Shakespeare Scavenger Hunt Quiz

Hi, class!

aw yeah

Below you will find all of the categories for the Shakespeare research webquest that we've been assembling for the last few class periods. They are listed in the same order as on the last blog post, only now, each topic is hyperlinked to one of your classmate's blogs! You're going to have to search through the facts that they have in their posts in order to answer the questions they've come up with.

All of the questions are in quiz form, conveniently in one word document which Mrs. DeRaps has sent to you via Email. Look through the list of questions and start searching these blogs for the answers.

All you need to do is copy and paste those answers into the word document. 

Yes, this quiz will be graded, so you will need to work individually and quietly until you are all finished. Happy hunting!


Shakespeare's Biography

Shakespeare's Biography (2)

Queen Elizabeth I and the Elizabethan Period

Renaissance Italy

The Plague

Elizabethan Sports

The Globe Theater

The Globe Theater (2)

Elizabethan Women/Hairstyles

Fashion/Color of Clothing

Food

Torture and Punishment

Marriage

Love


When you're all done, print your completed word doc or email it to me and check in with me.
-Mr. Thomas

Getting To Know The Bard

Hello everyone!
I hope you all had a relaxing and enjoyable weekend! Once we're finished with Of Mice and Men, we're going to get started on Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. 

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1883770,00.html

To get our feet wet, we're going to spend class today completing a webquest that will help us get more acquainted with Shakespeare and the world in which he lived. Each of you will be working on certain aspects of Shakespeare's life, using your blogs to report out what you've learned from these resources. Here are the basic instructions:

1. Click on your link

2. Choose 4 to 6 of the most important facts or ideas related to your topic

3. Rephrase and retype those facts into a blog post

4. Find a photo, drawing, or art piece related to your topic and upload it into your blog post

5. Make the title of your post the same as your topic

6. Write a sentence or two about one or two of the facts you've located (is this similar to today or different from today?)

Shakespeare's Biography

Shakespeare's Biography (2)

Queen Elizabeth I and the Elizabethan Period

Renaissance Italy

The Plague

The Plague (2)

Elizabethan Sports

The Globe Theater

The Globe Theater (2)

Elizabethan Women

Fashion

Color of Clothing

Food

Torture and Punishment

Marriage

Love

Hairstyles


And for extra credit:
Shakespeare's Portrait
The Shakespearean Insult
Insult Generator
Happy researching!


-Mr. Thomas

Freshman English: Midterm Exam

For your midterm, you're going to write a series of blog posts. For each post, I will be looking for the following criteria:

Evidence of Critical Thinking: Thoughtful observations, connections between readings and the larger world and/or your life, and growth in your thoughts/ observations from the beginning of the year.

Evidence of Critical Reading: Evidence of thorough readings, comprehension of reading materials, insightful reflections, and connections between readings materials.

Evidence of Creative Thinking: Inclusion of photographs, music, videos, or other media that enhances the presentation of the post; original ideas presented in readings are extended in a creative manner.

Evidence of the Ability to Write Clearly and Effectively: Grammar, spelling, capitalization errors do not interfere with audience understanding. The structure of your blog posts allows for understanding and is easy to follow.

Evidence of Awareness of Diverse Audience: Opinions, justifications, rationalizations, and summaries are written in a way that allows a diverse audience to understand your intent. Writings are not offensive, but engage audience members in your ideas and opinions in a creative manner.

Here are your topics. Some are required posts, but others offer some choices. Make sure that each entry meets the criteria listed above.


Required Posts

1. Last week, we completed a GIST summary about the recent shooting in Tucson, Arizona. In this entry, please type your summary paragraph that you wrote last week. Then, add an additional paragraph where you explain whether or not you believe the alleged shooter should receive the death penalty. Make sure to be thorough in your answer and offer reasons why you hold this opinion.

