1. Since students will be away tomorrow, for track and field, our viewing of the movie Hamlet will have to be held off until Wednesday and Thursday. Students can plan for a light B30 work week, then, it seems!!
2. Students were reminded that the essays are due on Thursday and are expected to be handed in in a certain order with the rubric attached at the top. A reminder was also given of my late assignment policy – you can hand in an assignment late “as long as”… I haven’t already marked the rest and returned them to the students. If I have marked them and returned then, you can no longer hand yours in and will have to start over with a new assignment / project. It may be very similar to the first or quite different. For this project, the essay, if you fail to hand it in and I hand the marked ones back, I will choose another essay question from the list of 36 and you will have to start over. This would not be fun. Do your work and finish your essay on time, please.
3. For those who still have not acted out their Porphyria’s Lover performances, this project is no longer an option to you. Your new assignment, in its place, is to narrate by memory 20 lines of Hamlet. It can be from any of Hamlet or Claudius’s soliloques or it can be from the Ghost’s speech about the murder scene. You will be marked by your speaking pace, volume, inflection, and ability to create the proper mood. Here is an example of someone reciting some lines.  This link is to another person’s version of the same lines. Which do you prefer?
4. I wrote out general descriptions of what an introductory and concluding paragraph need to be complete.
   1. An intro should have the following covered:
      1. An opening sentence – that hints at the topic in a unique or catchy way
      2. A sentence to link the opening statement to the literature (Hamlet)
      3. A few sentences to give general background information about the plot / characters of Hamlet. *Give the necessary information only.
      4. (optional background sentence)
      5. A sentence that introduces the more specific topic of the essay.
      6. The topic sentence with the three specific topics listed in one sentence in the order they appear in the essay.
      7. A transition sentence that sums up the introduction and leads to the beginning of the essay’s information.
   2. A concluding paragraph should have the following covered:
      1. A General sentence to restate the topic.
      2. Sentences that follow explaining why the topic is relevant to individuals / readers and their ordinary lives.
      3. (more of #2)
      4. (more of #2)
      5. Final sentence should be a well-worded sentence that leaves the reader with a satisfying ending. (Could possibly use a quote from the literature or popular phrase to end things with.)
5. Students who are here tomorrow will be able to work on their essay. We’ll wait for the rest of the group to view the video.

1. Students were given back the organizer they were to fill in as they watched the video about the Top Ten Unexplained Phenomenas in the world. In today’s discussion, I reviewed them with the students and we compiled information to fill in their charts more. It was important that they distinguish between reasons for believing in the phenomena and reasons against it.
2. We began reading, again, the poem called “The Witch of Coos”. We read through it twice and looked for specific clues to give us background and evidence of what we thought the plot was about. Will did a great job of picking out that the mother and her husband once killed a man (a man the mother was having an affair with) and they both dug a grave in the basement and burried him in it. The mother seems to be the only one to see or hear the bones crawling up the cellar steps and is now the only one left alive (since the husband died) who hears them scratching still on the wall from the attic now. It is quite an odd but quite descriptive poem. We finished our discussion and did the questions together.
3. Someone else has written a summary / analysis of the poem in their own blog. Some parts are a bit mature for our discussions, but you’ll understand more of the poem if you take a peak. See what you think.
4. Tomorrow, several students will be missing because of track. We will move forward with our analysis of several poems but these are tasks missing students will be able to catch up with quickly.

ela-b30-major-hamlet-assignment-08.doc 

1. Students had a sub May 08, so it almost guaranteed a quiet, productive class to assign their Hamlet / Unit final for today.
2. May 09, students were given the formal assignment handout that notified them of how their essay will be marked so they can ensure they meet all the requirements. It also is very clear and detailed regarding the order the essay’s parts should be compiled before handing in, such as Green rubric on the front, then final copy of essay, with brainstorming and drafts included at the end.
3. On this handout, as well, it made it clear the proper format for citing references from the Shakespeare text. It is not as simple as giving a page number; you must include the Act and scene numbers, and the lines of the prose you are refering to. I wrote on the board for students the Roman Numeral chart so they can be sure they are citing the right Act or scene.
   I (1), II (2), III (3), IV (4), V (5)     Acts
   i (1), ii (2), iii (3), iv (4), v (5), vi (6), vii (7) scenes
   The handout included three examples of integrating the text smoothly into your own sentence, being sure to maintain the context and speaker.
4. They’ll have another class to use for writing their essay and then, since they’re so eager to watch the film, we’ll spend a few classes and watch the Mel Gibson version of the play. You just can’t wait, can you!?!?

