Happy First Day of May!

Honors: ISTEP on Monday.  It will take about 70-80 minutes so it does leave almost 40 minutes of class time...I hope.

With that in mind, I want you to do well on ISTEP--take your time and think carefully--but we also need to prepare for class. We looked at the IP drafts today.  They are coming along but still require some additional evidence and analysis and valid support based on the discussions I heard.

The big concern seems to be the counter claim.  I opened up a new possibility in this regard.  Before I said the counterclaim has to explain why the IP does not deserve a seat at the table of influence.  That's still the first choice, however, now, if you are having a bear of a time coming up with a valid/logical/acceptable counterclaim, I'll allow you to argue that there is a negative influence that would diminish the positive influence you presented in your body paragraphs. Let me know if you have a question on that.

We are setting Friday May 8 as the completion date for the paper.  Now, that does not include any of the multi-media/screencast parts of the paper.  We will visit those the following week.

Standard: 55 minutes just seems to fast after having 125 minute classes.  We crammed what we could into the time and still didn't get as far as I had hoped.  For that reason, I just want you to read pages 23-28 this weekend.  Since ISTEP will only take a portion of our time on Monday/Tuesday, we will fill the rest of the time completing today's plan and jumping onto those new five pages.