Springing towards summer

We're enjoying our Spring break for Easter, and I hope you have had time to rest, and be with both family and friends. We've been grateful for the rest. Also puzzled by the rapid temperature shifts, by the way. Not long ago it felt like summer and we had need for air conditioning, but now it has turned cold again like there are still remembrances of winter. Rain or shine, summer vacation will be here sooner than you think.

Let's accomplish clearly a few goals - here is what remains to be done in the fourth quarter, the last of Spring 2015:

1) Informational Speaking - speak on the contents of your article, and whether you agree with it. Use a digital help like a photo or graph, projected on the overhead.

2) Informational Writing - inform of the contents of the article, and write about your opinions on the article without getting too persuasive.

3) Narrative Writing - see link to right of blog where you can see Narrative Prompts - which have been recently adjusted and are based on next year's Common App. Choose one, not the first!

4) Narrative Speaking - speak on what you are writing about in number 3 above.

5) Favorite Author Prezi - each student presents individually on an author we have read this year: about 20 slides with link to video and bibliography. Speak for 5 minutes; bonus for using Prezi instead of PowerPoint.

Slide distribution: 1 - Intro (like top left of writing assignment) 2-7 author biography, 8-13 giving examples of the writing of this author, showing why the sentences are beautiful or effective, showing other people's opinion about or interpretation of the writing, or comparing 2 works using same theme being discussed, 14-19 interesting points that made this person noteworthy, eccentricities or habits of the person, how the person trained to become excellent or made the work excellent. 20 works cited.


Besides the above, we have readings, however homework assignments have been carefully reduced or targeted, and you only need to submit 5. Assignments can be submitted up to 3 days late - endeavor to do everything on time! If you don't have enough time to submit one, skip it and do the next, perhaps:

Q4 Assignments from Collection 6 Modern World

HW41 The Destructors – G. Greene – p. 1092: 5,8,9,10,11 TEST

HW42 Shakespeare’s Sister from A Room of One’s Own – V. Woolf – p. 1113: 3,4,5,6

HW45 The Lake Isle of Innisfree – W.B. Yeats – p. 1168: 2,3,6,7

HW51 Digging – S. Heaney – p. 1248: 4,5,7

HW53 Do Not Go Gentle – D. Thomas – p. 1274: 4,5,6,7,8

HW43 Marriage is a Private Affair – C. Achebe – p. 1153: 5,9,10

HW50 B. Wordsworth – V.S. Naipul – p. 1239: 5,7,9

HW46 Araby – J. Joyce – p. 1182: 1,3,4,6

HW57 Saboteur – Ha Jin – p. 1317: 5,6,9,10

HW56 Towards a True Refuge – H.S. Suu Kyi

HW56 The Question of South Africa – D. Tutu

HW56 Universal Declaration of Human Rights –p. 1328: 1,4

Students must submit 5 of these homework assignments. Everyone takes 4 selection Tests.

Q4 blog reflection:

A) write about something interesting you learned this year during a club or class activity or while volunteering or working at a job 

B) advice to other students - if you are a senior tell students how to choose & apply for college and have a smooth senior year; non-seniors advise underclassmen on how to be better student or language learners

C) write something about your home country or culture that others from outside your country don't know, or write about plans for the future, such as college or summer..


Start working on your Q4 blog reflection, Author Prezi, and Q4 classroom notes (due 5/15). We are all looking forward to a great summer!

Extras:

HW47 Rocking Horse Winner – D.H. Lawrence – p. 1199: 6,7,8,9,10

HW59 The Horses – T. Hughes – p. 1336 3,4,5,6

HW58 Sailing to Byzantium – W.B. Yeats – p. 1333: 3,4,5,6


While on vacation, be sure to remain in a festive frame of mind!

Out with the Old and In with the...Next Step

Before our thoughts can turn to greener pastures like spring break or even graduation, we need to wrap up Q3. There will be a lot of things to accomplish before the end of this third quarter and academic year.

