Natalie worked through a presentation on the characterization of Ophelia and her relationship to her father, brother, and Hamlet. She took a quiz afterward and scored 80. Natalie is still working on the essay analyzing a piece of criticism on the play. Today she finished reading Act 5, and will bring the final worksheet next week. She will then take an open-book test on the entire play.
Will read a News Ela article about another dream job in the film industry. After reading the article about a camera operator, he answered questions about main ideas and key details. He scored 100% on the questions and did both the reading and the questions independently. Next, he explored the Prezi presentation platform. Prezi is a presentation platform that is a step above power point and widely used at the college level. I think it’s a great tool for him to explore. Next, he viewed a Prezi presentation of the mechanics of how to create one. In class, he will be working on a Prezi presentation about the dream jobs he has been reading about in class. Will did an awesome job today!
Will seemed to have enjoyed his time off. He seemed more relaxed in class, especially since we have completed all the college application work. Will did seem a little worried that he hadn’t finished the answers for the cinematographer questions we were working on prior to break, but I assured him that it was not my expectation for him to do classwork over the break. During class, he reread an article about the job of a cinematographer and did on-line research to find answers that weren’t readily found in the article. Will was very adamant about doing this completely independently and worked very hard during class.
Natalie read about the Romantic era of British Literature, and took some notes. Next week, I will follow up on this in more detail and with a quiz. I then wrote vocabulary terms on the whiteboard that I commented upon while Natalie took the writing down into her notebook. More than just new words, I chose and explained nuances and connotations between words that look alike but are actually antonyms, and those that cause usage problems. She will study these for a test later.
Sam and I discussed the writing process. I detailed the steps that she needed to do to produce a good literary analysis. We discussed transitions. We discussed introduction of the textual evidence and then the necessary analysis to follow it. All details should support the thesis. We then wrote the second body paragraph together.
Assignment
Finish her literary analysis to turn in for a grade.
Sam is having a little difficulty writing this paper. We discussed different ways to approach the analysis. We talked about the structure of the the introduction, body paragraphs and conclusions.
We talked about what she needs to do to continue with the paper. We practiced again blending the quotes that she chose for her support. We discussed the need to explain the analysis of those quotes/support in her body paragraphs.
Sam and I discussed again the requirements for her literary analysis. We talked about how she needs to approach the writing of the paper. She needs to use her outline as a guide to use her quotes as support for her analysis. We wrote the introduction together.
Natalie is completing an in-depth analysis of literary criticism. The text is by Henry Mackenzie, entitled "Criticism on the Character and Tragedy of Hamlet." The analysis calls for insights into the criticism based on purpose, issue at question, assumptions, inferences and how the author moves from evidence (main evidence and whether it is reliable and relevant) to conclusion, points of view, and implications. Next week we will complete chapter 5 of Hamlet and review all of the study guide questions -- completing those that were not answered in depth or those that were incorrect.
Will completed his dream jobs writing assignment in class today. He did a great job using compare and contrast signal words. Next, he generated questions that he would ask about a job as a cinematographer. Will read and highlighted an article which provided some of the answers to his questions. I showed him how to toggle back and forth from an open document to the internet for research purposes. He will combine some internet research along with articles provided him to answer the questions he generated about a job as a cinematographer.
