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Thursday, March 29, 2012

CRT Review

I hope you have loved reviewing for the CRT. This week we have reviewed the following things:

  • Commas, semi-colons, colons
  • Active/passive voice
  • Root words
    You played a lot of games, had a lot of fun, but you reviewed for the CRT. Don't forget these words:
  • Onomatopoeia
  • Metaphor/simile
  • Allusion
  • Alliteration

Monday, March 19, 2012

Choose Your New Book


  • You need to choose a book you have NEVER read... 
  • By an author you have NEVER read...
  • It should be on an adult level.
  • You can choose something that is on your "I want to read that" list.

Go to Amazon.com. Look at something you HAVE read that you liked. Look at the bottom. Look at the list of things of "People who bought this also liked..." Look at the recommendations.
Ask friends.
It should be AT LEAST 300 pages.
Bring it to class by April 1st. No fooling. You will have to read it by May 15th.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Big Ideas from Twelfth Night

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. 
1. Don't try to climb out of your social class:
  • Malvolio tries to climb
  • Queen Elizabeth HATED social climbers
  • The play was performed in front of her.
2. Love was something you had to SUFFER for:
  • Orsino is love-sick
  • Many of the characters seem to view love as a kind of curse, a feeling that attacks its victims suddenly and disruptively. 
  • Various characters claim to suffer painfully from being in love, or, rather, from the pangs of unrequited love.
  •  At one point, Orsino depicts love dolefully as an “appetite” that he wants to satisfy and cannot (I.i.13); at another point, he calls his desires “fell and cruel hounds” (I.i.21). 
  • Olivia more bluntly describes love as a “plague” from which she suffers terribly (I.v.265). 
  • Even the less melodramatic Viola sighs unhappily that “My state is desperate for my master’s love” (II.ii.35). 
  • This desperation has the potential to result in violence—as in Act V, scene i, when Orsino threatens to kill Cesario because he thinks that -Cesario has forsaken him to become Olivia’s lover.
3. Who's the man?? Gender is uncertain--and they didn't understand the whole IDENTICAL twin thing!!
It all works out in the end--right? That whole BROMANCE with Antonio is still AWKWARD... Whoo. I guess Antonio is just protecting Sebastian from Orsino, right??

You could have them make LISTS of things that repeat, or patterns that repeat, or things they see over and over and over again:

Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Letters, Messages, and Tokens
Madness
Disguises
Mistaken Identity
2 good discussion questions:
What role does Malvolio serve in the play? Does his fate seem unjust? Is it out of place in a romantic comedy? If so, why might Shakespeare have included it?
Paying particular attention to the fate of Malvolio and Antonio, discuss how Shakespeare brings some ambiguous touches to the happy ending. Why include Antonio? Why include a friend who gets totally shafted by Sebastian (ignore the who bromance thing... Sebastian shafts Antonio who saved his life! Antonio comes to help Sebastian whom he thinks will be treated terribly by Orsino, and Antonio basically gets tossed out of Illyria with nothing. What does this tell you about class and "friendship"?

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

End of the Term...

Can you BELIEVE it?! The term is ALMOST OVER!? It's time to FREAK OUT about it!! :D
No, really, we're almost done.
Here's what we have left to do:
We're going to continue to read Shakespeare.
We're going to finish with our book reports.
You're going to TURN IN ALL LATE WORK BY THIS FRIDAY. :D
We'll have an end of the term writing assessment, and then term 3 will be over! You MADE it. YAY.
Term 3 writing assessment will cover these concepts:
1. What is a foil?
2. How does it work with binary opposition?
3. You will get a prompt you haven't seen before and be asked to write about it. You will get 45 minutes to write 3 paragraphs. I will give you a brief review on how to set up the thesis statement and support for a good paragraph. Of course, I want you to have a great 3rd quarter assessment because I love your guts!
March 23rd is the last day of term 3.
I'll have your grades updated by Monday.

Book Report After Thoughts

The name of my book...
What I did for my book report...
What I am most proud of:
What I wish I did differently...

Other cool reports?

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Flex for this week

Tuesday: No FLEX--PLAN test!!
Wednesday: Setting "The House that Built Me" by Miranda Lambert
Thursday: Relationships "Stuck Like Glue" by  Sugarland
Flashback Friday: Make-up book reports. ALL LATE WORK DUE.