Sometimes my students really amaze me.
One of the things I love about teaching English is that I’m frequently learning new things from my students. Even my grade 8s have had wonderful insights that I’d never considered before.
Earlier this week, my class read “Dulce et Decorum Est”. After reading it for comprehension, they formed small groups and chose the poem’s words and short phrases they thought were particularly powerful. Writing on the board and windows, the groups listed the words in the order they appear in the poem. Then, using their lists, they identified patterns and progressions to help deepen their analysis and understanding.
As we went around to each group’s work, I was impressed, as always, at my students’ insights. However, one group, in particular, stood out because they used math to help them with their analysis. They numbered each word from 1 to 12, from the most powerful to the least powerful word in their list. After ranking the words, they found the average rank for each stanza in the poem: the lower the average, the more powerful the words in that stanza. Their result is shown in the photograph below.
By finding the averages, they identified that the words become more powerful in each new stanza, and this led to a discussion about why this was so.
Now, of course, their rankings were subjective, but it was still a unique method of approaching analysis, and it spurred an insightful discussion of the poem.
I can’t wait to see what my students teach me next.
Doors Marked Pull 
Hello Chris,
Your post and explanations were most interesting, but not having a PRO Sketchup, I do not have the 3D export to obj. I searched a little further and here is the way. I also posted it on XDA developers together with the text file mentioned here-below. Should you be interested, you will find it under “walk in your own sketchup 3D model with google cardboard virtual reality”. You are welcome to add it to your excellent user manual. Since my post on XDA, I realised that the .rb files could be stored on sketchup tools, so I made below a complement to my XDA post. I had to modify the original soft found on internet to force double face triangles, you can see my addon in the text file.
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Hi Guillaume,
Thank you very much. I didn’t actually realize that only the PRO version could export to obj. I thought I had an extension or something. Your post will be helpful for others who are in your shoes.
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your kind reply. For whoever is interested, the post on XDA developers has been updated with a version now even better than the native Sketchup PRO obj export. It is more adapted to OBJ2VR. It puts directly all files in the same folder (no need to modify the .mtl file),it creates both faces of every triangle (no more disappearing mesh), it solves the symmetry issue (text engraved are not mirrored).
http://forum.xda-developers.com/android/apps-games/walk-sketchup-3d-model-google-cardboard-t3304947