1. May 08, the students had a sub in for me. They watched a video that counted down the top ten unexplained phenomena that exist. This video did a good job of giving explanations for each phenomena along with the reasons to disbelieve each. Students were asked to fill in a pro/con chart as they watched. This was collected at the end of class.
2. May 09, we did a review of the Elements of Literature that authors use to create engaging writing. Students were asked to add details along the side as we discussed each. We began reading a poem called “The Witch of Coo”, written by famous author Robert Frost, when we were interupted by the announcement to go for our In-Motion walk. We’ll begin again on Monday when we return.

1. Students worked on filling in their own responses yesterday in determining how several themes were relevant to the play of Hamlet. We discussed those today and students shared several of their examples.
2. On the board, I spent some time this morning brainstorming for an essay of my own. Since we haven’t had any essay work since January, I wanted to be sure students had examples that reminded them of the process they have to follow in doing their major essay project. With the example on the board, there were five possible paragraph topics that suited my topic. With each, there were explanations of the topic and attached to each were two examples each of direct reference cited from the literature. From there, I was able to choose which three paragraphs I felt would be best for my essay, I organized them from good, better, and best in proving my argument, and then created topic sentences for each.
   I wrote a few topic sentences on the board for each of my paragraphs and asked students to analyze each to see if they were on topic of off topic. (Just because a sentence is close to the topic does not mean it’s the best sentence to prepare your reader for your topic.)
3. From there, students had time to work independently on their project. There will be several class periods to work where students can get a little guidance in writing their essay. You will have to write a formal literary essay for your departmental on the Hamlet play. This is absolutely great practice.
4. And… as announced last week and yesterday, there is a Hamlet / Unit Final exam tomorrow. You’ll do fine if you’ve been following along (or keeping up) as we’ve studied this crazy story!
5. Reminder – when citing reference from Shakespeare, you have to cite it by Act, scene and line(s), such as (V, ii, 34-39).

Students were asked to pre-read the short story we started yesterday. Today, in reading through it together, students put boxes around words that clearly altered the path of the plot, such as the word “But”. It was quite an intense and engaging story so I think they all enjoyed it. They had to complete the six questions attached as “Exit Slips”, meaning they could not leave until their questions were completed. In one of our next classes, though, we will look more closely at the plot structure. There are specific clues in the story that give hints of what is to come. We will see if students were able to recognize them.

1. Students started off today’s class with a handout on their desks that listed thirty-five different essay topics all related to the play of Hamlet. Everyone drew numbers and, going in the order of the numbers chosen, were allowed first pick at which essay topic they wanted to respond to. With everyone having their own essay to write, everyone will be responsible for doing their own work and investigation of the text. 🙂
2. We discussed the questions for our final Act, Act V, although the chatter was a little more energized today. I am so pleased that everyone is so excited about Hamlet essays and the play itself! I told you Shakespeare would be fun!
3. We began reading through the different themes that can be found in the play. For each theme listed, students just had to find the different ways that theme was relevant from the reading. With the excess talking, I gave the work load to the students to finish individually as an exit slip, meaning it was to be completed before they could leave the class. That got things quiet!
4. We will continue discussing your answers tomorrow regarding the themes. Students will be given the handout defining the expectations for their major essay and its worth, and will be given some hints at what will be on Thursday’s Hamlet / Unit final. Study hard! (Remember, you were told about this upcoming test last week, too!)