For now, I'd just like to post some information on the upcoming final exams next week. After that, this post will be updated to include plans for the fourth quarter.

There are questions on the Q3 Final from these stories and poems – including vocab for short stories:

HW25 The Poison Tree – p. 732: 4,5,6 TEST 1  3 questions

HW30 Quiet Night Thoughts – p. 823: 1,5,8 TEST 2  4 questions

HW34 Mark of the Beast – R. Kipling – p. 944: 4,8,9,10,11 TEST 3  3 questions

HW36 How Much Land Does a Man Need? – p. 963: 1,7,10 TEST 4  4 questions

HW38 The Jewels – p. 5,7,8 TEST 5  5 questions   also Vocab 

HW37 The Bet – A. Chekhov – p. 973: 5,9,11   4 questions also Vocab also Essay


There are no grammar questions this time, nor are there Wordly Wise questions on the final.

Q3 Midpoint

Five-minute Feud Debates
We will have one day of debates before break, and we are changing the time controls. We need to fit in two debates within one class period, so this should work:

Each of three speakers gets 2.5 minutes to speak
Thirty seconds between speakers
Each team gets 3 minutes of research time at class computer before debate
Total time per debate = 23 minutes

Topic 1: Should individuals be forced to receive vaccinations (e.g., against the measles), even if unwilling?

Topic 2: Homeschooling & non-traditional education should be encouraged.

Topic 5: The U.S. federal government should substantially increase its non-military exploration and/or development of the Earth's oceans.

Topic 6: The U.S. federal government should substantially curtail its domestic surveillance.


Go to the National Speech and Debate Association Web Site for more info on the above topics.

Five Beautiful Sentences assignment
Please find five sentences within your Book Group book, and email the following information:
1) The entire sentence and its page number
2) Underline the word for phrase that is "interesting" (see below)
3) Include a brief explanation about why you underlined it. Also helpful is explaining the context of the sentence within the story, or the importance of the sentence.

Underline words that are effectively, or well-written, but look for use of slang, idioms, vernacular (local language), difficult, or fresh.

Informational Speaking
Speak for at least two minutes about An Good Place to Visit in Taiwan. You may use your blog post as a source of ideas, but you may not read the speech from the blog or paper. It is recommended that a photo from online be prepared for the speech, perhaps attached to your blog post.
Keep in mind this is informational speaking, so include some facts and figures - things like describing the geography or location, population, economics, or some details. Avoid "selling," or persuading, and also avoid too many personal stories, or narratives.

Grammar Quiz
Our grammar quiz has been moved to Tuesday, March 10th. We will use the materials from "The Only Grammar Book You'll Ever Need" to explain the same topics below a bit better before the quiz.

Information includes the following three major points:
A) Verb Tenses - know form and use:
     1) Simple Present: "Alvyn is a man." "If you heat ice it melts." "The sun rises in the East and sets in the West." "I brush my teeth every morning." "I usually/sometimes/always play piano at night.
     2) Present Continuous: "I am writing now."
     3) Future: a) "will" for willingness: "I will go with you to Paris." or determination: "Yes I will go see a movie with Arielle." b) "am going to V" for plans: "We are going to visit Italy next summer." c) using present tense to show future with schedules: "I fly tomorrow at 9 AM." d) using present continuous tense for future (probably for plans too): "I am visiting Italy next summer."
     4) Present Perfect: a) for recently completed actions that still affect the present: "I have eaten lunch." b) for experience: "I have visited England before." c) for repeated actions happening from a point in the past, to now, and going into the future, using "for" or "since": "Book has studied Chinese for three years." or "Book has studied Chinese since 2012."
B) Verbals - words that look like verbs but are used as other parts of speech
     1) gerunds - words that look like verbs but are used as nouns: "Wakeboarding is really my favorite sport. Swimming is boring."
     2) participles - they look like verbs (ending in "-ing" or "-ed") but are used as adjectives: The girl sitting over there is my friend.
     3) infinitives - the basic form of the verb with "to" in front of it, usually used as a noun, but may be used as adjective or adverb. We will come back to this later, but for more immediate info, try this link on infinitive use. For now you need to know that we use infinitives to explain why we do something: "Stephen attends university to learn about physical therapy." "Brandon came to Taiwan to study Chinese."
C) An understanding that English is changing and that a lot of what is "right" is that way because a lot of people have decided to speak that way: "I don't recommend having 2 beers with lunch." or "Hey, you are looking good today." Instead, a more formal or traditional way to say these would be: "I'd recommend drinking two bottles of beer on the first Saturday night after graduation." or "You look good today."

