Fort Riley Middle School PD Please use this file to: 1) Locate the practice texts used in today’s session and 2) Access miscellaneous textual evidence and peer review resources
2/16/15 1:15-‐2:10 FRMS LIbrary
Don’t Hog the Water! by Monica
Water is an essential resource. Did you realize that less than 1% of all the water on Earth can be used by people? The rest is either salt water or is permanently frozen. There are shortages of clean water in many parts of the world and if we do our part to conserve it at home and at school, everyone wins. It is easy to forget how much water each of us uses a day. Every time someone stops at the drinking fountain, washes his or her hands, flushes the toilet, cleans up art supplies, mops the floor or cleans up the cafeteria, water is used. Teachers and students definitely need to learn more about protecting and conserving water. It is amazing, but just fixing one leaky faucet at our school can save over 3,000 gallons of water in one year! If you’re wondering what easy steps students can take to conserve water, here are some ideas. When washing your hands you can stop the water flow while soaping. Then turn it back on when it is time to rise. If you have automatic faucets make sure you get your hands out from under the sensor as you scrub. Pay attention! If you notice any leaky faucets or drinking fountains at your school, let the custodian know. Have you ever seen a toilet that just keeps flowing and flowing after it has been flushed? The janitor needs to know that or gallons of extra water just goes down the drain. And we can’t talk about saving water without thinking about the cafeteria! When stopping at a drinking fountain have you noticed how much water goes down the drain? We need to encourage classmates and teachers to bring a reusable water bottle to school. If you do use the drinking fountain, let go of the handle when you pause to breathe. Holding on just wastes more precious water. If you are ready for a couple bigger steps here are more ideas. Talk with the janitor at your building to see if your school uses low-‐flow or water-‐reducing devices on faucets and toilets. My dad put those in at our place and it cut our water bill a lot. If not, it is time to talk to the principal and explain. Lots of schools have plants outside. Check outside your building. Do the plants there need frequent watering? If they do, your class could work with a local garden club to find out about plants that can survive with less water. Talk to your school’s parent-‐ teacher organization about helping to replace the plants. And no matter what plants are used, be sure they have plenty of mulch around them because that helps. Since every creature on our planet has to share the tiny fraction of usable water, don’t be a hog. Do your share and take simple steps to conserve this important resource.
The Death Of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan Read more: http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/death-emmett-till#ixzz3RsVEX8te
‘Twas down in Mississippi not so long ago When a young boy from Chicago town stepped through a Southern door This boy’s dreadful tragedy I can still remember well The color of his skin was black and his name was Emmett Till Some men they dragged him to a barn and there they beat him up They said they had a reason, but I can’t remember what They tortured him and did some things too evil to repeat There were screaming sounds inside the barn, there was laughing sounds out on the street Then they rolled his body down a gulf amidst a bloody red rain And they threw him in the waters wide to cease his screaming pain The reason that they killed him there, and I’m sure it ain’t no lie Was just for the fun of killin’ him and to watch him slowly die And then to stop the United States of yelling for a trial Two brothers they confessed that they had killed poor Emmett Till But on the jury there were men who helped the brothers commit this awful crime And so this trial was a mockery, but nobody seemed to mind I saw the morning papers but I could not bear to see The smiling brothers walkin’ down the courthouse stairs For the jury found them innocent and the brothers they went free While Emmett’s body floats the foam of a Jim Crow southern sea If you can’t speak out against this kind of thing, a crime that’s so unjust Your eyes are filled with dead men’s dirt, your mind is filled with dust Your arms and legs they must be in shackles and chains, and your blood it must refuse to flow For you let this human race fall down so God-awful low! This song is just a reminder to remind your fellow man That this kind of thing still lives today in that ghost-robed Ku Klux Klan But if all of us folks that thinks alike, if we gave all we could give We could make this great land of ours a greater place to live Copyright © 1963, 1968 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991, 1996 by Special Rider Music
The Time-Sweepers by Ursula Wills-Jones http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Time898.shtml
You may not be familiar with the time-sweepers. The time-sweepers are the people who sweep up all the time that is lost and wasted. You cannot see them, though if you are in the railway station and think you see something out of the corner of your eye, that will probably be a time-sweeper, cleaning up around the bench you are sitting on. If you were to see them, you would find a small, bluish person with an intent expression, clutching a broom and a mop. The men wear overalls, the women old-fashioned tweed skirts and scarves on their head. The time-sweepers are present wherever time is being lost or wasted. There are always several in train stations, and at least one in every doctors surgery. The man who has waited so long to propose to his girlfriend that her hair has gone grey, probably has his own personal time-sweeper following him around. The woman who has spent thirty-five loathed years in an estate agents, dreaming of opening a florists, causes the neighbourhood time-sweeper to sigh, and fetch a bigger dustpan. You should not feel sorry for the time-sweepers, though their work is menial: they are never sick, do not worry that they are in the wrong career, and have excellent working conditions, though what they do