With Halloween coming up, I thought I’d write a post in the spirit of the holiday. Not just about Halloween, but about some things that have happened or things that are going to happen.

Ok, I know it’s a little late, actually really late, since we went to Wabowden for a volleyball tournament on Thursday, and today is Tuesday. But it still counts if I tell you now. We played each team twice. We played twelve games and and won six of them. We beat each team once, except for one of the Wabowden teams. Then we won against one of the Cross Lake teams twice. We improved majorly and our team is getting a lot better every time we go on tournaments. I hope that we all keep up the good work and hopefully we will get to go on more tournaments so we can get even better.

So Halloween is coming up, and our school has a few events going on in the spirit of the holiday. Today at 2:15 we have a pep rally. There is events like pumpin carving, pie eating contests, trick-or-treat (where you stick your hand in a bag full of gross food and you have to eat it), line of death (like leap frog), and tug-of-war. It is for grades 7-12. Tonight we also have a school dance for grades 7-12. The dances aren’t really that exciting, but it’s a chance to hang out with your friends. There is also baked goods available.

With tomorrow being Halloween, most kids are going trick-or-treating all night long. Some classes have Halloween parties, but we are just watching the movie Transformers. I hope to see everyone dressed up tomorrow and to see lots of kids going trick-or-treating tomorrow.

In these 2 chapters, Ponyboy, Johnny, and Two-Bit gave Cherry and Marcia a ride home in Two-Bit’s car. They meet up with Cherry and Marcia’s boyfriends, so the girls leave with them. Ponyboy and Johnny fall asleep in a field after Two-Bit drops them off there. By the time Ponyboy got home, it was really late and Darry was pretty angry with him, so he hit him. Ponyboy then decides to run away, so he goes back for Johnny so they can run away together. They get to this park, and then Cherry and Marcia’s boyfriends show up. They nearly drown Ponyboy, and one was getting ready to beat up Johnny until Johnny pulled out a pocketknife and stabs one of them. The rest of the Socs run away. Johnny killed one of the Socs that night in the park. Once they realize that the cops would be on the scene soon, they knew that they had to find Dally because he could get them some money and a gun. So they found him and he gave them what they were looking for. They continued their journey and ran for a long time. Then later they hopped on a train and Ponyboy fell asleep, but Johnny stayed awake to know when they had to jump off. When they got off the train, they decided that they were going to go to Jay Mountain, but they needed directions. So Ponyboy asked someone how to get to Jay Mountain. Then they started their walk and eventually they got to a church and stopped to sleep for a while.

Even though I’ve only read a few chapters, this book is getting better and better every chapter. I am excited to see how Ponyboy and Johnny make out on their own. I am also curious to see where they will end up and if they’ll ever get caught…

Sara

This week we have started a novel study on the book “The Outsiders“by S.E. Hinton. So far we have read chapters 1+2 and were told to write a response to the 2 chapters on our blog.

The greasers are the rougher, tougher people in the story. They slick their hair back, wear leather jackets, tighter jeans, carry knives, and do things to make them look tougher than everyone else. The socs, AKA the socials, are the richer people in the book. They are seen to be higher-class than everyone else. They are the ones who beat up the greasers. The two groups get into gang fights and things like that because they are so different from each other.

 The main characters in “The Outsiders” are Ponyboy Curtis, Sodapop Curtis, and Darrel or Darry Curtis. They are all brothers. Some other characters in the book are Johnny Cade, Dallas Winston, Keith (Two-Bit) Matthews and Steve Randle. These characters don’t come up as much as Ponyboy, Sodapop, and Darry. Ponyboy is the youngest of his 3 brothers. Ponyboy is 14 and has long, light-brown, almost red hair and greenish grey eyes. Soda is 16 and is called handsome by many people. He’s slim, has a finely drawn face, dark-gold hair, and has dark brown eyes. Darry is six-feet-two, has broad shoulders, is muscular, has dark-brown hair, and has pale blue-green eyes.

In these 2 chapters, Ponyboy gets jumped (beat up) by a group of Socs. The next night, he goes to the movies with his gang and he and Johnny meet a girl named Cherry Valance and her friend Marcia. They start to talk and Ponyboy realizes that some Socs have it just as bad as the greasers and that their life isn’t all all the glory that they think it is.

This is only the first 2 chapters out of 12, so you can probably expect many more of these type of things.

