Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Instructions for the Research Paper
Friday, May 18, 2012
Welcome to Cycle 6: Writing the Research Paper
Once you have decided on your topic based on your Proquest research, download this form or get it in the classroom. For each article on the pro and con sides that you use you must fill out this Cornell Notes sheet. You must have at least three key points from each article that you refer to and discuss in detail on your Cornell Notes sheet.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Holiday Homework
Jaidah - 1960's Washington Square Park
Emily - 1990's Monty High School, NYC
Maria S. - 2012, Washington Heights
Kim - 2019, Jamaica, Virgin Islands
Kassandra - 2012, 59th and 5th, NYC
Mac - 2012, A rave in an abandoned warehouse in the Bronx
Elizabeth - present day New Orleans - Mardi Gras
Marco - 1920's Italian restaurant, Brooklyn
Naomi - 2006, Barrios of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Daniel - 1992, Central Park, sunny day around the pond
Kristian - 2200 (future), Union Square Park, NYC
Dior 1980 - Plaza Hotel and Times Square, NYC
Yesenia 2012 - Times Square nightclub, NYC
In addition, each student listed came up with a basic plot line for their play, which they took home to help them write their play over the break.
The assignment is to write a scene (or play) of two to three pages. The rules are: you must use the names and personalities of Katherina, Petruchio and Bianca, but you can set your story in any time and place in history or in the future, and you can have the characters interact in any way you wish. Your scene should include dialogue and stage directions, and must have at least four characters in it. Three must be Katherina, Petruchio and Bianca, and you can use another character from the play or create your own character for the fourth.
Tamng of the Shrew - Characters
| Katherina | Petrucio | Bianca |
| spiteful | manipulative | flirty |
| stubborn | persistent | promiscuous with her affections |
| vicious | direct | has many suitors |
| mean | money-hungry | has the guys competing for her attention |
| angry | a leader | her father's favorite |
| has an attitude | annoying | obedient |
| jelous of Bianca | cocky | demure |
| destructive | self-centered | kind |
| demanding | concieted | sweet |
| violent | "my way or the highway" | polite |
| rude | selfish | studious |
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Welcome to Cycle 5, Spring 2012
Monday, March 19, 2012
What's Due in Order to Be Eligible for Passing This Cycle
1) Introductory writing piece: Description: A place where I like to hang out..." (a page and a half)
2) Dorothy Parker poem - with rhyme scheme and interpretation
3) 2 stanzas translation of "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd"
4) "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day" poem and worksheet
5) YOUR OWN "archaic” love poem
6) Translation of your own archaic love poem into slang
7) Read: Taming of the Shrew Prologue, Scene 1
8) Read: Taming of the Shrew Prologue, Scene 2
9) Taming of the Shrew characters sheet
10) Taming of the Shrew Open Book Assessment
11) Required readings:
Neil Gaiman’s “World’s End”
Frame tale (Story of Charlene and Brandt)
“A Tale of Two Cities”
“Aurelia of the Plains”
“Hob’s Leviathan”
12) “Hob’s Leviathan” Essay
11) Final exam, based on “World’s End,” “Taming of the Shrew” prologue, and basic knowledge of “archaic language” that we’ve studied.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Hob's Leviathan Essay
Assignment: Write an essay of two to three handwritten pages (no less than two pages), containing responses to the questions below.
Directions:
DO NOT write your essay in question-and-answer format.
DO write an essay using paragraphs and full sentences to express your ideas.
DO NOT copy extended quotes or texts from any source.
DO express yourself in your own words.
Make sure your essay has an introduction, body paragraphs and a conclusion.
Make sure to cover the topics and respond to the questions below, within the body of your essay.
1. Characters:
Make sure to describe the following characters, and also address the questions about each.
The Protagonist: “Jim” – What’s extraordinary about Jim?
Mr. Gadling – What’s extraordinary about Mr. Gadling?
The Captain – What’s the captain’s attitude toward Mr. Gadling? What’s the captain’s attitude toward the stowaway?
What other characters figure prominently in the story? Who are they and what is significant about them?
The Stowaway - Who is the stowaway, really? What is extraordinary about the stowaway?
2. Plot:
Summary: What happens in the story within the story (the story of the king who loved his queen more than life itself)?
Interpretation: What is the moral, meaning or message of that story-within-the-story?
Summary: What happens in the entire story of Hob’s Leviathan? What do the key characters do, and what significant events take place? Give a summary of the entire story.
Interpretation: What are the morals, meanings or messages within the story of Hob’s Leviathan? Explain what you think the messages of the story are. You must include more than one. There is definitely more than one message, moral or meaning in this story.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Neil Gaiman's Frame Tale in "World's End," and "A Tale of Two Cities"
What genre is Gaiman writing in? Respond using What happens to Brandt and Charlene in the Prologue/Frame Tale in "World's End"?
