We did spend some time this week creative writing and reading our books of the marking period too. I finished my first chosen book, Medea by Euripides. Since my theme for the marking period books is similar to our literary theme, which both have to do with how women are perceived in literature, I find myself comparing Medea to Macbeth frequently. I wonder if I can talk about Macbeth in my presentation at the end of the trimester, so that I can compare it to the other books and articles I will/have read. I guess I will see if I have enough time in the presentation.
This week went by really quickly because there was a snow storm last weekend and we did not have school on Monday because the roads were really bad. I also had to miss class on Wednesday because I had a final during class time. We spent most of our time this week watching our Shakespeare movies. For my group that meant we are watching Macbeth. The version we watched was set in World War II. I think it was interesting to see a more modern version of Macbeth. The director and creators of the movie put an imaginative twist on the familiar tale, while not changing the plot of characters. But the movie was actually pretty scary. Here is a brief description of the movie, as well as a list of the cast, and other information about the movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macbeth_(2010_film). I used the character list during the movie to find out which character were which, as it was kind of confusing to understand at first. Having subtitles on during the movie helped a lot. They speak in Shakespearean English so it is hard to adjust to at first.
We did spend some time this week creative writing and reading our books of the marking period too. I finished my first chosen book, Medea by Euripides. Since my theme for the marking period books is similar to our literary theme, which both have to do with how women are perceived in literature, I find myself comparing Medea to Macbeth frequently. I wonder if I can talk about Macbeth in my presentation at the end of the trimester, so that I can compare it to the other books and articles I will/have read. I guess I will see if I have enough time in the presentation.
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This week we worked on our Shakespearean Drama Projects. My group decided to pick the feminism/ gender literary theory. We spent a lot of time researching our theory. I particullarly liked this explanation of the theory: http://www.victorianweb.org/gender/femtheory.html. I am glad we picked this theory because it's really interesting and unique. The only other group doing this theory is reading King Leer with it, and we are reading Macbeth with it, so I am sure we will have an original presentation. I am exited to read Macbeth because it seems like a really important book that most people have read or know about.
Additionally, we did a very fun creative writing exercise in class this week. Each person wrote a few sentences to begin a story then they switched with someone else and they had to continue the other person's story however they wanted to. I really enjoyed it because it lets you run with an idea you can put any twist on, while also giving you inspiration to start off. While listening to other people's pieces it was interesting to see how each person added their own personality and twist to each story. There were many comical stories and there were also deep ones. The beginning I was given was a girl jumping off a tower. At first I did not know where to go with it and I felt so restrained, like there was only so many places that could lead to. But, once I started writing and continuing the story it led to an introspective dialogue that considers the value of human life and intelligence, which is something I probably would have never wrote if it was not for this exercise. This week we started the new trimester. I enjoyed the fresh start. We took our first AP practice test and I feel really good about how I did. I was not expecting to do that well, but I did better than I expected. I think I did better because there was no pressure for doing well, so I did not overthink myself or second guess my thoughts. Additionally, unlike most standardized tests, I was able to finish with time to spare.
We also spent a lot of time this week thinking about our independent reading projects. At first I had no idea what topic to chose, but now that I thought of my topic, I am very exited to start reading my books. My topic is looking at how women are view in literature, by comparing ancient to more modern novels. The books I chose were Medea by Euripides and The Awakening by Kate Chopin. Another reason I am exited for this project is that I have never heard of a Pecha Kucha style presentation before. I am very interested in the Pecha Kucha style, and I want to try it. Here is an interesting TED talk about Pecha Kucha: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM4TXMBGLdY I faced an inner tragedy as the world was shocked by an outer one these past couple of days. On Wednesday, I woke up the day after the election. I did not know what to feel. I quickly picked up my phone. I did not know if I wanted to know the results of the election. I was afraid. I mindlessly scrolled through social media. Deep down, I think I hoped to come across the election results. Soon enough, I did. I was in disbelief, and I had no reaction. Soon, my mom came into my room and realized I was already awake. When I said the election results out loud I started to cry. I remained frustrated for the rest of the day. I wanted to talk about it. I wanted to talk about it so badly but class after class my teachers and classmates pretended like nothing happened. Acted as though it was just another day. That bothered me so much. But I realized, for most of America, it is just another day. Because one of the most concealed aspects of privilege is that, while you can advocate for minority rights, you can also take a break. So many people are calling for us to forget about the election, to forget about the results and to just continue living our lives and being happy and loving. There is nothing wrong with that except some of us can’t just move on with our lives because our lives will never be the same. For instance, take this viral video of Stephen Colbert’s thoughts during the election: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXhFGO8R7aU. As much as I love Stephen Colbert, he is a white, straight, wealthy male, and he is speaking from a very privileged perspective. He can advocate for minority rights but at the end of the day he can always safely go home. After this election I don’t have that safety. And many others don’t either.