Here’s a video to walk you through some of those themes…

1. Big Disclaimer to start here: Before I arrived here, the students were accidentally taught an A10 unit and a B10 unit in their ELA A10 course. This semester, in their ELA B10 course, they’ve taken a (second) B10 unit so I’ve decided to give them a treat and teach an A10 unit, so things are back in balance. The A10 courses are not as “heavy or deep” as the B10 courses (A10 is theme based and B10 is issues based), so they deserve a bit of a break and we can enjoy some interesting topics and stories until our end comes in June.
2. We started our unit on The Unknown today by looking at the four main sub-units we will consider: Mystery and Suspense, The Unexplained, Fantasy, and Science Fiction. Because students still need to study Macbeth, we will take that B10 play in our A10 unit, but it will fit in quite nicely in our discussion of Fantasy fiction.
3. Students were given a handout that clearly shows the material we will cover before the end of the school year. We had a good discussion about the difference between Fantasy and Science Fiction genres and then we watched a few short videos and students had to write down which of the four sub-units each topic would fit under. For example, we watched the short clip of Magician David Blaine who just beat the world record for holding his breath under water for seventeen minutes. How this could be real is hard to fathom. Does it fit under Science fiction (but it’s not fiction, Fantasy (no mythical creaters were involved and there’s no real quest between good and evil), the Unexplained (although science says it’s possible) so then it must be Mystery and Suspense. What’s the trick? We’ll likely never know!
4. We began reading a short story in class together. Students were asked to have finished reading it for class tomorrow.

Here is an example of one of the videos were looked at today. Which sub-unit would you classify this in?

1. We got settled quickly and reviewed where we were. We reconsidered the mindset of both Hamlet and Laertes and were going to watch to see if the characters of the play were written to act “in character” or whether there seemed to be some inconsistencies in the writing or their actions in the play.
2. We listened to the audio and read along. I was very proud to see that throughout our study of Hamlet, all but a few students followed intently in their play books. It was nice to see that they didn’t just sit back and listen, but that they followed and were “with me” through it all. That was great.
3. We considered one question, a nagging one if you will: Near the end, when the duel has begun and Claudius offers Hamlet the drink from the poisoned cup, Laertes asks Claudius in an aside whether he should do it now, cut Hamlet and let the killing begin, but Claudius almost seems intent on being “the one” to usher Hamlet to death. The promise was given to Laertes, though, that he could be the hand that killed Hamlet. Does it seem like Claudius is a little too eager to be the one to kill, or did he just take advantage of a moment of opportunity?
   Another question is why Laertes backs off so suddenly! Hamlet is bound to die now that he has been cut by the poisoned sword, and Laertes himself has been cut so he will die as well. Why not die and spew hateful, vengeful words at Hamlet? Why not yell at him and flaunt the fact that “na na! You’re about to die and it’s because you killed my dad!”? Instead of this, though, Laertes immediately becomes weak of his purpose and confesses everything to Hamlet and tells on the King. Is this because the Queen and he, himself, are about to die and that wasn’t in the plan? Is it because he’s about to die and wants to die without sin on his hands? Why does Laertes confess and reach out for Hamlet’s forgiveness so quickly after purposefully cutting Hamlet with the sword to kill him. Inconsistent action or the result of his reasoned thinking?
4. We watched five short video clips that an English student did for his teacher’s class and then posted on Youtube. He took the movie of Hamlet with Mel Gibson and condensed the two hour movie into half an hour. He did a fantastic job of breaking the movie apart so that each video has only the actions of each of the five Acts of Hamlet. He also did a wonderful job of maintaining the essential plot components to keep the story and tension in tact. What he did do, though, that is so unique is that he added modern elements to his voice over (like his constant criticism of Spiderman III being awful), added literary comments through the same dialogue about elements of the writing, such as major characters talking with minor ones. He also used some interesting voice choices but was able to record it all and have it sound very authentic, not like a student with a microphone. The students loved it!
   I will say that it was not without contemplation and professional judgement that I decided to show these videos in my classroom. I mentioned to the students that there was some language in them that I would choose to remove if possible, but that when weighing the benefits and negatives, I found the benefit much greater. I don’t purposefully show content that is more mature than my students, but in this instance, I felt it was alright to do so. So we watched the videos and it was a comprehensive review of all the essential parts of Hamlet that we have taken over the last month. Whew! What a great play!

1. During yesterday’s odd day, the students had ELA 10 for the first class while they waited for the announcement that the buses were there to take them home early. Way early! To keep things in order for that class, they began watching the movie of the novel they finished reading a short while ago. In today’s class, they continued watching that movie. They got to the very end, with only a few minutes to spare, when I stopped it to get the desks back in their order and share with them what their exam marks were.
2. I have to say that I was VERY VERY pleased with the majority of essay outline responses students had in their exam. They obviously learned a great deal from our intense review of essay writing and filled out that part of the exam above and beyond what I was honestly expecting. It was very pleasing for me while I was marking! Well done!