that your other group members haven't reached yet)
• prepare your response carefully (100-500 words EDITED and PROOFREAD) ***HINT: It's a really good idea to use a word processor such as WordPerfect or Talking Word Processor to draft, edit, and revise your responses before you post them.
• post your response to the comment section of the host's blog
• read the other postings and respond to these at least twice 

UPDATE: The Wounded discussion post is now up and ready for your input on Reshad's Blog.

UPDATE # 2: The Wave discussion post is up and running on Connor's Blog. The Black and White discussion is post is ready on Noah's Blog, and I believe the Branded post is good to go on Qavi's Blog.

Grade 6/7 Glog Presentations

Good morning, bloggers!

Lately, it seems like most of the blogging activity is being done by the Grade 8s. They've got their Digital Literature Circles happening, so that's been a bit of a focus. However, the Grade 6/7 class have been doing some really great work as well. Recently, they were assigned a project which required them to research either an early Canadian explorer (John Cabot, Jacques Cartier, Samuel de Champlain, or Henry Hudson) or a Canadian First Nations group. After they did all of their research, they were asked to create a Glog that presented all of the information they found in an interesting way. Well, have they ever delivered! The Glogs look fantastic, and I think it would be a complete shame if I didn't share them with you.

To view our Grade 6/7 class Glogs, simply click on a link below!

Dayna's Glog

Brandon R's Glog

Alicia's Glog

Casey's Glog

Zach's Glog

Courtney's Glog

Rob's Glog

Caitlin's Glog

Brandon W's Glog

Assignment #10: Buddy Videos

Good Moring, Bloggers!
I hope everyone is off to a wonderful start with the Grade 8 Literature circles. I know that many of our Hillsdale Grade 8s are well on their way to being finished the first reading section, if they aren't finished already. Some are even starting to bug their wonderful teacher about when they are allowed to start reading Section 2 (*cough* MAX *cough*).

The purpose of THIS assignment, however, has nothing to do with the Literature Circles. Our Grade 8 buddies in Ottawa have been working very hard on creating interesting and creative presentations. They presented the finished product last week, and video taped everything! Now, they've uploaded the videos and posted them on their own blogs for us to view.

So, your assignment this time is simply to head on over to your Ottawa partner's blog and view their wonderful video, and then leave a comment once you've finished. They covered some really interesting topics such as Plagarism, Facebook Privacy, Digital Footprints, Cyber Bullying, and more! Once you've viewed the video and left your comment, be sure to come back here and comment on THIS post to let me know you've completed your task.

Here's the catch: The videos often don't work on our school computers becuase of the DDSB web filtering programs. If you can't watch from school, please watch from home.

P.S. Feel free to view and comment on more than one video! Watch and comment on as many as you wish!

Literature Circles

Digital literature circles have begun! Many of the Grade 8 students at Hillsdale and Fielding are well into the first section of their books by now, and are preparing to post and respond to their first set of discussion questions. Students from Hillsdale will be hosting the questions for week one. Take a look at the list below to find out which blogs you need to visit this week!

If you're reading Sketches, Andrianna will be hosting your discussion. (I know, this is a change from the info you've got. Unfortunately, Karran has been sick this week, so he and Andrianna have traded discussion weeks.)

If you're reading Black and White, Sam will be hosting your discussion.

If you're reading Branded, Hannah will be hosting your discussion.

If you're reading Shaken, Max will be hosting your discussion.

If you're reading Wave, Breah will be hosting your discussion.

If you're reading We All Fall Down, Kelly will be hosting your discussion.

If you're reading Wounded, Michelle will be hosting your discussion.

On Friday, discussion questions will be posted. All group members will have until next Friday (Feb.  11) to respond to the question.

Please note: You are welcome and encouraged to comment more than once. If a groupmate makes a statement that you find interesting, you are encouraged to respond to what they've said, even if you've already posted your initial response. Be as active in the discussion as you want!