Pun Intended: Class Log & Discussions

Back in the swing...

It has been a long break, (sort of), for me, with Thursday needing a sub so that I could attend a memorial service for a 16 year old car accident victim, (PLEASE wear a seat belt), and Friday no work for me so that you guys can do your work study thing.  Then the weekend!  And now.... Monday.

UB Spanish: Good job on the dialogues you guys wrote, but I'm a little unnerved that you had (count them) four days to work on them, and most of you were still scrambling to get past your greetings when you walked in to class.  Tomorrow I want the animals/verbs worksheet you did.  Today we also began reading part of a Spanish reader to help us understand things in context. 

UB Literature: There were some amusing Twelfth Night scene recreations today.  I do not regret making you suffer through my guitar and song version of "Orsino's Island," but I bet some of you all do!  Finish your Welty story for tomorrow, as well as your short chapter from Luke about the Prodigal Son, and your Buddhist folktale.  Be well versed in all three for tomorrow.

In case you want to try and out-do me in guitar, here are the tabs and lyrics to today's performance piece: isle_song.doc.pdf

Hey hey it's Tuesday (yeah I'm pressed for a header)

UB Spanish: Now that we have officially conquered Spanish time, adjectives, tener, and AR verbs, we can tackle the verb "SER"!!  Ah mi!

UB Literature: We're unraveling our plot... how will it end?  Stay tuned to find out!

Case of the "Mondays"

UB Spanish I: Review day!  Since a majority of the test grades were unmentionable, today was dedicated to reviewing and worksheets.  I know, boring.  Let's see if we can't STUDY, and thus have the opportunity to do new and exciting activities.  Remember, there is no review game like fly-swatter vocabulary if you don't know the vocabulary!!

UB Literature: Today we reviewed Act 2.2 to talk about the "tangled knot" of events, as well as the FATE of each character.  How do you think their fates are knotted together?  Tomorrow we will continue reading. 

Almost summer! (for me)

NLR Japan Excursion: Only one more day!  :(    Today we finished our face masks, rehearsed our plays, and sponge painted our kimono robe costumes., (then scrubbed the acrylics off the floor!)  Bring your parents tomorrow! 

UB Spanish: "Baile Bingo" review game and our first quizzish-test.  The results, save maybe two, were not pretty.  STUDY.

UB Literature: We continued to read Tweflth Night, only not as fun because I left all our costumes in my car :(  But we did have an amusing song-ish performance by our Feste, anyways, as well as a great example of what a caterwaul is.  Um, thanks, guys...  and answer your reading response for Monday!

Scrubs + Kabuki = awesome!

NLR Japan Excursion: Today we planned out our kabuki/noh performances for Friday's Parent Day, and began making our face masks.

UB Spanish: Reviewed how to conjugate "tener," looked at how to conjugate regular "AR" verbs.  Quiz tomorrow!

UB Literature: Today we assigned parts sans gender discrimination and continued to read through Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

Homework: First, choose one character we have met in the play.  Then, describe how the character is presented to us, (example: Feste is obviously a clown/fool/jester).  You may want to do some brief research to look into each character's full job/station description, (example: Malvolio is a steward, what the heck is a steward??), as well as looking into what is expected of a person in that position and how you would expect them to act. 

Then, I want you to tell me what we know about this person after meeting them and their unique personalities.  What are they like in regards to their titles or jobs?  Is their presentation (what they are described as), congruent with the reality of who they are?  The obvious example for this is Viola: we meet her as a girl who then DISGUISES herself as a boy.  I want you to think about the words "disguise" and "deception."  What kinds of disguises and deceptions are being paraded in the play due to inconsistencies between our expectations of a character's personality and what their personalities are really like?  Why might Shakesepeare use this as a theme?   

Potato Paints

NLR Japan Excursion: Haiku writing!  A look at "Real Samurai Write Poems" Basho, two word poems, and reading poems for both metaphor and imagery.  We made "authentic" haiku scrolls with our own haiku poems and potato "wood block" stamps.

UB Spanish: A full day!  We reviewed pronouns, looked at how to tell time in Spanish, learned to count to 100 (cein), and looked at our first Spanish verb conjugation: "tener" (to have).  Don't forget that "tener" is a stem changing verb, and soon we are going to look at "ar," "er," and "ir" verbs, known as regular verbs.  Quiz Thursday!!

UB Literature: We did an exercise in ordering and understanding Shakespeare's lines, then read through the second scene of Twelfth Night.

The Complete Works of Shakespeare Abridged tonight at 7:30!

Rain, rain...

NLR Japan Excursion: Today was origami and Japanese floral arrangement day!  We made water balloons, hopping frogs, and paper cranes; didn't quite make it to origami lillies, tulips and roses, but maybe tomorrow.

UB Spanish: Reviewed a list of vocabulary that was both old and new, reviewed adjectives and learned some new ones, began working with the construction of "Me gusta a..."  Played one round o f "Celebrity Who Am I?" and the award goes to Michael V. for correctly identifying Flavor-flav before I even got to mention the giant pocket watch!  Assigned a practice worksheet for homework.

UB Literature: Reminder of what grades I have for you: blog creation (all), "Cathedral" writing prompt (those who were absent from discussion), and "Sonny's Blues" writing prompt (all).  Introduced Shakesepeare's Twelfth Night, or What You Will, and began reading Act I.1 

Last Thursday

NLR Japan Excursion: Sushi making (veggie & crab rolls), tea cup painting, and Spirited Away!

UB Spanish: Definite and indefinite articles review, pronoun review, adjective review, and "fly swatter vocabulary" game

UB Literature: Listened to some Louie Armstrong and John Coltrane, broke into groups to find & discuss different motifs and images in "Sonny's Blues."

Homework: Read the introduction found inside your copies of Twelfth Night for Monday

All UB students: trip to Reynolds Auditorium to see the Arkansas Shakespeare Theater's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.  I loved it, and I hope you all did, too!

Friday ~ was a work day, no  class!