jake zerillo

First in class we talked about making sure everyone completed their blogs so if you didn't do that make sure you do. Then we went on to watching the Bowling for columbine documentary and we needed to keep in mind when juxtaposition, tone and ethos are used in the documentary. Then we first started watching the video and when Mr. Rivers paused it we talked about tone and how the guy that was being interviewed makes the scene a sad tone because he gets very emotional when they talk about the columbine high school and how horrible he feels about the innocent kids that were killed in the high school shooting. Also the music in the video got very soft to make the tone sad. Later on in the documentary we talked about another guy who shows ethos and is very credible because he is shown wearing a suit and he works for one of the largest gun making companies in the world. And it made him look more credible because other people who have been interviewed in the video have not looked very qualified. In the background there are huge bombs behind the guy why he talks about how if kids get mad they should not resort to violence and shooting. Which helps support the guy interviewing him. Farther into the video we go back to that sad tone because they show video footage of the shooters at the columbine high school and the music is very sad. And then the tone brightens when the parents who's kids were killed spoke out to the public and gave them faith that things needed to change. For example a semi automatic gun is not used to shoot deer therefore it shouldn't be sold. This also shows juxtaposition because the sad tone and the brightened tone contrast but at the same time they also support each other to make the world better. And then later on the schools got very strict and they show how a kid got suspended for using a paper gun in school and saying I'm going to kill you to one of his friends playing cops and robbers.

This picture shows that just a normal looking guy with a camera and a gun can make a difference in the world.

Lauren Zanetakos

1/26/17

Today was the second day of watching “Bowling for Columbine”. Before turning on the documentary Mr. Rivers had the class define tone, Juxtaposition, and Ethos.

Tone- author’s attitude about_____

Juxtaposition- for both points of an argument: counterclaim, contrasting (show opposites)

Ethos- credibility (appeal)

As we continued to watch the movie, Mr. Rivers instructed us to write down possible claims and evidence that the director presented. These were a few that I found.

·         You're not responsible if you have a gun

·         People think that guns is the answer to settling most problems- Brent pulled a gun on someone and got expelled for a year

·         DJ was number three on the suspect list due to the fact that he has an instruction manual on how to build a bomb and has admitted to have made a few.

Talked to James Nickels, one of the suspected Oklahoma Bombers, he said that Timothy McBay was a great decent guy. Timothy McBay was later executed for his participation in that domestic terrorist attack in Oklahoma City. Nickels also claimed that all the ingredients bomb ingredients found by the police on his “food” farm where strictly for farming use only. When speaking to ## he spoke of how the people need to over throw the government when it grows too radical. This same man clams that everyone has the right to bare arms but only in the sense of guns vs. nuclear weapons because in the words of James Nickels “you know there’s wackoes out there”. Nickel also sleeps with an 44 magnum under his pillow and showed Michel Moore the gun and cocked it, placing the loaded armed pistil to his temple. By Moore including this interview in this documentary he is making his argument stronger by showing how little Nickels’ bounders are when it comes to guns and protecting himself.

Skylar Winberry| 25 January 2017

Today's class began with Mr. Rivers collecting some more copies of The Great Gatsby. So make sure to bring your copy if you did not already. After that, we went over the assignment for our research paper again. Mr. Rivers has laid out all the due dates for each part of the project so we can be held accountable for every part of the paper. We have to have our documentary chosen by monday January 30. After reviewing the guidelines for our reachearch paper, Mr. Rivers introduced the movie we will be examining in class as a outline of our paper. This movie is called Bowling for Columbine. It is a documentary about the school shooting in Littleton, Colorado on April 20,1999. Mr. Rivers gave us two questions to keep in mind while watching the film. They were: what argument does the film make and how does the director support that claim?

The claims made in the film were:

• It's too dangerous to sell guns at a bank→ shows violence of america
• Too simple for people to get guns
• Michigan is very pro guns→ people are being reckless with guns
• Bullets are sold too widely

The information given to support those claims were:

• Says it's too easy
• Points out issues with the process
• Walks out with gun in hand
• Advertisement → bank uses gun as main photo
• Underplays his intelligence

• Was given NRA award
• A dog shot a man
• People wouldn’t waste bullets on innocent people if ammunition was expensive

The point being made in the beginning of the film is that guns and ammunition are too easy to obtain. We will continue to see the other claims the film makes as we watch the rest of the movie.

