Blake+Bachara



My name is Blake and I was born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida. I love reading, cooking, traveling to new places, and cheering on the Clemson Tigers. I'm excited to begin my student teaching next year.

This dictionary will give a complete listing of definitions and uses for any word in the English language, as well as its etymology. This site is especially useful in older works to see how authors may have intended a word differently than today's readers would understand it. Google Ngram is a tool that allows students to see graphs of word frequencies over various times in various locations. It is an interesting way for students to "play" with language.
 * Oxford English Dictionary** @http://www.oed.com/
 * Google Ngram** @https://books.google.com/ngrams

Glogster is a resource that allows users to create a digital multi-media poster. It can include text, video, graphics, and images making it useful in a wide array of classroom activities.
 * Setting Exploration**. When beginning a new work, students often need to learn some background information. Glogster would be a great way for students to display what they have learned in a creative format. For example, if the class was beginning to read //The Great Gatsby//, one group may write about the Jazz Age, while another may create a presentation about fictional memoir as a genre, and still another might present on Long Island in the early 1920s.
 * Writing Tutorials.** Students could make a Glog about different aspects of writing, such as how to write a good introductory paragraph, how to correctly cite materials in MLA format, or defining characteristics of different writing styles.

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 * Remember the Mountain Bed **

** Billy Bragg & Wilco – Mermaid Avenue Vol. II **
Words: Woody Guthrie 1944. Music: Tweedy/Bennett 1999

Do you still sing of the mountain bed we made of limbs and leaves? Do you still sigh there near the sky where the holly berry bleeds? You laughed as I covered you over with leaves Face, breast, hips, and thighs You smiled when I said the leaves were just the color of your eyes

Rosin smells and turpentine smells from eucalyptus and pine Bitter tastes of twigs we chewed where tangled wood vines twine Trees held us in on all four sides so thick we could not see I could not see any wrong in you, and you saw none in me

Your arm was brown against the ground, your cheeks part of the sky Your fingers played with grassy moss, as limber you did lie Your stomach moved beneath your shirt and your knees were in the air Your feet played games with mountain roots as you lay thinking there

Below us the trees grew clumps of trees, raised families of trees, and they As proud as we tossed their heads in the wind and flung good seeds away The sun was hot and the sun was bright down in the valley below Where people starved and hungry for life so empty come and go

There in the shade and hid from the sun we freed our minds and learned Our greatest reason for being here, our bodies moved and burned There on our mountain bed of leaves we learned life's reason why The people laugh and love and dream, they fight, they hate to die

The smell of your hair I know is still there, if most of our leaves are blown Our words still ring in the brush and the trees where singing seeds are sown Your shape and form is dim but plain, there on our mountain bed I see my life was brightest where you laughed and laid your head...

I learned the reason why man must work and how to dream big dreams To conquer time and space and fight the rivers and the seas I stand here filled with my emptiness now and look at city and land And I know why farms and cities are built by hot, warm, nervous hands

I crossed many states just to stand here now, my face all hot with tears I crossed city, and valley, desert, and stream, to bring my body here My history and future blaze bright in me and all my joy and pain Go through my head on our mountain bed where I smell your hair again.

All this day long I linger here and on in through the night My greeds, desires, my cravings, hopes, my dreams inside me fight: My loneliness healed, my emptiness filled, I walk above all pain Back to the breast of my woman and child to scatter my seeds again

media type="custom" key="24923102" I read the lyrics before listening to the music, and when I did hear the song it sounded very much as I expected it to. As I read the lyrics, I imagined a slow, lolling song, because it seemed to me like two people on a summer afternoon without any obligations enjoying the sun and each other. One of the major themes running throughout the song is the connectedness between humans and nature. There were times when I was not sure whether the other person here was actually a person or if it was personification of a larger concept, even life. The first two lines of the third to last stanza to me sounded like a passing of time, or even almost a coming of age moment, before the rest of the song which returns to many of the same feelings and locations, but with a sense of added perspective. The last line I have a hard time reconciling with the rest of the piece, because I can't decide if the protagonist has moved on and this is a different woman, if the woman he is talking about is the woman from the beginning, or if it has been a metaphor the whole time exactly what he is doing. I do like that the last line connects back to middle of the song, when the trees were described as scattering their seed.

What Path Will You Choose, or Why You Should Consider Teaching Abroad

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This is an example of a way for students to learn and practice vocabulary in the classroom. It is a tool called Padlet, and is similar to Glogster but has a cleaner feel making it ideal for learning. I like this tool because it allows for student collaboration and continuous additions. This means that by the end of the year, students would have a comprehensive list of vocabulary covered with pictures, examples from the text, definitions, and sample sentences from multiple viewpoints. Additionally, words that "go together" can be put physically together on the wall. Words could be grouped alphabetically, by book or unit, by theme, or whatever grouping makes sense for a particular class.

//Here is my example word wall made with Padlet: media type="custom" key="25349642"//

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This video is a book trailer for Agatha Christie's //And Then There Were None//. Video book trailers are a great way to integrate technology into a high school English classroom. Not only does it encourage proficiency in at least two technological aspects (making and editing, as well as posting the video), it also allows students to demonstrate knowledge of a work, perhaps even encouraging others to read it themselves.