For more review, use this link to see the web site we used in class for those verb tenses.

Q3 Romantics & Victorians

We'll be going over readings from the 1800's in England and Europe, which covers their Romantic and Victorian periods. To make our literature assignments more achievable for most students this year, we have reduced the number of required assignments to ten, and the number of questions in each assignment is three questions. 

Q3 Required Literature Homework

HW25 The Poison Tree – W. Blake – p. 732: 4,5,6 TEST

HW26 Composed Upon Westminster Bridge – W. Wordsworth – p. 744: 2,5,6

HW27 She Walks in Beauty – Byron – p. 795: 1,2,3

HW28 Ode to the West Wind – P. Shelley – p. 810: 1,7,8  

HW30 Quiet Night Thoughts – Li Po – p. 823: 1,5,8  TEST

HW33 Sonnet 43 – E.B. Browning – p. 915: 2,3,4

HW34 Mark of the Beast – R. Kipling – p. 944: 7,8,9  TEST

HW36 How Much Land Does a Man Need? – L. Tolstoy – p. 963: 1,7,10 TEST

HW37 The Bet – A. Chekhov – p. 973: 5,9,11 TEST

HW38 The Jewels – G. Maupassant – p. 982: 5,7,8 TEST

Students need to complete five tests in total, and may choose to take either one of the last two that are already scheduled.

We will have a variety of speaking and writing tasks, and more will be posted here later on those. For now, focus on Speech Meet. Homework for each student's chapter for their speech must be done by Wednesday after break - exercises C & E. The first 200 words of your speech must be recited in class by Friday of the week after break.

A forgone conclusion

It's a forgone conclusion that the second quarter of this year is coming to a rapid close, and that you will soon be enjoying the holidays with your families. I'd like to think it is also an "inevitable conclusion" that you have done your best and enjoyed learning in class this quarter, but if I am being too optimistic, you can let me know.

Shakespeare coined a long list of useful phrases, including "a forgone conclusion," which comes from Othello, and you may easily find more listed here and perhaps a few sprinkled throughout this post.


As a reminder for some who are trying to fill in gaps with missing assignments, I will list the Q2 required homework assignments below - there are just 8 of them. A few still need to confirm their final drafts of papers or get in Q2 classroom notebooks, but Monday is the last day and at this point you should consider yourself late and hurry before Santa decides to leave you only a lump of coal for Christmas!

Q2 British Lit HW

HW9 Passionate Shepherd p. 298: 2,3,4,5

HW10 Coy Mistress p. 307: 2,4,5,6,7

HW11 Shakespeare Sonnets 29 & 30 p. 315-316: On 29: 3,4,5;  On 30: 3,4,5,6

HW12 Shakespeare Sonnets 116 & 130 p. 319-320: 1,3,4 for both

HW14 Death Be Not Proud p. 352: 1,2,3,4,5

HW16 Bible: Prodigal Son parable p. 381: 3, 4,5,6

HW20 A Modest Proposal p. 594: 8-15                

HW22 Candide – Voltaire p. 623: 6,8,9,10

HW23 Don Quixote p.632: 3,4,6,7

For HW11 & HW12, the highest score is taken and so you may do one of those.

Please remember to turn in your textbooks to Mr. Catlin at the final exam!


For Speech Meet, which happens in January, you will need to memorize the first 400 words of the following Wordly Wise lesson you have been assigned to from your book. Do exercises C & E by the Tuesday after break.

