My Experiences with Poe.

     So far in my whole life I have read only one Edgar Allan Poe story. That was the Cask of Amontillado. I enjoyed that short story a lot mostly for the suspense of it. It kept me wanting to read further into the story to see what happens. The end where the one man gets buried alive was pretty creepy but I loved it. I have hopes that more of Poe's story's will scare me and I will also enjoy them.

Picture of Poe.

http://poestories.com/view.php?photo=42bfc99c5f774

WebQuest.

1. Edgar Allen Poe was born on January 19, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts. He passed away at age 41 on October 7, 1849.
http://poestories.com/biography.php

2.The death of his mother influenced Poe's writings. Also when his father abandoned him and his sister his writing was also influenced. Finally all his drinking affected him. All this grief in his childhood caused his writing to be very dark and scary.
http://poestories.com/biography.php


3. I have five theories of Poe's death. One is that he died from rabies. Another theory is that Poe died from alcohol poisoning since he drank a lot in the first place. Some think that Poe died from heart problems or maybe tuberculosis like his mother. The Baltimore Clipper said he died from congestion of the brain which means brain problems. These are just a few theories but no one is exactly sure how he died.
 http://knowingpoe.thinkport.org/person/death.asp

4.  According to the Edgar Allan Poe museum Poe's home was in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.
http://www.poemuseum.org/life.php

5.The Poe Society of Baltimore thinks that Poe lived in Virginia.
http://www.eapoe.org/papers/misc1921/quinnc02.htm

6.Poe was expelled from the famous Military Academy, West Point.
http://poestories.com/biography.php

7. Poe married his cousin, Virginia Clemm, when she was only 13 years old and he was over 20 years old.
http://poestories.com/biography.php

8.  I think it's really weird that Edgar married his cousin and even odder that she wasn't even an adult yet.

9.  The Murders in the Rue Morgue is known as the first detective story .
http://poestories.com/summaries.php


10. The Tell Tale Heart was written in 1850. The Black Cat was written in 1845.
http://poestories.com/stories.php

11. The Raven was published in 1845.
http://poestories.com/stories.php
12. I think of this picture when I am reading Poe's stories.
http://poestories.com/view.php?photo=42bfc99c5f774

13. By far the Cask of Amontadillo. It was scary and suspenseful and kept me reading. It was my favorite Poe story so far and my only one.
http://poestories.com/comments.php

14. I love this dude hes awesome even though he isnt alive.
 http://poestories.com/guestbook.php

15.  first story. The Black Cat
     A man comes home drunk and kills his cat. This comes back to haunt him later and once again the killer is the narrator of the story.
The Gold Bug
     A story about two men who are looking for treasure. The treasure is the famous treasure of Captain Kidd. There are encrypted messages within the story and if you read the story you could even decode real messages!
http://poestories.com/summaries.php

16. I felt that listening to the audio version deepened my reading experience by hearing the expressions of the narrators voice.

17. The Poe Toaster is a man who came to Poe's grave every year and put an empty bottle of Cognac and three roses down as a " Toast".
http://knowingpoe.thinkport.org/library/news/toaster.asp

 18. One example of Poe in my life are the Baltimore Ravens named after his poem. Another example is Poe was number 4 on most searched terms in 1999. A third example is that a award for mystery writers is called an Edgar. Another example is that 81 films have been based on Poe's works. Finally a novel called the strange city is a book about the Poe toaster.
http://knowingpoe.thinkport.org/library/news/yourlife.asp

Welcome back!

     Welcome back to me English Blog. It's the second quarter and we are starting something new. We are off research papers and on to short stories. We will be reading from authors like Edgar Allen Poe and William Shakespeare.
     I updated the theme of my blog and I also updated my current projects gadget. I hope this new theme looks good and can be easily read.
    I personally have never read any William Shakespeare books or talked about them so I am interested to see what kind of writing he does. Also I have heard that he uses sarcasm and irony in his stories a lot. I have only read one Edgar Allen Poe book but enjoyed it. It was only a short story but i enjoyed it. The creepiness of it kept me reading and the suspense also made me want to continue reading.
     Im excited to start short stories and read some books from some famous authors that are new to me.

Research Paper

                It’s a fact that we all know that some minority students do bad. Students of any race can do poorly in school. Now a fact most of us know is that not all minority students do bad in school. This is a stereotype that people have stuck in their head. All minority students that aren’t well off do poorly in school. That must change. Schools must help all minority students succeed in school, and erase the stereotype that all of them do poorly.

