The Case Against Summer Vacation

I think that summer vacation is a need for many kids. We enjoy having the time off away from school and learning. I think that younger kids should switch the hours with us because younger kids are more awake and alert in the morning, unlike us who are really sleep deprived. it a proven fact that we need sleep because otherwise we come to school grumpy and unmotivated to learn. little kids are high strung all day and are up at the crack of dawn playing around. I feel that the perfect school hours would be from 8:30 to 2 everyday being 6 hours of school everyday instead of seven. I think that instead of being off of school for summer vacation for two months, but we should be off for a full four months. We deserve to be off for four months considering we go to school for 9 out of twelve months out of the year.

review

-The newest album put out by Justin Timberlake ‘The 20/20 Experience’ has really boosted his career. His title to his album relates to the amount of songs on his album. His song tunnel vision shows in his album artwork. His album seems to start slow and get faster once you get towards the middle of the album, and then it gets slower again. This album really made a comeback to his career, making one of his best albums yet. 4 of his best songs have come off the album to become really popular, more than any of his songs on any of his albums so far. One or two songs that are on the album don’t catch my attention and are not really interesting.

Pusher love girl- has a steady slow beat

Suit and tie- little faster beat

Don’t hold the wall- slow beat

Strawberry bubblegum- slow beat

Tunnel vision- starts slow then goes a little faster beat

Spaceship coupe- slow beat

That girl- starts slow then gets faster

Let the groove get in- fast beat, relates to title

Mirrors- fast and a slow beat

Blue ocean floor- really slow beat

Gimme what I don’t know (I want)- fast beat

True blood- fast beat

Cabaret- fast beat

TKO- beat gets faster as the song goes on

Take back the night- fast song

Murder- fast song

Drink you away- slow beat, song

You got it on- slow song and beat

Amnesia- little faster beat and song

Only when I walk away- beat starts slow goes a little fast and then slow again

yearly spendings

Yearly Spending’s

The most money spent out of all the holidays is Christmas, what a surprise. Christmas is the number one most costly holiday spending about 135.16 per year. The average money spent per year on all the holidays is $228.4 billion this year already. Thanksgiving is second for the most money spent with 30.50 million dollars per year. I think that spending this much on Christmas and thanksgiving is a little ridiculous. I think that for us humans to be spending this much on Christmas gifts, I think that the prices of things such as toys and gifts should be lowered for the courtesy of us. Halloween is the least spent holiday ever, at 6 billion per year while mother and father’s day is ahead of Halloween when Halloween should be expected to have more money spent for all the people who spend money on Halloween candy per year. Mother’s day has more spent rather than father’s day which I think is kind of weird since moms and dads are equal. Valentine’s Day is also at the top of the chart at third. I think that’s reasonable because people want to get gifts for their loved ones. Holiday spending keeps sizing up as the years go on. So in 2 years from now, I predict that the price spend yearly will go up by twice what it is already.

album reviews

1.       “Dynamic” could be a one-word review of Scotty McCreery‘s sophomore album, ‘See You Tonight.’   -Scotty McCreery(Country)

2.       The fantastically fierce single gets Perry’s fourth record off to a mighty start. It’s a high-energy blast of catchy pop.   –Katy Perry(Pop)

3.       The Marshall Mathers LP 2 bears the name of Em’s most powerful album.    –Eminem(HipHop)

4.       On "Rock N Roll," all the Auto-Tune in Sweden can't keep her bad reputation from battling "hipster bullshit.”    -Avril Lavigne(Rock)

5.       A massively overrated album, Kanye experiments with some interesting sounds but ultimately fails to create anything particularly memorable and his lyrics are pretty weak on the whole. 

–Kanye West(Rap)

6.       Overall I found it pretty blah, and I thought “Boys ‘Round Here” was unbelievably stupid.

–Blake Shelton(Country)

Stories

Bears Fan Tasers Wife over Lost Packers Bet

According to NBC News, “The rivalry between Chicago and Green Bay rose to a new level after a south suburban Bears fan used a Taser on his Packers fan wife when she “lost a bet" following the Bears win Monday, according to police.” But later his wife said she did not take consent to getting tased by her husband. NBC Chicago stated that, “but cell phone footage of the incident shows her "laughing and it seemed apparent that Ms. Grant had consented," the arresting officer wrote in the complaint.” According to ESPN, “Grant was charged with felony possession of an electronic weapon.”