Molly   –  Chapter 11 Women’s Day (women’s suffrage in the USA)

Oscar   –  Chapter 18 A Family Affair (organ transplants)

Gordon   – Chapter 10 The Tycoon of Pop (Andy Warhol)

Book  –  Chapter 12 On Death and Dying (psychiatrist Kubler-Ross)

George  –  Chapter 9 White Death (sharks)

At one fell swoop, we have made the approach to speech meet this year simple and appealing to those wanting to memorize something straightforward, while ensuring vocabulary is being acquired. Anyone who would like to memorize something else, like a poem or TED talk for public performance and extra credit is not being denied the opportunity to do so, and we can find a larger space than the usual classroom to use!

With speech meet this year, if we approach the activity with an open mind, we should find that all's well that ends well, and we will have gained something for our efforts. At least during our fine holidays, you will be able to surf online or have gaming parties to your heart's content.


If you are a bit of a night owl, you will get some more info on the final exam this weekend, and I hope you will not find yourself saying "woe is me" after seeing the list.

Here are the stories covered by the Final Exam:

HW9 The Passionate Shepherd to His Love – C. Marlowe

HW9 The Nymph Replies to the Shepherd – W. Raleigh

HW10 To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time – R. Herrick  

HW10 To His Coy Mistress – A. Marvell – TEST on HW9 & HW10  

HW11 Shakespeare’s Sonnets 29 & 30 – TEST

HW12 Shakespeare’s Sonnets 116 & 130 – TEST

HW14 Death Be Not Proud – J. Donne – TEST

HW16 The King James Bible: Prodigal Son parable

HW20 A Modest Proposal – J. Swift – TEST

HW21 Heroic Couplets – A. Pope  

HW22 Candide – Voltaire – TEST

HW23 Don Quixote – M. de Cervantes  

There will be 5 to 6 questions each major assignment or author that was tested, and 2 questions each of the three minor stories.

HW9 & HW10 – the pastoral and Carpe Diem poems, have 4 questions

HW11 & HW12, the Shakespeare Sonnets, has 5 questions total, as does Death Be Not Proud, which was HW14.

HW20 & HW23 have 6 questions each, and HW16, HW21, & HW23 each have 2 questions.

There are 32 questions, with no writing, vocabulary, or questions from the Book Groups.

List of helpful terms for the Exam: pastoral, Carpe Diem, Shakespearean Sonnet, quatrain, couplet, turn, meter, iambic pentameter, paradox, parable, allegory, verbal irony; persuasion, antithesis, satire, parody, hyperbole, understatement, simile, personification



Enjoy your Christmas holiday!

Moving at Epic speed

Welcome, Heroes, to a new school year, and a fresh start in what I hope you will count among your excellent learning experiences. British literature subject that has depth and breadth that may not easily be found elsewhere. During this first quarter of the 2014-15 academic year, we can expect to examine the roots of British writing, with Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, and Arthurian legends, while comparing to heroes that may be familiar from Greece.

Our course is not only going to focus on reading, however. We do have quite a bit of speaking, writing, and basic skills to master. We'll be working on vocabulary-building and developing a better awareness of grammar - with its correct application - and keep our eyes on pressing concerns of upperclassmen, including college applications and testing.

A certain place must be kept up in our reading. In fact, once our routines are settled, we can expect to mix things up with both reading groups, otherwise known as "literature circles," and spoken group work that will likely focus on debate. A lot is coming, and I'll update this post later on content.

For now, I would like to share the planned readings for the first quarter, classes for which basically end on Wednesday, October 8th. October 9th will be off for students and the 10th is a national holiday. Starting the following week, on Monday, October 13th, we have the quarterly exams for the first quarter. So we'll need to keep in mind early on that exams will start after a long weekend.