Sara

Hey,

I’m just gonna write about things that we’re doing in school and whatever else I can think of..

This week in school we are working on our L.A. assessments like we have to every year. They’re not for marks or anything, they’re just so our teachers can know what kins of things that we need to work on and what we’re good at. We have a math test this afternoon, on formulas. On Tuesday we have a social studies test on the early humans and  creation myths. We have just started doing french and I think it’s gonna be a really fun class.

On Monday we have a volleyball game, and I’m sure if you’ve read my last posts you’d know a lot about what’s going on. I like volleyball, but I don’t really think that I’m getting any better so I don’t know if I’m going to stay in.

I know this post doesn’t really have a lot in it, but I’ve gotta cut it short since silent reading is almost over. I’m update you on the vball tournament on Tuesday!

Sara

Hey,

So today is Monday, and I’m sure we’re all loving it because we just had four days off and are definitely looking forward to 5 days of straight school. Yesterday, we had a volleyball practice from 3-5 PM. Most of us showed up. We practiced drills, setting, bumping, serving, etc for the for the first hour, and the last hour we just played a game. It was pretty good. Someone said that they should actually hold a 2 hour practice every Sunday. I think it’s a really good idea.

But anyways, We were supposed to have a game today against Waboden, but they ended up not being able to come until next Monday. So I guess that just gives us a little more time to practice. Which is a good thing, because we kind of need it. I’m not saying that we’re bad, I’m just saying that we could be better. But we’re actually getting WAY better than when we just started for sure.

So if we do good on Monday’s game, we get a chance to play in a one-day tournament against other schools in our area. I’m not sure where we wold go, but I think it could be really fun. But I think it would be even better if we could stay in Snow Lake because from what ‘ve heard, we’ve got the biggest gym. And of course everyone is used to playing in their own gym, but we’ve kind of got to just get used to playing in other places. But I think this is a really good opportunity for us.

I’m really having fun being in volleyball so far this year. I hope that the whole team will have a good time playing on Monday. Well, wish us luck!

Sara

On Wednesday October 10th, we had a Skype call with the kids from L.A. We talked about the 4 questions that we were discussing when we were having our Moodle chat. I think a lot of people really enjoyed seeing each other when we are actually somewhere around 3 000 miles apart. So here’s most of what we talked about:

The first question was to define power. Some people said that power is controlling someone or something. It’s being able to manipulate someone. It’s like a force. It can be used in good or bad ways, and it can be knowledge or money.

The second question was how does power affect personal relationships. Most people said that if you have power, you will get greedy and people will get jealous. If you have lots of power, you can get engulfed in it and lose friends. Power makes people fell confident and better than others and will fell that they don’t need anyone else but themselves.

In the next question, we talked about what role power plays in a person’s decision making process. Some people said that when you have power, you have a say and you can make decisions on your own.

The last question was why having power is important. When you’ve got power, you can make decisions on your own. You can take control over things. You can dominate over people when you have power.

That’s basically everything we discussed during our Skype call.

Sara

When you first read “The Bet” by Anton Chekhov and “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury, you don’t really see the similarities. But when you think about power, and both cases of power, they are a bit similar. Not so much the events, but the examples of power that are used. Both main characters have power, just not over the same things.

When you compare the things that you might think of when you think of a story, like the characters, the setting, and the main events, this is what comes out. The characters in “The Bet” are a banker and a lawyer; in “The Veldt” they’re a family with two little kids. Not that alike. The settings are pretty much opposite. An old-fashioned house in the 1870’s. A house that has a bunch of high-tech gadgets that takes place in the future. Like I said, opposites. The main events are different, too. But I’ve already explained them in other posts. So the only thing that’s really alike is the power. But that’s the most important thing.
In “The Bet”, the lawyer has the power because he could leave whenever he wanted to. In “The Veldt”, the children have the power over the parents with all their future gadgets. These examples of power are similar because the people who hold the power can control whoever they want to. I think that out of these two stories, the most amount of power being held against someone is shown in “The Veldt” when the children trick the parents into the nursery so they can get what they want.

So these stories have absolutely nothing in common. That’s what you thought when you first read them, right? But once you dig a little deeper and actually think, they come out being pretty alike. You just have to find it. Sometime’s there’s some things that you’ve got to dig for to uncover.