What is Gaiman's "A Tale of Two Cities" really about? What is happening to the main character, Robert, and what do you think Gaiman's message is to the reader?
What genre is Gaiman writing in? Respond using this graphic organizer.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Understanding the Prologue, and What is a Frame Tale?
Questions:
What is a frame tale?
In what way is the Prologue a Frame Tale?
Here are some definitions of the phrase "frame tale," or "frame story."
frame tale, also frame story
n. A narrative structure containing or connecting a series of otherwise unrelated tales.
- The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
frame tale, also frame story
noun
1. a narrative providing the framework for connecting a series of otherwise unrelated stories.
2. a literary device that uses such a narrative structure.
- Dictionary.com Unabridged, Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
What's Due So Far and Must Be In Your Folders
1) Introductory writing piece: Description: A place where I like to hang out..." (a page and a half)
2) Dorothy Parker poem - with rhyme scheme and interpretation
3) 2 stanzas translation of "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd"
4) "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day" poem and worksheet
5) YOUR OWN "archaic love poem"
6) Translation of your own "archaic love poem" into slang
7) Taming of the Shrew Prologue characters sheet
8) Taming of the Shrew Open Book Assessment
Friday, February 17, 2012
Taming of the Shrew Prologue Open Book Assessment
Taming of the Shrew Prologue, Scene 2
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Taming of the Shrew Literary Elements
According to Wikipedia,
Padua (Italian: Padova [ˈpaːdova] Latin: Patavium, Venetian: Padoa, Ancient German: Esten) is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area.
Padua stands on the Bacchiglione River, 40 km west of Venice and 29 km southeast of Vicenza. The Brenta River, which once ran through the city, still touches the northern districts. Its agricultural setting is the Venetian Plain (Pianura Veneta). To the city's south west lies the Euganaean Hills, praised by Lucan and Martial, Petrarch, Ugo Foscolo, and Shelley. It hosts the renowned University of Padua, almost 800 years old and famous, among other things, for having had Galileo Galilei among its lecturers.
The city is picturesque, with a dense network of arcaded streets opening into large communal piazze, and many bridges crossing the various branches of the Bacchiglione, which once surrounded the ancient walls like a moat.
- Wikipedia
Here are some images to give you a sense of the City of Padua during the Renaissance (many of these structures still exist today).
Here are some people in Italian Renaissance clothing, to give you an idea of how people would have dressed at that time, in that place:
The Taming of the Shrew - First Assignment
Monday, February 13, 2012
Translate Shakespeare's "Shall I Compare Thee To a Summer's Day" into contemporary speech
by William Shakespeare
STRUCTURE: Sonnet XVIII is a typical English or Shakespearean sonnet. It consists of three quatrains followed by a couplet, and has the characteristic rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg. Sonnets typically discuss the love and beauty of a beloved, often an unattainable love, but sonnets can be written about any topic.
Iambic Pentameter
Shakespeare wrote his sonnets and most of his plays in Iambic Pentameter. It is a specific pattern of beats to a line. Iambic pentameter consists of five “feet” – short-long, short-long, short-long, short-long, short-long.
An iambic “foot” is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The rhythm can be written like this:
da DUM
A line of iambic pentameter is five iambic feet in a row:
da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM
˘ / ˘ / ˘ / ˘ / ˘ /
Shall I com- pare thee to a Sum- mers day?
Thou art more love- ly and more temp- per- ate.
Rough winds do shake the dar- ling buds of May,
And Sum - mer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Assignment: What techniques can we use to translate Shakespearean language into today’s standard English? Answer the following questions to find out!
1) What words do you know in today’s English that can help you understand Shakespearean English?
a. Define “temperate” ____mild temperature, showing moderation or self-restraint______________
b. Define “darling” ___affectionate form of address____________
c. Define “complexion” _____color of your skin______________
d. Define “decline”___reject, get lower, go down__________
e. Define “untrimmed” – remember that the prefix, “un,” means “not.” You may not find “untrimmed” in the dictionary, but you will certainly find “trim.” You may already know what “trim” means! What does it mean? ______________________
f. What literary element is used in the phrase “Nor shall Death brag thou wand’rest in his shade?”___Personification____
g. What is “this” that is referred to in the last line of the poem? _________________________________________________ (this cannot be answered until you have completed your translation!
Assignment: Using your notes above, your intelligence, and the FOOTNOTES, translate this poem into modern Standard English.