Q1 Assignments (from Collections 1 & 2)

HW1 Beowulf Part 1 – p. 42 – 2, 4, 6, 7, 8; due 9/2  

HW2 Beowulf Part 2 – p. 50 – 5, 6, 7, 8; due 9/4 TEST (combined)

HW3 Canterbury Tales 1: Prologue – p. 165 – 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10; due 9/11 TEST

HW4 Canterbury Tales 2: The Pardoner’s Tale – p. 176 7, 8, 9, 10, 11; due 9/19  

HW5 Canterbury Tales 3: Wife of Bath – p. 188 (6-7, 10-13) due 9/25 TEST

HW6 Iliad – p. 79 – 4, 6, 7, 9, due 9/30 TEST

HW7 Day of Destiny from Le Morte D’Arthur (King Arthur) – p . 223 – 3, 4, 7 (writing extra) 10/3 TEST

HW8 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – p. 237 – 2, 3, 4, 5 (extra credit) 10/7 

Before parent conferences, which happen from September 15-19, we will also complete revisions of a Persuasive writing essay and do a graded autobiographical speaking task. During that week, students will have a half-day schedule for classes. I do recommend planning to use some of that time for upcoming reading. If you preview scheduled readings and have questions prepared, then we'll be able to help you more effectively and efficiently, and your learning results, not to mention grades, should be better. 

The middle of the first quarter is September 12, but we hope no one will require notices to parents that your average is below 70%. If you find yourself in that range, I urge you to schedule one day a week with me at 3:45 to have your questions answered about homework & assessments, until your grade is in the B range. Upperclassmen should set a reasonable goal for themselves, in my opinion, of attaining at least a B in their junior and senior year English courses. Only then can you go about your business for your other classes - if not, then you need to work on your English so that success all across your courses is ensured. Please feel welcome to see me - I want to offer encouragement, direction, and proper instruction and your success is my first priority.

The assignments for all four quarters have already been mapped out - we have an exciting lineup of wonderful authors! If you feel me pushing you fast, it is not only because I know you can do it, but because simple put, if we go too slowly we will not be able to read some of the really great writings and authors in British and Western literature. If we do the plan above, and proceed with about an average of 15 readings per quarter after this, we will have an admirable preparation for any college English or Literature course. We do not need to have tests on every selection, and the suggested exercises need not always be graded, but to "pass" on reading them would be a "fail" for your experience in reading & life. When you see what's coming, you'll not fail to get enthusiastic, and devote a little more of your time & effort to British Literature this year.

Embracing Change

This whole year has been about learning to adjust to slightly new or challenging situations, I feel. All of us have come a long way and we've seen some incredible achievements despite quite daunting challenges. Take, for example, how the Talent Show at our school went. As I recall, most talent shows in the past, Christmas programs, and other events of this importance were usually entrusted to a talented teacher to figure out before, but since this option was not available this year, students were graciously given the opportunity to lead the way, and the results were wonderful! That was the best talent show I have seen at GCA, not only because the show went smoothly, or the performances were great, but because the students were all really excited the whole way through. I'm going to long remember Casey, Hank (and George) with their music, and thanks to other students like Michelle, we have a good example going forward of student leadership and creativity.

There are other examples of uncomfortable change all around us, from the freakish typhoons in the area (the Philippines got hit with the worst one EVER recorded within the last year) to weirdos with guns (California) or knives (Taipei's mrt). It feels like the world is getting worse - or is it?

My theory is the world has always been messed up, and we are simply getting more up-to-the-minute news of it from around the world more easily. All I know is that the feeling that the world is bad and getting worse is nothing new, and that the best thing you can do is be prepared to be flexible, because change will be needed if you are to cope in the world as an independent person.

Speaking of independence, congratulations to the graduating seniors! I liked what I saw in terms of advice to underclassmen on the individual blogs - we should make sure they read it! If I have time later, I will summarize them below, but my favorite one was from "Sigmund": STUDY HARD if you want a good senior year. Good, simple advice!

My advice to you, going forward, is to Embrace Change - be ready to change your viewpoints, habits, and self. If you want to change the world, start by changing yourself!