According to the Digital Journal, Weird Asia News, and the faster times news articles, a Chinese farmer named Wu Yulu has created an army of robots. Wu Yulu has created 26 robots over the past 30 years and is continuing to make even more to this day. Wu Yulu is 46 years old and first got interested in robotics when he was 11 years old. He calls his robots his sons, and names them after him as Wu no.1, Wu no.2, and Wu no.3, all the way to Wu no.26. The robots he made can light cigarettes, play instruments, and write calligraphy. Wu’s favorite robot he has built is called a rickshawbot, it’s his prized possession.

According to the British News Journal, British Talk and other foreign newspapers, a man named David Capaldi is going to swim down the River Thames. In the dead of winter. With no clothes on. He will attempt to swim from the London Bridge to the Waterloo Bridge and back in under two hours. One hour there and one hour back. Capaldi is known for doing these extremities; in 2007 he swam across River Pekoe in Italy, he only wore goggles. No clothes at all. He will be expected to attempt this adventure in January of 2015.

According to the Mirror News online, a construction worker named Chris Kelly, found a false widow spider hidden, while he was renovating a house in Burnley. Once he spotted the little creature, he couldn’t keep his eyes off of it. Chris came face-to-face with one of the most venomous spiders in the UK and he wasn’t going to let it just scuttle away. In doing so, he managed to capture it in his lunch box before taking it home for the weekend. While most of us would’ve quickly gotten rid of it, Chris called him Boris. As if that wasn’t enough, to keep him living and healthy, he fed him sugar puffs. Chris put holes in his lunch box to make sure that Boris could breathe and he tapped the lid down so he was sure he wouldn’t escape.

high intrest question

How do you think that students ACL tears are affecting their return back to their sports?

subject choice ethos pathos logos

The subject I decided to cover was acl tears: surgery or rehab? I looked at 3 articles specifically. In one of them the article title is athletes risk second injury after acl reconstruction. This article summary is that after reconstructing of the torn acl into a new one, is that 2 years later there is a chance to tear the same knee again or to tear the opposite knee. The second one I looked at was called a torn acl may not always mean surgery.  It sums up that is your not going to play sports then you can go to rehab and heal the tear almost all the way back to its regular acl before it was torn. If you are playing sports there is still a chance you don’t need to get surgery and can still play sports, you just have to let it heal long enough.  The last article I looked at is titled surgery can be an option. It sums up that surgery is probably the best possible idea for a torn acl, and then once you get surgery you could be back and doing regular activities tops a year. The surgeons will either take hamstring from your own body because its strong, or a deceased persons acl. I think that getting surgery is the best option, so for people who play sports, like me can jump slowly back into them the next year.

journalism opinion question from ken ross

           My opinion on the “Docs to parents: Limit kids’ texts, tweets, online” is that I disagree. I think that kids’ should be able to use their phones and laptops and to text and tweet. If parents banned our phones from us, if we went to hang out with our friends or had an emergency where we needed to call 911 or someone, then we wouldn’t be able to and that’s the cost of our safety. I feel that if parents did follow through with these recommendations, and take away our phones after 2 hours of using it; we would trick them right out of their own rules and find a way to use it even though they told us not to use our technology. We could also be using our technology for a good cause, like setting up a website to end world hunger and putting up donations to really help people. Even if we are not doing homework, I think that having our phones also lets us contact our friends. I feel that taking away our phones is like taking away some of our freedom, we can’t really contact anybody if we want to and we won’t have any sort of social life so we will always be bored.

Magazine Review

           The magazine I decided to review was seventeen magazine. I personally find interest to this magazine because I sometimes use tips from it and like to read certain facts and cool things in it. My magazine is directed towards 9 year olds which I find quite odd since the magazine is called seventeen magazine. I feel that maybe the writers wanted to attract the young people of today and get them to get more tips to feel older or to have tips for when they are older. My ratio from adds to regular adds in the magazine are 61:130. this ratio shows that there are more regular stuff in the magazine that related to the actual magazine instead of ads. In the 100 word article I covered, there were 8 sentences, and 120 syllables which made it a reading for a 9 year old. I would write this magazine for 15 years old to 19 years old because I feel that we would get more enjoyment if it appealed to the teenagers. I feel that a lot of teens take a lot of advice from seventeen magazine, and I think they would be disappointed to really know the truth behind the magazine to be written for 9 year olds.

Gianna Larson

Data driven article

October 16, 2013

Mr. Kefor- F Block

              Teachers and their walls

         

           By looking at teachers walls, what assumptions can you make about the teachers based on the certain things on their walls? I was really curious to find out the answers to this topic, so I went around to a good amount of teachers classrooms with questions already in my head for what I was looking for in each classroom.

