1. Students watched the beginning of Macbeth today in the projector room. Some students were missing yesterday while others were fairly disruptive so students watched again from the beginning today.
2. We turned on the subtitles, which seemed to help some follow along better.
3. Students then returned to the classroom, at the point in the film that was the beginning of Act two, and were given a short writing assignment. They need to put themselves into the first person perspective of either Macbeth or Lady Macbeth and write a narrative piece detailing all the thoughts they believe would be running through the character’s mind. 
   For example, if you wanted to write it from the perspective of Lady Macbeth, you could imagine Macbeth is out on the patio, obviously disturbed by what he is planning to do, and you, being his wife, know well that he’s probably talking himself out of doing it, you might write the plotting thoughts that could go through Lady Macbeth’s mind in exactly what she thinks she needs to say to him in order to convince him to do the deed.  Students will be given some time tomorrow to work on this.

1. Students have worked very hard and with great focus lately so they were given the movie for Animal Farm to watch. We discussed it before hand and the agreement was made that they can watch the video that goes with the novel as long as…. they trust me and work With me as we begin Hamlet next week. It is a good version of the movie.

See below to watch a portion of a different version of Animal Farm…

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/cDYXwfZxJto" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

1. Students started by looking at the irony in yesterday’s final scene, scene 6. As the characters Duncan and Lady Macbeth went on about how beautiful the weather and surroundings were at the Macbeth castle, all these fair compliments and prospects, the foul reality of Duncan’s fate and Macbeth’s pursuit for the throne are very opposite.
2. We read through scene 7 quickly, discussed the answers to the questions together, and had a discussion of whether students believed Macbeth was the one determined to go through with the murder or whether Lady Macbeth was more a force in it. Students seemed to agree that Lady Macbeth is more to blame.
3. We moved to the projector room to begin watching the video up to the end of Act 1.

1. We continued reading to the end of the short story “Escape” and soon after wrote comparisons on the board the students generated. They wrote down the similarities between this short story and the novel, Animal Farm, they have just finished reading. There are some striking similarities, mainly focused on the idea that the animals, like the main character of the story, were given a sense of freedom they had not had before even though it was short-lived.
2. Students were then given the task of writing a formal paragraph with two integrated quotes, one from Animal Farm and the other from the story “Escape”. We haven’t done any formal writing for several months and with the departmental exam looming in a month or so we want to start getting back into shape. Training season begins! 😀