Library visit, 5/21

Researching and publishing essay the fourth.

Researching:

• Got quotes from your schools yet? Try typing in yourtown.k12.ma.us where "yourtown" gets replaced by, well, your town. Try it for a few other towns. Click around until you find the public schools nearest your home. Try some private school websites here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
  
• Got a teacher yet? Call one of these schools and ask to speak with an English teacher. Or ask Mr. Hurley, Ms. Demoura, Mr. Catano, Mr. Croteau, Mr. Atkins, Mrs. Eberly, or Mr. Smith for help.
• Got a British author yet? Email or call authors listed here, here, here, here.
  

Publishing:

• Type your essay in here.
  

What do I do when I'm done?

• Read the new CM Blog.
  
• Check out Tom F.'s photos and read about the CM Rugby team here.
  
• Read the other blog entries from over the course of the year.
  

Library visit, 3/27

In the library today, check that you have all body paragraphs properly researched and sourced. For research tips, check the blog entry from our first library visit.

When you are ready to submit your "final" draft, click here.


"What do I do when I'm done?" you ask?

Read the new CM blog.

Practice writing a works cited page for your essay the first, second, or third. Follow the rules here.

See what anagrams the Internet Anagram Server makes with your name and/or with this week's vocab words.

Check out the extra credit possibilities below.

Solve this week's National-Public-Radio puzzle.

Extra credit, quarter 3

Here are some extra credit opportunities for the third quarter:

-Trace or sketch a plate from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell onto at least an 8 1/2" by 11" poster.

-Memorize and recite the poem "The World is Too Much With Us" by William Wordsworth.

-Read another book (other than Book 1) from Paradise Lost by John Milton and give a brief presentation to the class about it, citing a few key lines.

Library visit, essay the third, 3/11

Here are some research ideas for each job you have to do in your essay-the-third.

Introduction:

-Find a print source in the library (encyclopedia of sports, book on your sport) that will verify the date/origin of your sport. Do not rely simply on internet data!

-Look up the sport in the OED to find what you can learn about the origin of the word.

-Head to the London Times, the Mirror, the Telegraph, the Metro, and the Evening Standard. Do a "popularity" search on their sports pages and come to a conclusion about how popular your sport is.

-Determine, after reading the articles above, the scope of your paper--England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, India, Kenya, etc. In your thesis, you should identify the region you'll be discussing in your body paragraphs.



Body paragraphs:

-Find out from the articles in the newspapers above what the name of a professional organization is of your sport. Then go directly to that organization's website (google should not be required). This website might be able to give you some of the specialized rules, if any, of your sport in a particular region. (It might also give you a nice history of your sport there.)

-Find the name of an amateur organization of your sport by reading articles from the newspapers above. Go directly to that organization's website.

-Once you have figured out a professional or amateur player's name, try finding an interview with them. Type "their name" and "interview" into EBSCO or Infotrac or JStor to look for interviews.

-Try looking at sportsillustrated.com or the Sporting News websites for recent articles about your sport--type your sport and the region associated with it into their search bars.

-Have you found a piece of literature yet that mentions, references, or is inspired by your sport?

-Try searching for a poem at this poetry site. Or this one. Or try searching for a story here. Also try going back to the OED.

Extra credit, quarter 2

Here are some extra credit opportunities for you in the second quarter.

• Watch any of the following movies: Camelot (1967), First Knight (1995), Scotland PA (2001; with parental guidance). Write about how these movies teach you more about King Arthur, a little more about Britain, and a lot more about literature. (25 pts)
  
• Read "The Reeve's Tale" or "The Knight's Tale" from The Canterbury Tales. Sketch a scene from any of these in color to decorate our classroom wall. (25 pts)
  
• Memorize and recite Macbeth's "She should have died hereafter" speech from Act V of Macbeth (20 pts).
  

All points apply to homework grades.

Bear in mind that first quarter extra credit can be turned in for second quarter extra credit too!

Got those Monday-test-day blues?

Here's what I've been brainstorming about for Macbeth essay topics:

• “Equivocation” is the purposeful deceit of someone by using false statements that sound true. There must be at least three characters in this play who "equivocate" with the other characters in at least one way or another.
  

• Macbeth might be read as how a bad king gets what’s coming to him, but it might also be read as Shakespeare’s advice on good leadership. After all, he wrote it just as James I was taking the throne. If you think about a few characters in particular, you can really understand how this play is basically a prescription for how to be a good king, by showing us a few characters who define, in one way or another, what makes a good leader.

And the winner is...

Did you happen to miss the sonnet vote?
Alas, that you neglected all the best
your witty peers could offer, all they wrote
in verse and rhyme, they beat out all the rest
and won their classes' winter sonnet game.
Then moving on to our trueteacher site,
they represented well, fought hard to claim
the rights and privileges so requisite
of being the 8-Mile Sonnet Death
Match champ. Bravo to Sungeun's Chris's, Todd's
and rhythmic Thomas, Michael's, Brendan's breath.
For all spoke well against the stringent odds
the Bard proscribed in jest. Still, there is one
With most votes cast for him: Chris Masterson.