(LABEL=Monster)

2. Write a reflective post about your blog. It's only a baby blog at this point, but I want to know what you're learning about writing from this process. Think about: improvements in the quality of your writing, your awareness of audience, your writing/ blogging goals for the rest of the year.

(LABEL=Reflection)


Optional Posts (Choose Two)

1. Write about your previous experiences with reading. Were you a reader before you started high school? Has Silent Sustained Reading changed your reading habits at all? What are the benefits of having SSR as part of our class time? What are the drawbacks? Do you plan to read more or less books for the rest of this school year?

(LABEL=SSR)

2. Write a post about your experiences in peer editing and teacher conferencing over your 5 Paragraph Essay. What did you learn from your peer editing and teacher conferences? What could have made them more effective? Do you think conferencing about your writing will make your writing better?

(LABEL=Writing)

3. Write reflective post about your experiences so far in high school. How are you doing academically compared to middle school? Do you feel like you've been successful in the high school? Why or why not?

(LABEL=Reflection)

4. Choose one of the poems you read or wrote for Poetry Friday. Retype it here and explain why you liked this poem and what made it stand out to you. Then, explain how you feel about reading and writing poems. Do you feel that you are growing as a poet? Do you feel more confident in writing/ reading poems now than you did at the start of this school year?

(LABEL=Poetry Friday)

The Real Cases: Death Row Inmates

Today, we're going to look at photos and information about actual people who are currently on death row. This means that they have been sentenced to die for a crime (or crimes) that they have committed. From this list, choose three people who are on death row. In a blog post, use their cases to talk about whether or not you agree with the death penalty.

When you're done with your post, please send me a link in an email. I will list your posts on this blog and you will have the opportunity to comment on other blogs.

Make sure that you are respectful in your post and that you clearly state your opinion. When you comment on other blogs, make sure that you are respectful and give a thorough response to their comments/ ideas. 

Speak: Public Service Announcements

Our culminating project for our study of Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak is to create public service announcements that will be played on our local radio and hosted on the SAVES (Sexual Assault Victims Emergency Services) website. Public Service Announcements are little bits of sound that inform listeners about important social issues.

Here are some sample videos of Public Service Announcements:



And here are some sample audio Public Service Announcements:

Male Pride

Male Excuses

Female Respect

With the help of Ms. Plummer, you all are going to now draft a script for your PSA and actually record one in today's class. I cannot wait to hear the powerful statements that you all come up with!

SSR Survey Quarter One

Please take this short survey so that I can collect data about this quarter's SSR.

Did You Know? Statistics About Sexual Assault

Today, we're revisiting the issue of whether or not Laurie Halse Anderson's book Speak is appropriate reading material for high school students. Now, you have read the book and have an understanding of the scenes, language, and characters with which Mr. Scroggins took issue.

Now that you have enough information to form an opinion about whether or not this book should be taught in schools, you're going to write a letter in support of this book or in support of Mr. Scroggins's efforts to ban it. In your letter, you need to speak to his claim that this book contains "soft pornography".

To do this, you are going to give information about the main character's experience with sexual assault and a fact about sexual assault. Here are some websites from which you can find statistics and facts about rape and sexual assault:

http://www.rainn.org/

http://www.pcar.org/

http://www.teenpcar.com/

http://www.mecasa.org/

http://www.savesrapecrisis.org/

http://calcasa.org/

Please start your letter with "To Whom It May Concern" and close with "Sincerely".

Your letters will be posted on your blog to add to the online conversation about this controversial topic.

Speak: Our Tree Emerges

For a couple of weeks, we've been collecting powerful words from our reading of Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak and creating parts of a tree. Today, we assembled part of our tree on our classroom wall. Though it's not done, I can tell that it is going to look amazing and send a powerful message about the themes and topics covered in this book. We will work to create more bark, branches, leaves, and roots in our upcoming classes. Off to a great start, though!

Here's our emerging tree:

Speak Out Against Sexual Assault

We've been reading and talking about our book Speak for the past week or so. We're getting more and more into the book and are starting to see the effects of the rape on Melinda's relationships with her friends, family, teachers, and herself. She has been hurting herself and is even dressing differently.