           I went into 13 different teachers to make my observations. When I went into each teachers classroom, I had a piece of paper that was categorized into 4 categories, posters(subject), organization such as fire drill procedures and so on, any student work that is featured around the room, and any other posters that don't relate to the subject. I brought some of my classmates along with me to help me make observations. Christine Remick, Carli Arcaro, and Casey Holmes, help me sufficiently with helping me to collect the data I needed for my data driven article.

           In some classrooms there was close to nothing at all, but in others there was everything that you could have asked to see in a teachers classroom. The total amount of tallys I got for the posters relating to the subject were 13. Every class I went into had something that related to the subject they taught. I found that the Spanish classrooms had the most posters related to their subject. The next category was organization. I found that once again every classroom I went to had a tally for organization. Every classroom had a fire drill procedure hung up near there door, and they also had a fire exit plan to the nearest exit out the school. For student work, I got a total of 10 talleys. Going around the classrooms I found out that the math teachers had the most student work hanging up around their rooms. The last category was posters in general. The total tally for posters were 9. Not many classrooms had posters up in their room that didn't not relate to their subject. I found that the science classrooms had the overall most posters not related to their subject hanging in their room.

           By my results, you can make a conclusion that the science department is the classrooms that had the most of everything in almost each category. The science classrooms are the classrooms that are very well organized and have the most student work, which could mean that they really value the students work more than the other teachers.

Schaps, Eric. "The Role of Supportive School Environments in Promoting Academic Success." Developmental Studies Center. Getting Results, 2005. Web. 03 Oct. 2013. http://www.devstu.org/research-articles-and-papers-the-role-of-supportive-school-environments-in-promoting-academic-success.

Wooley, Marx E. "Action Steps for Implementing a Healthy School Environment." Web log post. Action Steps Healthy School Environment. N.p., 2003. Web. 03 Oct. 2013. http://www2.edc.org/makinghealthacademic/concept/actions_environment.asp.

Holcombe, Rebecca. "Adolescents’ Perceptions of School Environment, Engagement, and Academic Achievement in Middle School." Adolescents' Perceptions of School Environment, Engagement, and Academic Achievement in Middle School. N.p., 2012. Web. 03 Oct. 2013. http://aer.sagepub.com/content/47/3/633.abstract.

Research Question: By looking at teachers classrooms, what assumptions can you make about teachers based on the certain things on their walls?

Free write short position paper

Gianna Larson

          The Norton High School girl's soccer team has come such a better team within a year time span. Last year, the Norton girl's soccer teams had lost many of their games, game after game with few wins at all. This year the new coach, Mr.Clark, who also happens to be a teacher at Norton high school, has trained us to be the best we can be. Before tryouts we had been out of shape, but he had us do a summer soccer camp called championship soccer school, which worked on our fitness also scrimmaging everyday to give us practice. Over the summer Coach Clark had us have training sessions with a licensed coach, who has had past experiences with coaching colleges and club teams. Captains practices really helped also, running 2 miles every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings to help us prepare for tryouts. Before every game Coach Clark says "What the mind believes, the body can achieve." He wants us to set the bar high and have us work hard to make the tournament and go all the way and win. We are getting much better but we are not done yet, Coach Clark has plans to get us to be the number one team in trivalley within 3 years. I truly believe it can happen. Coach Greene and Coach Carlie also help to progress us as players during practices and during the games by giving helpful tips from the sidelines. The parents also give great amounts of support and get involved with the boosters as much as they can to help us succeed. As the season goes on, we all hope to progress as a team and to work as a team. It will take a lot of sweat and hard work to get there, but it is something that is definitely possible as we keep getting better every day.

Interview: Levi Kahn

Gianna Larson

September 23, 2013

F Period Journalism

Interview: Levi Kahn

 

 

          Levi Kahn, the oldest of three boys, enjoys playing basketball and baseball at Norton High School. School to him is "Garbage and very boring, but its very important." On his free time, he likes to take long walks on the beach, sleep, and do homework. Levi was born in Rochester, Minnesota, and has twin brothers named "Aiden and Jared." who are 15 and are sophomores at Norton high school. Hi favorite color is purple, which also happen to be Norton's themed color. He likes to watch professional basketball, baseball, and football. He does not do any activities after school except for after school sports. Levi likes all kinds of music except country, "I hate country." He likes the TV show criminal minds when ever he ha free time. He describes himself as smart, lazy, and athletic, "Lazy being the main one."