Sonnet XVIII Your Translation
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate1:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date,
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion2 dimmed,
And every fair3 from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed.4
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st5,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
- William Shakespeare, about 1609
___________________________________
FOOTNOTES
1 In the time of Shakespeare, "temperate" carried both outward and inward meanings (externally, a weather condition; internally, a balanced nature),
2 as did the word "complexion,” in line six, which can have two meanings: 1) The outward appearance of the face as compared with the sun ("the eye of heaven") in the previous line, the first meaning is more obvious, meaning of a negative change in the person’s outward appearance, or 2) The second meaning of "complexion" would communicate that the beloved's inner, cheerful, and temperate disposition is sometimes blotted out like the sun on a cloudy day.
3 The word “fair” can be translated as “lovely,” or “beautiful.”
4 The word, "untrimmed" in line eight, can be taken two ways: First, in the sense of loss of decoration and frills, and second, in the sense of untrimmed sails on a ship. In the first interpretation, the poem reads that beautiful things naturally lose their fanciness over time. In the second, it reads that nature is a ship with sails not adjusted to wind changes in order to correct course. This, in combination with the words "nature's changing course", creates an oxymoron: the unchanging change of nature, or the fact that the only thing that does not change is change. Both change and eternity are then acknowledged and challenged by the final line.
5 "Ow'st" in line ten can also carry two meanings equally common at the time: "ownest" and "owest". Many readers interpret it as "ownest", as do many Shakespearean glosses ("owe" in Shakespeare's day, was sometimes used as a synonym for "own"). However, "owest" delivers an interesting view on the text. It conveys the idea that beauty is something borrowed from nature—that it must be paid back as time progresses. In this interpretation, "fair" can be a pun on "fare", or the fare required by nature for life's journey. Other scholars have pointed out that this borrowing and lending theme within the poem is true of both nature and humanity. Summer, for example, is said to have a "lease" with "all too short a date."
Friday, February 10, 2012
Progress Check
1. Where I like to hang out
2. Dorothy Parker interpretation
3. Nymph to Sheppard 2 stanza translation
4. Your “archaic” love poem
5. Slang translation of your “archaic” love poem. You must translate it into as much slang as possible. Most of it must be in slang. Use as little Standard English as possible.
6. Print out of the “archaic” love poem
7. Print out of the slang poem.
Slang Poem
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Tips for Writing Your "Archaic Language" Poem
The word "thou" is a second person singular pronoun in English. It is now largely archaic, having been replaced in almost all contexts by you.
"Thou" is the nominative form: the subject of the sentence.
Example: Thou hast such lovely eyes.
(modern translation: You have such lovely eyes.)
Verbs following thou often have the endings -st or -est; for example: "thou goest."
"Thee" is the oblique/objective form. Use it when the target is the object on which the verb acts.
Example: I give my love to thee.
(Modern translation: I give my love to you.)
"Thy" is the archaic equivalent of “your.” It is the possessive.
Use "thy" to replace “your,”
but use “thine” if the noun following starts with a vowel.
Example a) Thy face is lovely.
(Modern translation: Your face is lovely.)
Example b) Thine eyes art lovely.
(Modern translation: Your eyes are lovely.)
“Thine” is also used to replace “yours”
Example: My heart is thine.
(Modern translation: My heart is yours.)
Originally, “thou” was simply the singular counterpart to the plural pronoun “ye.”
“Thou” was later used to express intimacy, familiarity or even disrespect,
while “you” was used for formal circumstances.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Writing Poetry
#2: Label the rhyme pattern next to each line, as we do it together on the board, and then finish the labeling on your own.
The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd
If all the world and love were young, A
And truth in every shepherd's tongue, A
These pretty pleasures might me move B
To live with thee and be thy love. B
Time drives the flocks from field to fold, C
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold; C
And Philomel[1] becometh dumb;[2] D
The rest complains of cares to come. D
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields E
To wayward winter reckoning yields:[3] E
A honey tongue,[4] a heart of gall, [5] F
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall. F
etc. -- continue labeling the poem on the copy you have in your folder, or get a copy of the poem from me if you do not have it.
One Perfect Rose – Rhyme Pattern:
A single flow'r he sent me, since we met. A
All tenderly his messenger he chose; B
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet - A
One perfect rose. B
etc. Please continue labeling the rhyme pattern the the copy in your folder. Get a copy of the poem in class if you do not already have it.
There are other rhyme patterns! A SONNET is: ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG
Assignment: Write two poems
Poem #1: Use at least 6 archaic words in your poem. The poem must be at least 12 lines long, and must have a rhyme pattern!
Poem #2: Use at least 6 slang words or terms. No curses, references to “weed” or sexually explicit slang, please. The poem must have a rhyme pattern, and it must be at least 12 lines long.