As we think about the impact of sexual assault on this one girl, it's interesting to bring the ideas presented in this book back to our lives. How do we feel when we are forced to be silent? How do we feel when we force ourselves to remain silent?

We talked about these feelings and created a bit of an artistic representation of us being silenced. (This project was optional in that you did not have to use tape if you did not want to. There were some non-tape options available if this made you feel uncomfortable.) Here is what some of you created:

To me, the entire collection of photos from this activity is nothing short of powerful. And disturbing. Great work, all!

Speak: SAVES Advocates Visit

Today we were lucky enough to have two guest speakers from the Sexual Assault Victims Emergency Services (SAVES). SAVES is located on Main Street in Farmington. Kristen Plummer and Jeb Murphy planned an eye-opening activity for us.

It was interesting to hear the facts and statistics about how many men and women are sexually assaulted in this country. This information was definitely alarming. It was also interesting to read and hear your contributions to this discussion. We'll have to see if we can make connections between what we talked learned about today to Melinda's experience in the book.

We'll invite Kristen and Jeb to come back and speak with us after we've read more of this book. Thanks to Kristen and Jeb and SAVES for helping to prepare us to read and talk about this sensitive topic!

Speak: How's Melinda Feeling?

We've been reading Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak for a couple of classes now. We're far enough into the book that we see how Melinda is feeling bullied at school, disconnected at home, and alienated from her former friends.

In today's reading, we watched as Melinda was physically attacked by a pair of girls at the pep rally. This comes right after Melinda finds an abandoned janitor's closet, which she has decided to make into her hiding spot. It's almost like we got to see her as happy and feeling safe and then what little peace and comfort she had was ripped away. Hopefully, we'll see a change in her life soon.

After we read in today's class, I wanted you all to have a chance to express yourselves in a creative, abstract manner. To do this, we used Legos. You each had the chance to choose some shapes/ colors and to arrange them in an abstract manner. With your creation, I wanted you to show how Melinda is feeling after the first few weeks of school. We are going to use these photos and the explanations that you wrote about your creations in our first blog entry next week.

Here are some of your photos. I'll let you explain them next week. I just wanted to share a few of them because they are all so very cool!

Great job. I was impressed at how quickly and easily you all came up with your abstract representation. No two designs were alike! Amazing.

Welcome, Class of 2014

Crazy, huh? That you're in high school. That you're going to an entirely new school. That you have all sorts of exciting opportunities and life-events that are going to happen over the next year. Over the next four years. Okay, let's not get too ahead of ourselves!

Well, I just wanted to take this time to formally welcome you all to Mt. Blue. I am truly excited to start this year, and I hope that you all settle in and feel comfortable at your new school soon. I know that transitioning from one school to another is not an easy task, but you'll probably feel at home in a few short weeks.

We don't have much time together today due to all kinds of special freshman-only activities that are planned for you, but we will have more time later this week to talk about what we'll be learning this year. Also, we'll do some getting-to-know-you activities to help ease us into the year.

So, make yourselves welcome at Mt. Blue. We're lucky to have such amazing students!

Final: English 9

Phew. We've made it to our final class, to our final exam. Where did the time go? Well, if this year went quickly for you, think about the next three years. Those are going to fly by and soon you'll be walking across that graduation stage, grabbing your diploma and heading out into the world. Before you take off, we've got a little work to do.

First, I'd like you to take this survey so that I can better plan for you and your classmates for next year. Your honest feedback is appreciated.

Next, you're going to write a series of blog posts. Here are the criteria on which your blog posts are being graded:

Evidence of Critical Thinking: Thoughtful observations, connections between readings and the larger world and/or your life, and growth in your thoughts/ observations from the beginning of the year.

Evidence of Critical Reading: Evidence of thorough readings, comprehension of reading materials, insightful reflections, and connections between readings materials.