                Now one reason why some minority students do poorly in school is because of the life before they even enter kindergarten. This time in life is shown to be when the brain progresses the most              (Whitmire).  If they aren’t treated right this time intellectually then they’ll fall behind. One thing that can let kids fall behind in this time is not having enough literature in their lives. If they’re parents don’t read to them or they don’t read any at all then they’ll fall behind. It’s proven that if you have more books in your home and read them or someone reads them too you have a higher literacy rate (Evans). Another thing that affects children before kindergarten is not going to pre-school. Many kids that are well off are sent to pre-school as kids. Pre-k can help kids become more advanced with learning. They get a basic grasp on things like letters and numbers before kindergarten. The minority kids who live in poverty can’t afford pre-k since it’s not public so they fall behind other kids. They fall behind so much that this was discovered. "At the University of North Carolina, psychologist Craig Ramey showed that a high quality pre-school can boost IQ by 7-10 points with the gains holding as the child entered adulthood." (Whitmire). That makes a huge difference in learning and can let a kid who doesn’t go to pre-k fall behind.

Another thing that majorly affects a kid’s success in school is their home life and parents. The condition of their home and how they live affects their performance in school. Also how good their parents are affects performance also. It’s proven that better parenting helps children perform better (Whitmire). If the parents parent better a few things will improve with the child. First the child will be on better behavior which helps in school. Second the child will be more willing to learn because the kid will understand the importance of a good education if their parents raise them good.

The next thing to do with home life is what is in the home. If the kid is surrounded by books and literature they will do better in school. The reason being is that reading the books helps the child understand English more for English class. Also reading literature better than watching  T.V. all day. Finally having the books helps the child learn to read better if they read a lot. This skill helps a lot in school .Another factor at home that affects school performance is support from parents. It’s shown that minority children’s parents usually offer less support (Whitmire). This hurts the kid in school a few ways. First the kid will generally care less about school.  They’ll care less if their parents don’t care if they do good or not. Also if their parents don’t support them they can’t get help. Even if they try in school if they need help but the parent doesn’t care how they do the parent won’t help. That can hurt a kid’s performance in school. Finally the social factors of a child’s home life and the economic factors outweigh anything the school can deal with (Evans). This is backed up by this statement "The achievement gap has much more to do with social and economic factors than schools can deal with"(Evans). This means that the social factors a home are things a school can change a little but not much. The economic factors on the other hand are too big for a school to deal with. That makes home life problems not the schools fault.

                Finally the condition of a school plays a big role in how a student succeeds. How good the schools physical condition and condition in the form of good learning tools affects a child’s performance in school. First off the factors that aren’t the physical condition of the school play a big role in a student’s success. For example the size of a class affects a student’s performance. Bigger classes are shown to reduce the success of children (Whitmire). Larger classes occur in schools who can’t afford more classrooms or teachers. Also things like lack of computers, and violence in schools can reduce the performance of children (Evans). Next it is proven that improving these conditions will help a minority student more than a white student(Judith). Since the minority student is the focus of this paper this is important as doing this will help the minority student do better in school which is what is needed to be done to erase the stereotype all minority students do bad. Third of all a student’s success in school is related to the educational background and goals of the other pupils (Judith). This basically is saying that the attitude and academic background of the other students will rub off others and help determine how much they succeed. This is known as when how one student acts affects how all the other students act also. Finally there is the issue of how other peers will look on at you. Some minority students are afraid that if they do well and behave in school they are acting “Too White”. This is shown in this statement. " Some minority students believe if they behave and do well in school they are acting too white"(Evans). This pretty much means some students have the ability to do good but are afraid their peers will make fun of them if they act different. Note that this isn’t too common in good students.

                One opposing argument is that all minority students do poorly in school no matter what. This could be because minority students score on average lower than white students (Judith). This is a very wrong statement.  For one a lot of minority students succeed in school. A lot do better than white students. For example many Asian students score better than white students (Evans). They are on the same level as white students most of the time. A lot of the time African American and Hispanic students score up there as well.

                Another opposing argument is that minority students do poorly just because they go to a public school and this too is wrong. For example in public schools parents are more involved with the school (Whitmire). This helps the kids do better because the parents care. Also rural and small towns spend more money for minority public schools (Whitmire). This of course helps the school be better and the students do better.

                Minority students have some problems needing fixing but everyone does. A lot of factors play into why minority students don’t do well sometimes. Bad parents, bad school conditions, and violence are a few things that can reduce performance of a student. If we can make these things better we can help minority students do better for this reason. School need to help the minority perform better in school and drop the horrible stereotype that they can’t succeed in school!

Works Cited

"Excerpt from Equality of Educational Opportunity (Coleman Report)." American Decades. Ed. Judith S. Baughman, et al. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Gale Student Resources In Context. Web. 27 Sept. 2010.

Evans, Robert. "Reframing the Achievement Gap." Phi Delta Kappan Vol. 86, No. 8. April 2005: 582-589. SIRS Researcher. Web. 20 Sep 2010.

Whitmire, Richard. "The Education Gap: Why Minority Test Scores Lag." Gannett News Service. Nov. 5 1997: n.p. SIRS Researcher. Web. 16 Sep 2010.

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