for leisure is unknown. They enjoy bank holidays off, which is why, on these days, there seems so much more time than usual. At Christmas and new year, the time-sweepers have a week's holiday. When they return to work in January, they face a vast backlog of time which has been lost, wasted and thrown away over the holidays. It takes them around three weeks to resume normal service, which is why January always seems to last longer than other months. The time-sweepers have been around forever, though modern life has created wasted time in such large concentrations that in some places the time-sweepers have been forced to industrialise their operations, buying a number of specialised compressing lorries similar to those used by ordinary binmen. They use these for the largest collections, at prisons and shopping malls, two venues where the tide of wasted time threatens to swamp even the most dedicated operatives. Were you to ask a time-sweeper, they would tell you one surprising thing: time enjoyed is never time wasted. Cleaning up in a large office full of staggering tedium, the time-sweeper will pass straight by the desk of the woman who is reading a holiday catalogue under the desk, poring over photos of tropical beaches. They will pass by the next desk, where a man is enjoyably wondering what his mother-in-law looks like naked, and stop by the desk of the young man who is counting every minute, and loathing the hours. You may wonder what happens to the wasted time after it has all been cleaned up. Never fear, the time-sweepers are ardent recyclers. It is collected, packed into large containers, moved to Liverpool docks, loaded onto a ship, and taken to India. There, in a dusty industrial estate somewhere near Bombay, it is cleaned, sorted, and graded. The most toxic and poisoned time – the residues of failed peace negotiations, wrongful imprisonments and truly poisonous marriages, is skimmed off and buried in a tank underneath a disused army base. There, it will take two or three centuries to decay, and become harmless again. The rest of the time – made up of stuff such as dull meetings, missed appointments, delayed buses and bad nights at the theatre, is cleaned and put back onto a ship, where it is taken to the Guangzhou industrial export processing zone. Here it is compressed and stored, awaiting redistribution. Around twenty percent goes direct to the factories of the export processing zone, which has the world's highest
productivity rate. A quarter is bought in hard dollars by the Chinese government. Ten percent of the most concentrated stuff is sold to a cryogenics laboratory in California. Another twenty or so percent is discreetly sold to a variety of rich private clients, mostly old, rich men who have married beautiful young women. However, the time-sweepers are not in it for profit. The money from these deals pays for their operations, including dusters, bin-bags, overalls and shipping. The rest is distributed to good causes. Noone who gets any extra time has to fill in any forms, or ask for a grant. They are all quite unaware that they are in receipt of assistance. One of these beneficiaries is a shabby and overtired scientist in a crumbling public laboratory outside Novosibirsk, who will be the man to find the vaccine for malaria. Another is a prostitute in a Nairobi slum who has fostered seventeen children, and who, despite twenty years in the business, never falls ill. A third is the Indian taxi-driver in a cramped flat in Toronto, who, in between sending money home to a sick wife and children, is writing what will later be acknowledged as the greatest novel of the century. Not all the recipients of the time-sweepers' largesse are people. About forty miles outside Timbuktu, a medieval mosque, buried in sand, receives a delivery every decade or so. Somewhere below the floor in the Aegean sea, a Trojan galley is miraculously preserved in mud. Similarly, the time-sweepers gift a little extra time to a temple in Mexico, and preserve a haul of dark-age treasure in a Galway bog. A certain amount of charitable time is kept back for emergency situations, both small and large. It is parachuted in in times of desperation, and has facilitated peace deals, changed battles, and allowed numerous fathers to make it to the delivery room in time. The time-sweepers are, by their very nature, a tidy and orderly sort of people. They wish that humans would think more about throwing away this valuable commodity, but don't expect it'll happen any time soon. There isn't a moral to this story. It's just that if you are planning on throwing away your time, please remember - somebody has to pick it up.
Misc. Textual Evidence/Peer Review Resources
Prepare ahead: Copy each task card on different-colored cardstock. Make one set available for each student group.
Task Cards 1. Circle all the powerful verbs, specific nouns, and high-quality descriptive words. Did the writer have at least 10 outstanding words sprinkled throughout the piece? If not, find 4–6 weak words to improve.
2. Make a ★ by any fresh descriptive phrases you feel paint vivid images that readers will remember long after reading the piece. If you don’t find any such images, add two of them yourselves.
3. Put a check by any slang. Unless those terms were included on purpose, go back and replace them with better options.
4. Overall, does the language feel natural and are words used correctly? If so, explain your thinking. If not, give the writer one piece of advice about that.
1. Read the piece again from the beginning. Did the writer get off-topic anywhere? If so, mark those spots with a large dot. Explain how the writer could fix those problem areas.
2. Was the topic small enough to handle well? If so, explain your thinking. If it was too general, give the writer advice on how to narrow it.
Step 2: Ideas & Content
3. Did the writer remember to “show” instead of “tell”? If so, mark the two best spots. If not, find two spots and fix them.
4. Did the piece have important details, information, or examples in all the parts? If so, mark the two best spots. If not, what should the writer do to improve those spots?
Strategies for Writers Grades 5–8 ■ Activity 18 ■ Be the Editor
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Step 1: Word Choice