Evidence of Creative Thinking: Inclusion of photographs, music, videos, or other media that enhances the presentation of the post; original ideas presented in readings are extended in a creative manner.


Evidence of the Ability to Write Clearly and Effectively: Grammar, spelling, capitalization errors do not interfere with audience understanding. The structure of your blog posts allows for understanding and is easy to follow.

Evidence of Awareness of Diverse Audience: Opinions, justifications, rationalizations, and summaries are written in a way that allows a diverse audience to understand your intent. Writings are not offensive, but engage audience members in your ideas and opinions in a creative manner.

Community of Practice: Wherever necessary, credit has been given to original source for photos and ideas. This is done through embedded hyperlinks.


Required Posts

1. Write a review of a book you've read for SSR from this quarter. If you only have one from this quarter and have already written a post, write one about a book from another quarter. (LABEL=SSR, Book Review)


2. Write a reflective post about this year's English class. I want to know what you're taking away from this course and what project/ book/ process has influenced your learning. I also want to know what you'd like to study in more depth next year. (LABEL=Reflection)


Optional Posts (Choose Two)


1. Write a reflection about Poetry Friday. Has this made you more confident in writing your own poems? Have you learned more about poetry this year? If not, talk about your needs as a learner where poetry is concerned. (LABEL= Poetry Friday)


2. Write a post about a topic or interest that you have that you'd like us to discuss/ explore sometime this year. Your post could be a specific issue that you've heard about in the news, or one that is more local and relevant to our school. (LABEL=Opinion Piece)


3. We have maintained our individual blogs throughout this school year. Reflect on your ability to blog and how your abilities have grown over the course of this school year. Also, what are some ways that you feel you can improve in your blogging? What would you like improve upon in your blog next year? (LABEL=Reflection)


4. Choose a photo from this site (type in a word that sums up your experience) that shows how you feel about how this school year in this class. This post should show your ability to think creatively and to explain your thoughts to a diverse audience. **Make sure embed a hyperlink to the site where you found your image. (LABEL=Creative Thinking)


Please take your time with these posts. Make sure to check over each entry for those little errors that can mess up an otherwise perfectly good post! Let me know if you need help; otherwise, blog away!

Happy Summer--I'll miss you!

Romeo and Juliet: Acrostic Elegy and Modern Re-visionary Movie

Last class, I was not here due to a graduate class I'm currently taking. Because I wasn't here, you did not quite finish the acrostic elegies over Romeo and Juliet.  Today, I showed you all how to superimpose your poem over a gravestone to create a more powerful image. Here are some of your creations:

Tombstone Poem

Have Another True Emotion

After completing these poems, we watched a modern adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, which is based on another R & J spin-off, West Side Story. We talked a bit about the history of the conflict between Israel and Palestine and how this conflict relates to Romeo and Juliet. The movie that we watched is called West Bank Story. It won an Oscar and several other prestigious awards.

Our final exam is scheduled for Monday, June 14th at 10am.

Character Psychoanalysis: Chalk Drawings

After today's reading of Romeo and Juliet, you all opened your chalk pictures that I sent to you in your FirstClass emails and blogged about why you chose each of your designs to represent Romeo and Juliet.

Here are some links to student blog posts about the chalk designs they created.

Student 1

Student 2

Some of you did not have time to complete your blog posts. These need to be finished by next class. Happy last few days of school!

Poetry Friday: Izumi Shikibu

During my National Poetry Month online travels, I was delighted to stumble across a poem from a Japanese poet named Izumi Shikibu. I conducted a little background check and found that she has a fascinating biography.

Her story reminded me of Romeo and Juliet in that Shikibu had a bit of a love triangle going on in her life. She was married to a provincial official and fell in love with the stepson of the empress, Prince Atsumichi. Much of Shikibu's poetry revolves around the passionate love affair with this Prince.