Until next assignment,

Sara

So on Wednesday we travelled in the school van to Cranberry Portage to play volleyball. We didn’t win any games, but we certainly improved since the last time we played them.

I am really proud of our team and especially the beginners like myself because we really improved on a lot of things. With the help of some good coaches we can get a lot better!

Last night, we had just a regular practice, like we do every Tuesday and Thursday, and the senior boys coaches came early to help us. We mostly served when they were there, and they really helped me with my serving.

So the next time we play in a tournament, hopefully we’ll do really well and maybe win a few games! Well, wish us luck!

Sara

“The Veldt“ is a story written by Ray Bradbury about the Hadley family that lives in the future and has everything a person could even dream of. In their house, there is machines that allow you to do absolutely nothing for yourself. You don’t even have to bathe yourself! They have this room called a nursery, which in our time would be thought of as a place where a baby would be kept. But in their time, this room has the power to take you wherever you want to go. In the story, the parents felt that the famiy needed to live a normal lifestyle so they decidde to shut the whole house off and get out of the house for a bit. The 2 children, Peter and Wendy, went to an african veldt in the nursery and locked their parents in because they don’t want the house to be shut off, and because they won’t let them go on a trip to New York in a space shuttle. Once the parents were locked in the nursery, the lions were ready to feed. Once the person who was told to shut down their house and the nursery arrived, the lions were done feeding and the parents were nowhere to be found.

In the story, the children have gotten everything they could ever desire, and once it was taken away, they didn’t know how to live like a normal family. Sure it would be great to have a stove that cooks your food by itself, or a shoe tier that would same you some back pain. But for some people it’s one of the other. If you ask your mom or dad for a big huge present for your birthday, they might happen to say something like, “Okay, but that means no dinner for a couple of months!” So it’s your decision: big huge present, or food?

It’s pretty much the same kind of thing, no matter what you’re talking about. If it’s about water, food, anything, really. It’s all coming from the same idea. Everyone deserves some luxury every once in a while. But if you’ve got luxury all your life and then someone tries to take you away from it all (and this is exactly what was going to happen in “The Veldt”), you’re not going to know anything about real life.

This story also has a lot to do with power and relationships. Peter and Wendy, had total control over their parents, and that power is very clear in the story. Their power was stronger because the two of them brainstormed their ideas together. Their plan probably came from both of their heads, not just one. So, power kind of fits in with all of the other things that me, and the rest of my class, and the class from L.A. have been told to write about. But some people just write about what they’re told to write about. But if you really think about it, you can conjoin the last post that we’ve written with this one and it will make a lot of sense. The stories don’t really have much in common, but the ideas do. For example, in “The Veldt” the kids had the power over the parents with all of their desires. If they didn’t have the nursery, there would be no lions to eat the parents. They would have nothing but their brains to work with.

So in the end, I think that some things you can have both and it will work to your advantage, but some won’t. Sometimes you need things that some people probably don’t have on a daily basis. But sometimes, you just have to be happy that you have what you need to live, because not everyone has as much luxury as you do, even if you think you don’t have it all that great.

Sara

Hey guys,

As you all know from reading my intro post, I am in junior girls volleyball. Just recently we played a team from Cranberry Portage which is about an hour and a half or so away from Snow Lake. It was our first game, so everyone was obviously nervous. But the reason we didn’t do so well is probably because we’ve only had 5 actual practices, or maybe just because we really suck. But I don’t think thats it. I think that we’re gonna turn out to be a really good team.

So here’s how it all went down: we played 3 games where we just played each other, and the Snow Lake Tigers (our team) only one the last one. I think we did really well on that game, though. Then our coaches decided to mix the teams for fun. My side did really well and one that game. We all did good on that one because we knew everybody and we weren’t nervous anymore.

So we’ve got a game against Cranberry (again) this afternoon. We’re going to their school this time. The game I just wrote about was exactly one week ago, I just didn’t have time to write earlier since we’ve been doing some other work with blogging. Hopefully we do better than we did on the last one, but we have to remember that it’s all for fun. My friend’s sister told us something the other day; she said that no one can hit the ball over every time by themselves. We win as a team and we lose as a team. We need to get our serve receives down so we can hopefully win a set.

Well, I’ll be sure to update soon on whether we’ve gotten any better in a week’s time. Bye!

Sara