It seemed like the online world was so different from the real world. The election results consumed social media. I immersed myself into my online bubble and barely existed in the real world. I felt like everything that was happening in the real world wasn’t really happening to me. I felt like everything was reflecting and bouncing off of me. On social media I force myself to follow people with very different view points than me so that I can keep an open mind and always hear other people’s views, instead of just constantly reinforcing my own. And in the past I have been very active on social media but I stayed quiet. I don’t even know what to say. Thoughts swarm my brain and everything seems fake. So while Oedipus’ story is a classical and quintessential example of tragedy, we all face tragedies in our own lives. And I do not just mean tragic events in the colloquial context. I really mean that we all go through moments where it feels like everything that happened after that moment is different. Those moments that change our outlook on life. And in this case, a moment that will change my world. We started learning about tragedy this week. I have already learned about tragedy in previous English classes, but I am curious to see what is added to my current understanding of tragedy. I think reading the Wikipedia pages was very informative. Many teachers I have had in the past have prohibited the use of Wikipedia, but I think it is very useful resource and I am glad we are encouraged to use it in this class. In addition to skimming through the recommended Wikipedia pages, I read the Wikipedia page on catharsis because part of the definition for tragedy included catharsis, and I did not understand what it well. Here is a link to that page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharsis I learned that catharsis is a cleansing of (bad) emotions that leaves the audience with a sense of renewed-ness. It seems like it would be hard to create the feeling catharsis in an audience, so I want to read a piece of literature that successfully creates that feeling in me.
In class today (Friday), we started thinking out the argumentative pieces we are going to write. As part of that assignment we looked at the issue surrounding the Dakota Access Pipeline. It was interesting to hear people's opinions on it. I really enjoy talking about political issues in class and discussing our views. I am a person with strong beliefs and values, but that does not mean I can't listen to other people's opinions. I learned more about the pipeline and I am glad we talked about it in class and that we read articles about it. I did not know that there are already pipelines in the Missouri River. We spent most of our time this week finishing up and presenting our Elements of Fiction projects. The TED Talk that we watch on Monday was incredibly informative and I feel like I benefited from it a lot. I thought it was so cool that a lot of the most famous and influential speeches followed the same structure!
On the day of our presentation, Sela and I were very nervous to present. Thankfully, that did not show in our final presentation. We took a deep breath and gave it our all. I was really happy that it went just like we practiced. Additionally, Sela informed me that Mr. Schoenborn wanted to use our presentation as a model. It is exiting to know that all our hard work really paid off. I just wish we could have gotten a 10/10 on it, because I don't really understand what we did wrong. I learned a lot this week by listening to other people's presentations. I not only learned from the information they were presenting but I got to see real examples of different presentation styles and their affects on the me/the audience. For example, Mr. Schoenborn told Sela and I that it is much more effective to have many large images and few words in our presentation because it draws interest in the audience. I found this to be true while watching other people's presentations. When the presentations were paragraphs of words with a few small pictures it was less interesting to pay attention to what they were saying; but when the presentations used interesting fonts, colors, and pictures, caring about what the presenter was saying was easier. This PowerPoint is a fun guide to keep your presentation really interesting: www.slideshare.net/damonnofar/8-tips-for-slideshare/29-theanswer_isinfographics This week we spent the majority of class time working on our projects. At the beginning of the week we thought that we would be presenting our projects at the end of the week. So, my partner and I spent a lot of time at home reading our short stories and making our presentation. Later in the week, we found out that the projects will not be due until next week, so we had more time to work on perfecting our presentations and practicing presenting. My partner and I changed our presentation a lot from what we originally had. Originally, we had slides with a title, bullet points, and a picture or two. But, after we learned to make our projects more appealing and captivating to the audience, we through more about the stylistic choices we made. We changed the backgrounds of the slides, we made the pictures interact with the text, and we considered the color of the text. Our presentations should enhance the ideas and thoughts we had during this project, not dull them.