I can picture Juliet writing to Romeo with a similar passion. I'm pretty sure that Juliet would not be able to limit her poems to a mere five lines, as she does not show the restraint that Shikibu using in creating her poems.

Today, we read four of Shikibu's poems, discussed them, and then you all wrote two of your own using Shikibu's structure and flavor. I asked that you write one that relates to Romeo and Juliet and one free choice. Some of you chose to write another R & J poem, while others chose to write many more than two poems. Here are some pictures of your poems on sticky notes. We'll use these later for a blog post.

NWEA Testing

I have been impressed with the patience and care that you've all taken in completing the NWEA tests this week. I know that this is a tough time of year to be asking you all to complete tests, and the weather is not exactly cooperating with temperatures over 95 degrees every day.

I will go over your scores with you and create those handy-dandy little graphs after your scores are uploading into the database. So far, most of you have improved over your earlier scores this year or have stayed about the same. After I've created your graphs, I'll email them to you so that you can store your scores for future reference.

Romeo and Juliet: Abstract Representations

Today's Romeo and Juliet lesson allowed all of you to choose an abstract representation for Romeo and Juliet. I gave each of you a sheet with some fairly random drawings on it. You all chose a set of symbols to explain the situation and feelings of Romeo and Juliet. After this, you all used chalk to recreate your chosen symbols on brick or on the pavement. I snapped a photo of each of your recreations. You will use these photos to help explain the connection you see between the abstract design and the story of Romeo and Juliet next class.

Here are some of your chalk drawings:

The Question Box

I just realized today that I've never really profiled our Question Box on this blog before. It has been such a large part of our class and our discussions and I haven't even mentioned it! What was I thinking? Well. The Question Box has been placed out every class and most of you have contributed to this box at one point or another.

Today, we actually had three unanswered questions in our Question Box. I'll list them here and give a little synopsis of our discussion around each of these questions.

Question 1: Is it/ was it a sin to commit suicide? Would Romeo and Juliet be considered sinners if the committed suicide?

Our Discussion: In Shakespeare's day, issues of religion were a big deal. Suicide was considered a sin and most people in the audience would have believed in God. Elizabeth I was a tolerant ruler and kept the religious peace during her life, but there were many religious revolutions before and after her reign. Today, an audience watching a Shakespeare play may or may not believe in God, so the ramifications of Romeo and Juliet's suicide would be in the mind of the observer.

Question 2: How many days/ weeks/ months does this play span?

Our Discussion: This play starts on a Sunday and ends on a Thursday. So, a grand total of five days. This means that Romeo and Juliet meet, fall in love, get married, a couple of people die, Romeo is banished, Juliet is engaged to another, and they commit suicide. Talk about a busy week!

Question 3: What's the difference between a monologue and a soliloquy?

Our Discussion: A monologue is like a speech. Characters on stage would listen to one person talk without interrupting. A soliloquy is either not heard by the other characters in the play or no other characters are on stage. A soliloquy allows the audience to learn a character's true motivations and thoughts. Not so much with monologues.

Well, those are the questions that landed in the Question Box before today. I happen to know that there is at least one new one for next class. Keep 'em coming!

Poetry Friday: Love/ Hate Songs, Reconstructed

This week, you all worked to choose songs that would represent your predictions for Romeo and Juliet if they had stayed alive. Where would their relationship have been if they had lived into their twenties? Would they still be madly in love, would they resent each other, or would they have completely forgotten about each other and moved on to someone else?

Today, you all worked with the lyrics from your poems. I split you all up into groups of three and you worked to take the words and phrases of your songs and thread together to create a found poem. You were grouped based on your predictions and your opinions of which songs would work best together. The results were outstanding!

Here is one student sample (re-created by three talented 9th grade ladies) that I thought embodied the true essence of this lesson:


This song was created using "found" lines and words from the following songs: "Love Story" by Taylor Swift, "Check Yes Juliet" by We Three Kings, and "Today Was a Fairy Tale" by Taylor Swift. Good work!