Pun Intended: Class Log & Discussions

humpty hump day

NLR English III: another long day!  I suppose a four hour stretch of anything is is a lot.  Today we began reading A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah.  We followed this up with our vocabulary.  The words/phrases today were: oral tradition, narration, narrator, parbale, plot, exposition, resolution, denouement, point of view, and protragonist.  We continued reading Medea, then resumed after break to write a persausive letter, following, (sometimes not following), examples from the book Letters From a Nut.  We concluded the day with a few grammar sheets.  In between, we began working on chapter guide questions for The Catcher in the Rye.  Productive day!

UB Spanish: Today was the dreaded test day.  Tomorrow we begin our "body biography" projects, be prepared to get creative!

UB Literature: First we broke in to groups to find examples of dark/light and blind/sighted imagery, ideas, occurences, etc. in the play Oedipus Rex.  Then we continued reading.  Read through p. 15 of your packet tonight

Friday!

UB Spanish: We closed out the week with a look at our stories about Maria and Enrique, then played a review game I like to call "Spanish Tableau."  Finish any worksheets you need to make up, and color your "paint by addition and subtraction" ships for extra credit.

UB Literature: We finished up our discussion of "Why I Live at the P.O." and talked about Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily."  It was a great day for romanticizing about the old south... and other fun metaphors.  One more week!

Feels like Monday

UB Spanish: still a small class - what kind of bar-b-que did our absentees eat??  Still, we perservered without them.  Today I provided all of the worksheets I have ever passed across your desks, a la carte.  Then we reviewed "ar" verbs, and learned to conjugate "er" verbs.  We concluded with a nice review of ser and estar, with a look at how to formulate ser into questions and sentences.

UB Literature: For your final week, would you rather read more stories or read Oedipus Rex?  I'll accept votes.  Today we worked in groups and discussed "Why I live at the P.O" as well as two coinciding religious parables/stories.  We will finish our charts tomorrow.  Until then, read "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner. 

Homework: Today we talked about how the context of Welty's story can be broadened into a commentary on relations between the northern and southern states, (remember the "dead letters"?)  I want you to think about Faulkner's story as a social commentary, as well.  My question for you is: what do you think he is saying about the southern states?  Think about post-civil war daily life, attitudes, conditions, or anything that he may have considered or observered.  Feel free to do a little googling on the post-war southern states to help get your thoughts going.  Happy blogging!

P.S. - creepy story, huh?  One of my favorite Faulkner pieces!! 

No one in my class today! :(

I guess everybody decided to go on holiday for the 4th of July early!  So today you all who were left enjoyed a little improv action on my part.

UB Spanish: all of three students!  Good job practicing your conversational skills and discussing the history/relationship of languages.  Review your vocab and you're golden.

UB Literature: Prime example of me "pantsing."  We read "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  Then we discussed how to look at and read potential symbolism, metaphor, and allegory in the story in order to deepen our understanding of it.  We looked at images in the story, expectations held by both ourselves and the story's characters, religious allusions, and anything else we could pick out to help us enjoy the story on mulitple levels.  If you missed class, read it!  90 page paper due on Thursday when we return.  Ok, maybe not.  But nonetheless - read! 

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

Adios, Will!

UB Spanish: We are getting conversational up in here!  Today we reviewed "ser," and then learned how to use and conjugate "estar."  Tomorrow John will cover for me while I attend a memorial service, and you will be expected to work with an assigned partner to create a dialogue that you will read aloud before the class on Monday.

UB Literature: Finish Twelfth Night for homework, and be prepared to create your own, modern scenes in class tomorrow.  John will cover for me.  You will perform your scenes for me Monday; remember, I like costumes!  Read "Why I Live at the P.O." by Eudora Welty over the weekend.

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?