Week 5 and Beyond - Weekly Vocabulary Assignments

Post Title: Weekly Vocabulary

Your internship sites are rich with new and unfamiliar terms or phrases. One of the goals of the internship is to further develop your English language proficiency. Once every two weeks, you are to publish a post about new vocabulary words or phrases that you have encountered or picked up "on the job." There is a template provided below for you to use each week. Your goal is at least five each post, totaling 20 by the end. Please give the word/phrase, what it means, and the context in which you came across it.

EXAMPLE:
Here is an example:

Word: Jailbroken

Meaning: A computer hardware device that has been hacked into

Context: I saw an article about the iPhone being jailbroken, or hacked so it could be used on other mobile service providers.

TEMPLATE:
1. Word / Phrase:

Meaning:

Context:

2. Word / Phrase:

Meaning:

Context:

3. Word / Phrase:

Meaning:

Context:

4. Word / Phrase:

Meaning:

Context:

5. Word / Phrase:

Meaning:

Context:

Question: What if I didn't hear any new words?

Answer: Challenge yourself. Do the assignment using words or phrases related to SAT preparation, college now, or some other advanced activity that will require expanding your vocabulary and increasing your English language proficiency.

Week Four: You're a third of the way there

Title: The End of the Fourth Week of Internships

For your blog assignment this week, please describe your internship site by answering the following questions...

PART 1
What is it?

What kind of business is it and what kind of work do the professionals do there?

Where is it? What is the neighborhood like compared to where our school is?

Tell a little about your mentor.

What kinds of things have you done so far?

What were some of the highlights of the fourth week? (Memorable moments, cool things, incredibly difficult things...)

PART 2
Please answer some logistical questions...

When do you leave school?

How long does it take you to get to your internship?

When do you arrive at home?

What is your schedule? (What days do you work and for how long each day?)

Who are the two people that can sign your time card? (Your mentor and the additional person)

Part 3
This is a supplemental assignment for your fourth week.

How was the fourth week different than the third week?


What is something that you really like about the internship?


What is something you dislike about the internship?


Who else's blog have your read and commented on?

Week Three - Life as a High School Intern

So many things are happening as the days pass. Two periods a day of classes, then you're off to the cafeteria for a delicious and hearty lunch, a little socializing with your friends, and a few "I'll see you tomorrows". Then you're on your way to the train or bus so that you can do your thing: Intern, assist, help out, learn.

For today's post, your job is to describe as many internship tasks as you can. Since you began three Mondays back, what have you been doing? Paint a picture of a typical day in the life of an intern. What are you doing from the time you start until the time you leave? Are you working alone or with a group of people? Who are you working with? In what kind of space are you working?

Turn your description into a short story, diary, or journal entry that creates a picture of the life of you, a high school intern.

Use your journal entries from each day to make your story more interesting and full of details.

Wednesday Internship Goal Achieved

Congratulations to Gardy today for his fantastic work today at IHS. As an in-house intern, he created three excel spreadsheets that will be used to track your progress in Internship Seminar. For each assigned post you create and each iMentor email that you send, you will receive a stamp (of sorts).

When you come back to class, make sure to view your name and see if you are all caught up on your iMentor emails and Internship posts.

Have a great night, and if you get a chance, watch the news on Channel 13 at 7 p.m. It's a great way to learn about what's going on in the world.

See you tomorrow.

Week 2 - Getting better acquainted with your site

You're off to your second week interning and I suspect you're learning a great deal about the ins and outs of your site. This week's writing task involves how you document the work you'll be doing each day. In other words, "How do you keep good records of the work you do each day?" This is an extremely important part of your internship and you’ll need to use your journals each and every day.

Take a look at this story:

An intern came to me this morning and complained that he wanted a new site. I responded "Why?" He began to tell me how he had asked his mentor if he could use an office computer. She said, "Sure, no problem." So this young man proceeded to do some work on the computer for an hour or so. At the time he was about to leave and get his time card signed, his mentor approached him and said, "What have you done today?" He paused, sort of amazed that she was asking him that question. To make matters worse, his mentor didn't ask thequestion in a kind way, and the intern felt pretty upset. He had been working all day at his internship site, but he wasn't quick to respond with a list of things that he'd done. He left the internship that day feeling really dejected. He wished he hadn’t been there at all. It was a sad day.

So what's the lesson of this story? In your post for today, answer the question. Create a plan that you think will be the best plan to make sure that you are able to explain to your mentor at the end of a day, week, or month, what you’ve been accomplishing. What about being able to record all the things you're learning and doing so that you can write an essay in April about your internship? What can you do?