Staying Organized

     Good morning! :)
     I just read everyone's plans, and I am really excited about the variety of topics that people plan to study.  This is going to be great for all of you and also really fun in that I am going to learn a lot as well.  I will post all of your topics to my blog next week, but to give you a taste, Derek is going to teach me about car restoration, and Garrett's going to explore Hollywood mysteries. What variety! :)
     For now I wanted to send you a quick note about staying organized between blog posts.  While all of your graded work is going to be done through Blogger, I want you to think of the blog as more of a final draft of what you are learning.  For notes and rough draft materials, I suggest getting a composition notebook.  Most of you are used to using notebooks in class and not doing everything online, and I think continuing that method will help you here as well.  Therefore, my vision is that you have a composition notebook that is specifically for this class and that you write quick notes to yourself in daily.  I would take it out while you read and jot down the date, pages that you read that day, page numbers of quotes you might want to write about, perhaps ideas that you can explore for your analytical blog posts (like symbolism, answers to your essential questions, etc.), and of course your vocab words.  Then, when you have a blog post to write, you flip through that notebook to find material.  For the Friday blog, you'll need to look at it to record your page numbers accurately.  You'll also need to make sure that you found at least ten vocab words, defined them, and that you recorded what page you found them on in your book.  Then for your other two blogs a week, if you keep ideas in the notebook, you won't be spending tons of your writing time just looking for material to write about.  It will already be there!
      Of course no one will be checking this notebook, but it seems to me that it will help you be more successful, so I hope it's a suggestion that you take.  Please contact me if you have any questions. You could also comment on the class blog to share ideas that you have about how to be successful. Though this is an independent class, you can still learn from each other by reading each other's blogs and sharing ideas on our class blog.
      Enjoy the rest of the weekend, do some revising on your plans (particularly essential questions) if I suggested that in my comments, and get reading! :)  You have your first 80-100 pages due on Friday, the 5th, and the first blog based around a quotation is due by 2:15 pm on Tuesday, and your first analytical post due on Thursday by 2:15 pm.  Then we should be on a roll with this. Good luck, and I hope you'll have fun with it. :)