8100-ABED_1: Lesson 16 — Activity 3: Assignment

In this assignment, you will practise making notes.

Do the following:

Choose one of the pieces of writing below to make notes on.

1. You may choose an excerpt from an essay called "What a Certain Visionary Once Said" by Tomson Highway. Tomson Highway was born to a family of nomadic caribou hunters on the border between Manitoba and Nunavut. He grew up knowing two languages, Cree, his mother tongue, and Dene, the language of the neighbouring "nation," a people with whom his family roamed and hunted.
Today, he enjoys an international career as a playwright, a novelist, and as a pianist/songwriter. For more information on Tomson Highway, you can go to his website: http://www.tomsonhighway.com/.

OR

2. You may choose an example of writing about a topic in science. The topic of this piece of writing is the atmosphere of the Earth.

Use these steps to make notes as you read or listen to the selection chosen:

1. Read or listen to the material once.

2. Fill in the Note Taking organizer as you read or listen a second time:

Give your notes a title. This identifies the topic.

Identify key ideas in the essay and write these down in the organizer.

Look at what you have written in the organizer. Do the key ideas cover everything you need to know about the topic? If you have missed anything, add it to the organizer.

Jot down a few points to help you remember the information related to each key idea.You may add additional key words and notes to this organizer, as well.

Here is the excerpt from "What a Certain Visionary Once Said" by Tomson Highway:

As you travel north from Winnipeg, the flatness of the prairie begins to give way. And the northern forests begin to take over, forests of spruce and pine and poplar and birch. The northern rivers and the northern rapids, the waterfalls, the eskers, the northern lakes – thousands of them – with their innumerable islands encircled by golden-sand beaches and flat limestone surfaces that slide gracefully into water.

As you travel farther north, the trees themselves begin to diminish in height and size. And get smaller, until finally, you reach the barren lands. It is from these reaches that herds of caribou in the thousands come thundering down each winter. It is here that you find trout and pickerel and pike and whitefish in profusion. If you’re here in August, your eyes will be glutted with a sudden explosion of colour seldom seen in any southern Canadian landscape: fields of wild raspberries, cloud berries, blueberries, cranberries, stands of wild flowers you never believed such remote northern terrain was capable of nurturing. And the water is still so clean you can dip your hand over the side of your canoe and you can drink it. In winter, you can eat the snow, without fear. In both winter and summer, you can breathe, this is your land, your home...

...You begin to understand that this earth we live on... has an emotional, psychological, and spiritual life every bit as complex as that of the most complex, sensitive, and intelligent of individuals.

And it’s ours. Or is it?

A certain ancient Aboriginal visionary of this country once said: “We have not inherited this land; we have merely borrowed it from our children.”

If that’s the case, what a loan!

Eh?

Adapted from "What a Certain Visionary Once Said," by Tomson Highway, Sightlines 7, Toronto: Prentice Hall Ginn Canada, Pearson Education Canada.

Here is the example of writing about a topic in Science:

The Importance of Earth’s Atmosphere

Earth’s atmosphere is a thin layer of air that forms a protective covering around our planet. If the Earth had no atmosphere, days would be extremely hot and nights would be extremely cold. The Earth’s atmosphere maintains a balance between the amount of heat absorbed from the sun and the amount of heat that escapes back into space. It also protects life-forms from some of the sun’s harmful rays.

Layers of the Earth’s Atmosphere

What do you think would happen if you left a glass of chocolate milk out on the counter for a while? Eventually, you would see a lower layer with more chocolate separating from the upper layers with less chocolate. The Earth’s atmosphere has layers like a glass of chocolate milk. There are five layers in the Earth’s atmosphere. Each layer has its own properties. The lower layers are comprised of the troposphere and the stratosphere. The upper layers are the mesosphere, thermosphere, and the exosphere. Most of the air is in the troposphere and the stratosphere layers.

You may use a computer or paper to complete this assignment.

When you are done, review for spelling and punctuation.

Please do one of the following:

1. You can type your work directly into the assignment box on the next page by clicking the "add submission" button under the orange box at the bottom of this page.
2. If you type your work into the attached Word document, save your document, and either send it to your teacher as an e-mail attachment or print it off and then hand it in to your teacher so it can be marked.
3. You can also choose to complete a hand-written assignment on a piece of paper. If so, please hand in your assignment to your teacher so it can be marked.

See the Marking Guide below to see how your teacher will grade this assignment.

Marking Guide:

This assignment is worth 10 marks.

If you wish to write directly into the assignment box, do the following: When you are ready to begin writing, click the "add submission" button below. Be sure to save your work as you go!