While reading and analyzing our stories in the beginning of the week, we learned a lot about our elements of fiction. Both of the short stories we read for humor, "The Drunkard" and "Rape Fantasies," had very heavy topics (a struggle with alcoholism within a family and understanding what rape is, respectively) and may not have been seen as humor at first. But, once we analyzed both stories we found many examples of irony in both. And, according to this website, literarydevices.net/humor/, humor in literature can be even more than irony. Humor can come from hyperbole or even surprise. Most of our time this week was divided between revising and perfecting our creative writing and working on our elements of literature project. At first, I was really reluctant about revising and sharing my creative writing. This is partly because I was hesitant to share my writing because I felt like all of it was really personal. But, I chose a couple of pieces, I edited them, and I took out certain parts. Afterwards, I felt much less uneasy about sharing them. Part of me even felt good for releasing my personal thoughts to other eyes, because I feel like they are no longer attached to me. In a way, I feel liberated from my past thoughts.
A few times this past marking period I felt like I did not know what to write about for my creative writing, because sometime the given prompt does not inspire me. So, for the next marking period I found this cool link with a lot of interesting prompts. [thinkwritten.com/365-creative-writing-prompts/] I doubt that I will feel like I have nothing to write about in the future creative writing blocks because this website has so many different ideas to get my thoughts flowing. While working on our projects this week, Sela and I read "The Most Dangerous Game." We were definitely much more productive when we went out in the hallway. Hopefully, we will continue to do that. Next week, we plan to analyze "The Most Dangerous Game" by answering the big question and finding supporting evidence in the text. This will probably not take that long because we annotated as we read it the first time, and we already have some ideas. Then, we need to read about our second element of fiction. After that we have to read and analyze our other two short stories. Presumably this will not take as long as reading "The Most Dangerous Game" did, because "The Most Dangerous Game" is longer than both of our other short stories. My goal is to be done with all the reading and analyzing this week and work on putting together our thoughts into the presentation by next week. Unfortunately, there were many fog delays which interrupted our learning this week. However, we still managed to learn a lot. One thing we spent a lot of time on was our projects. My partner and I chose Humor and Fantasy. I am exited to read The Most Dangerous Game again. I read it in middle school and, although I do not remember it well now, I really enjoyed the story then. Now I want to take that enjoyment to the next level by discovering how the author created a sense of thrill, excitement, and mystery in me, and all readers, while reading the short story.
Additionally, this week, when working on the Poem of the Week reflection, I was caught in a whirlwind of divine inspiration. I thought of a great poem idea and as soon as I got home I started writing it. I think it would be a good idea if we could have time in class to read our own poems in the morning, maybe once a week, instead of our daily poem from other authors. I love writing poetry, so I think it would be fun to share our works of art and get feedback from the class. This website talks about different ways of integrating poetry into the classroom: www.poets.org/national-poetry-month/tips-teaching-poetry. If you scroll down to the "Success Stories from Past Years", there are many different ways of including poetry in school, one of the stories reminded me of what we already do in class, starting off each day with a different poem. The first success story from Rye Country Day School interested me a lot. The students at that school read a poem that is meaningful to them, aloud to the class, then explain why that poem is significant to them. I love this idea, and wish we could try something along those lines in our class. I know we are pressed for time, but maybe it is an activity we could do after the AP test. "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" by Emily Dickinson was the poem of the week. The first time I looked at it, when we were analyzing the title in class, I thought it said "I felt a Funnel, in my Brain." I am glad I made that mistake because I began to predict what the poem "I felt a Funnel, in my Brain" was about, and I was actually really exited to read it. I imagined a poem about knowledge leaking, as everything someone thought they once knew was being questioned. As soon as I realized the word was "funeral" and not "funnel" I was actually slightly disappointed. Now, I almost want to write the poem, "I felt a Funnel, in my Brain." It would be a sort of parody of the original poem that adds on to the mental emotions already created in the original. Furthermore, I never knew that Emily Dickinson never actually published any of her works. My group members and I joked about conspiracies that her sister-in-law actually wrote the poems but said they were Emily's because she did not want to be judged for the work. Nevertheless, I think the story is super interesting and it made me want to learn more about Emily Dickinson's past. This is a link to a biography I read about her: www.biography.com/people/emily-dickinson-9274190#synopsis. I couldn't believe her grandfather founded Amherst. What a small world! I understand time is limited, but I wish we could have talked more about her history in class. Maybe next time we could talk about the authors history more, because as we learned in the Ted Talk that we watched this week, knowing the artists history helps create a context and helps you build the story. Speaking of the Ted Talk, I am ecstatic about the new project we are staring. I love art, but I have not had the opportunity to take an art class in a while, and I miss it! The TED talk we watched in class reminded me of a vlogbrothers video I watched a while back in which John Green talks about a cool art exhibit. This was the video that took my appreciation for art to a whole new level: www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDwTjPsG4b0 |
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