1/25/17 Bayleigh Takacs

Today the class started with the collection of the rest of the Great Gatsby books. We then moved into reviewing what the newly introduced research paper is all about. With groups we were told to talk and describe the assignment in one sentence. What was most popular throughout the class was that the assignment is to watch a documentary and argue if you agree or disagree. We reviewed the requirements of the assignment as a class, that can found on your google classroom page. After the review, we moved into watching a documentary and answering questions such as, what is the argument, how does he develop/support the argument? We started watching Bowling for Columbine over a long span of time, starting today. Every time we watch it we will have questions, we answer them in our notes. Today was primarily about focusing about answering the questions and look for what we will be doing for our own project. While watching the documentary, we stopped and discusses the questions above and revised our information as we went along. We continued to watch the documentary until the bell rang.

Kelli Vogel

     Today during class, we went over the research paper that is due March 2nd. There is a checklist with due dates on google classroom  to make sure everyone stays on task for example our first due date is on January 30th. For this day we need to know what documentary we are going to watch so Mr. Rivers will get a good idea on what our research paper is about. After talking about this Mr. Rivers wrote the words Bowling for Columbine on the board and then we were asked to talk to our group members on what we thought it was about. We discovered that it was a major school shooting in Littleton, Colorado on April 20, 1999. Then we proceed to watch a documentary on this topic. As we were watching this we had to answer two questions. The first question was, What argument does the film make? The second question was HOW does the director support that claim? The documentary is longer than an hour so we only so a short clip of it today. We watched a man walk into a bank located in Michigan with a flier that stated, “Free gun, if you open up a bank account with us.” The man actually opened up a bank account and was forced to have a background check because it's the law. We concluded class going over the two questions. The arguments that were present in film were, it’s too simple for people to get guns and some people are way to reckless to have a gun in their hands. For the second question we stated that the director points out issues with the process, he walks out with a gun in his hand, along with the fact that the bank uses the guns to advertise. The picture below helps you get a better understanding of what we watched on the documentary today in class. This was the exact picture that we saw on the film today.

Alexis Reeder January 20, 2017

    Today in class we finished our Summative on Gatsby Romanticism v Modernism. I wrote my paper on how “The Great Gatsby” was a modernist because Fitzgerald used a lot of grey areas. He wrote everything in pieces and having us figure out how to put his puzzle together. You can apply the changes in modernist philosophy to help better literary trends. In pre-Modernism, time is Linear (absolutely and always). Modernists: time is Relative (changes based on time). Modern dialect is the use of perception to see the gasps in truth; and the truth is binary.

Romanticism is the complete opposite of modernism. Romanticism is literally grey, but we're not dealing with a grey area. Negative tone about this place and its effect on people. Diustrusts progress - industrial revolution. Absolute romantics know whether the ending is good or bad or justified or unfair. Absolutes are truth, beauty, good, evil, etc.

Alex Pegher Blog 1/19/17

Today in class we began our work on an essay to determine whether The Great Gatsby is a modern or romantic text. Rivers stressed (in writing... he wasn't there) that since we had two days to do a potentially one-day assignment that we should spend a lot of time planning and revising our essay. The ability to listen to music certainly helped as well. I personally spent a large amount of time just staring at the cover of the Great Gatsby, because once you've read the book, the cover is so perfect that it gives you all the information and inspiration you need to write.

1/18/17 Hannah Newbold's blog

Continuing the assignment posted on the google classroom from yesterday. All of us in class today continued the Great Gatsby narrative assignment, where we had to choose an event from the book and write about it from a different characters perspective and figure out whether it was absolute or modern.

Nicole 1/13/17

Today, Mr. Rivers informed us of a change that has been made. We are no longer having the summative assessment on Tuesday and Wednesday. Instead, we will spend those two days rewriting a section from The Great Gatsby from a different character’s point of view. We are going to be allowed to work either by ourselves or in groups for that project. It will be explained more next week. The summative has been moved to Thursday and Friday.

After that, we discussed the ending of The Great Gatsby, with Nick’s final walk to Gatsby’s house, and how this scene further enhanced the tragedy. Gatsby was seemingly forgotten by everyone except for Nick, because the grass was overgrown and nobody else was there except for Nick. Nick did not enjoy Gatsby’s parties at the time, but now that it is in the past, he misses them. He was longing for the past, just like Gatsby always was.

