This week we watched the ending of the 1998 version of hamlet. Everyone that was a main character ended up dying, whether by poison or by blade. The king puts a pearl in the cup of wine that was for Hamlet, which had poison in it. After the 2nd round of Hamlets fencing match with his girlfriends brother, the king offers him the wine, which he denies. Then, the mother of hamlet takes the cup and drinks the wine. Realizing what just happened the king becomes sad. The 3rd round then starts and Laritiese goes for a cheap shot on hamlet with the poison blade, scratching his shoulder. They dual around the building and Hamlet ends up killing him. Then, as Hamlet watches his mother die, he goes after the king and slaughters him. First by throwing a rapier at him, then crushing him with a chandelier, then feeding him the poison drink. After all this, Hamlet begins to slowly die from the poisoned blade. After his death, an army invades their kingdom and are taken over as they have no leader to defend their palace.
This week in English 11A we learned how to attack certain sections of the ACT. ACT questions aren't necessarily extremely difficult, but the way they are worded make some of them challenging. With not enough time to take a full minute on each question, you have to make sure you are tuned in mentally at all times. There are many tricks in making the test as simple as possible, and one way we have learned is reading the paragraph before answering questions, and once you choose your answer, don't worry about it until after you finish. If you spend too much time on 1 problem, your chances of getting all the way through are slim to none. stay focused, choose your answer, complete the section you are in, and then at the end go back and re read and possibly switch your answer with the time you have remaining.
this week in class we learned about Hamlet. Hamlet is a story about a prince whos father gets murdered by his uncle, who then takes everything in the town. The uncle becomes king, Hamlets father, and marries Hamlets mother, all within 6 weeks. The whole story line of Lion King is based off of this play, which I found very interesting! So far in the movie, we are just finishing act one and hamlet just talked to his fathers ghost about getting revenge, keeping his mother safe, making sure she goes to heaven to be with him, and asking his friends for help in getting revenge.
This week in English 11a we learned all about the pardoners tale, and how to video edit. We read the story this week and made a video presentation on all of the main things and important parts of the story. It was all about how greed can get the best of people, and that you need to be thankful for the things you get, and that if you try to get more or go further, bad things may happen. To make the video, we had to use an app called WeVideo. It was very similar to things I have used in digital media. We had to get pictures and audio, along with recording our voice to put in the presentation. I have never used it before, or made a project like this. It was difficult at times but i enjoyed it and would like to do it again. Knowing how to use a program like this in the future will benefit me greatly, as you can make a project look nicer due to the advancements and extra options compared to a powerpoint presentation.
During the 6th week of the English 11A class, we learned about Old English Poems. Poetry has been around for ages and many people express their feelings through poetry. What i noticed during the period in which we read the poems, the 3 samples all expressed a certain sadness, whether it be losing your loved ones, or being alone and having nobody to share your time with. The poems painted a picture in my mind that the times back in those days were very slow, lonesome, and depressing, as they all dwelled upon the sad things in life, rather than the happy and good times. Another thing is that they really liked to use earths features (sea, winds, rocks, etc.) to describe their feelings of lost hope, sadness, and lack of love in life. I respect the poets for being able to be this skilled and be that witty with their words, as it truly is an amazing skill. Overall I think the poems were good. But, I just didn't like how they were so gloomy for the majority of the poem, even though the author gave some hope at the end, Giving the character a little light at the end of the tunnel. As something to look forward too!
This week we read the story Beowulf and the main idea we learned about was what it takes to be a hero. Beowulf is an extraordinary character who is very smart, courageous, witty, strong, and gritty. With all of these things being needed to be considered a hero to some people. He would step up to the plate when people needed help from someone and anyone, doing what ever he had to do to help save the people, whether it be setting a trap to kill Grendel, killing Grendel's mother after she killed the closest friend of the king, and at the end of the story even risking his own life as an older man to save his people of the dragon. we came to understand about the traits of a hero by looking at the qualities in our own heroes in our lives and relating them to heroes such as Beowulf, superman, batman, etc. and how all of them are very similar, even though they are super human, regular human beings can be heroes as well. Some questions i have about after this week are what happened to Wiglaf, the one who received many of Beowulf battle equipment, and if he is as brave and willing to do whatever it takes like Beowulf was. Overall i think my participation was good although at first i wasn't very interested in the story, but the further we got into it the more i wanted to read about it and learn more about it. I believe i understand the story pretty well and i enjoyed reading the story, as it was very interesting and detailed about the battles that took place in the short story. i still need to work on reading with more emotion and slowing down on the more suspenseful parts in a story.
This week we learned a lot about stories and how they all follow a similar story line, and watched the movie Star Wars to relate to it. Mainly all of the good books and movies follow the plan with there being a call, the threshold, the challenges, the abyss, the transformation, the revelation, the atonement, and a return(with a gift) we then would write what we thought what parts in the movie fit each part of the story line. I learned that in some way just about every story follows this line of events. I need to improve on writing more in depth sentences to make it easier for the reader to understand what's going on in the movie or book. I enjoyed watching the Star Wars a new hope because it is easier to stay involved in something in class when you can watch a movie and hear and see the scenes and how everything goes, rather than read a book that would take a much longer time to read. it was also a good movie and i hope we get to watch more movies in this class. I also believe luke showed a lot of the characteristics that are needed to be a good main character. he was very courageous, energetic, smart, a leader, and wanted to make things happen and have the best outcome possible. after her rescued the princess he could have left with Han Solo, but he decided to stay and help destroy the death star with the rebellion.
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March 2015
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