The last line of this novel is very significant:

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

This sentence is metaphorical. People try to push forward towards their goals, but the current prevents them from moving forward. In the case of Gatsby, the current (which represents reality) was pushing him towards the future, but he was refusing to accept reality and instead was desperately trying to move back to the past, towards Daisy. This was his tragic flaw, because he thought Daisy was his future, but he was actually moving in the wrong direction.

Then, we wrote a theme for The Great Gatsby. Remember that a topic is a subject or idea in the text, and a theme is a claim about that topic. This is what we came up with:

Topic: the past

Theme: People want to go back to the past, but they often forget about the bad things that happened.

Gatsby was so obsessed with trying to go back to the past and make his fantasy come true, that he ignored reality.

Today in Rivers' World 1/12/2017

Nadir Hassan

Today in Rivers’ World

We started today off by Mr. Rivers reminding us of the summative assignment that will take place on Tuesday and Wednesday. The prompt is whether The Great Gatsby is a romantic text or modernist text. It should be a fully developed essay. Class notes and the book itself may be used. It is encouraged that students find evidence to support their argument beforehand to make your life easier on Tuesday and Wednesday.  We then went on to discover more scenes in the novel that enhanced the tragedy in chapters 8 and 9. A scene that we delved deeper in was the conversation between Wolfshiem and Carraway. This scene adds tragedy to the novel because Wolfsheim is nostalgic about Gatsby but when the funeral appears in conversation, Wolfsheim decides not to arrive because he “‘I can’t do it—I can’t get mixed up in it,’ he said” (Gatsby 183).  Although he cares about Gatsby, he ultimately wants to distance himself from Gatsby and keep his identity intact. Also, it is important to note that this conversation took place in a building that serves as a fake front, one possibly of many that Wolfshiem has since he is a criminal. In the immediate future, a conversation between Nick and Gatsby’s Dad (Mr. Gatz) ensues. Mr. Gatz shares his nostalgia with Nick and shows him a picture of a house Mr. Gatz holds very dear to his heart. Pictures were hard to come by back in the past (Its the 1920s!) and Mr. Gatz admires the picture so much. From the actions that we see as the reader, Mr. Gatz 100% absolutely loves his son and can be considered to be a romantic quality. In addition to the picture, the reader also sees  “Hopalong Cassidy”, a book detailed Gatsby’s entire schedule when he was little. From this, it shows that Gatsby is super innocent and adds much more to his character because it shows how well and praise worthy Gatsby was. It shows how controlling Gatsby was even when he was little (a little hint that points toward his flaw). It could also point to how passionate Gatsby truly was. Overall, today’s day in english class was diving into these two scenes and taking it apart, to truly see the tragedy towards the end of this book.

Jaxon 1/11/17

Today in class we started by talking about the ending of The Great Gatsby. Then we analyzed Nicks last words to Gatsby. Page 154 “They’re a rotten crowd,” “you’re worth the whole damn bunch put together”. Mr Rivers the asked if Nick really asked this. I personally think he did because its Nick’s way of telling Gatsby he won in Nick's book and didn't lose everything. Its a backhanded compliment though because Gatsby is a good person only relatively though. But one argument someone said was that he could think that because of the tragedy of Gatsby's murder. Nick said that we was always glad that he said  that to Gatsby but then goes on to say he always despised him. Nick says this because he was a lier, criminal, and holds on to things to tight (Daisy). Then Mr Ricers asked how do the following parts of the Novel ENHANCE the tragedy? The first part was Nicks last words to Gatsby. This increased Nicks and Gatsby's status and is also tragic because Gatsby didn't know he was loved. He was still holding on to that phone call from Daisy but was killed and she never called. The next event we analyzed was Gatsby's murder. It was tragic because Tom only had positive effects from those events and the god guy Gatsby ended up dead. There was no justice for Gatsby, a very romantic theme. Wolfshine didn't seem to care much and its tragic that Gatsby wont be missed by anyone but Nick. This book ended with no grey areas with a tragic downfall of its main character, ending with a romantic perspective. 

Congrats Mr Rivers!