Wednesday Nov 30

today we got reading ... we finished Chapter 4 in the novel.

"it's ok to be jealous of your friends ..." line was discussed. I gave an example from my own life with a university buddy of mine, Dr. Geordie Rose. He was a teammate of mine back at McMaster in the early 90's and has gone on to do fairly well for himself.

At one point in time, we were asked about what we thought about what a game of Blitzball might look like. I did have a few suggestions:

Kabaddi
WheelChair Rugby
and Able Bodied Rugby, too

We watched a bit of them today. Interesting to see if any one of my students takes these sports up in any interest.

I'm not sure how, but we also mentioned Kelly Slater's new business, too. Watch this:


Kelly's Wave from Kelly Slater Wave Co on Vimeo.

We also saw the start of the 2004 film version of the book. I doubt we'll have time to see that during class time, but it's at least there.

I did also suggest a few ideas about the Culminating Activity in the class today.

Tuesday Nov 29

Teacher copy and the Blue copy

So today ....

yeah, We read until the middle of Chapter 3 - page 36 in the teacher copy and 44 in the Blue copy ...

and got 6, 7, 9 and 11 for homework.

We also watched this:

Monday Nov 28

What we dealt with today in class

I won't lie, it was a tough slog through A Separate Peace today.

We made it to page 19 in my copy of the book but that's complicated by the fact that we have three different versions of the text. We did get into chapter 2, though.

And we also got questions 1-5 for work for tomorrow. I will post due dates tomorrow, too.

And ... I found a bunch of work int he "to be returned" box at the front of the class and returned it today. Weird, no one was looking in it.... hashtag all good.

Just to keep people in the loop, this is what the teacher is reading:

So far, a pretty good read.

Thursday Nov 24

What a day, what a day.

We handed stuff in today - the essay on Othello was due. I also got some Othello part II questions as well.

After that, we had a discussion about the Pathways Presentation that went on during period two. I'm always a strong proponent that there are always many pathways to success.

After a bit of that, we got into the new unit, A Separate Peace.

During the reading, we heard about this and I said that I would post a pic of the northern lights on Jupiter:

I think I can see my house from here ....

Wednesday Nov 23

We got to Step Four in class ... well, that is I got to step Four in front of the class.

Seems I will go home tonight and finish my essay off and be ready to hand it in tomorrow.

On wards!

Monday Nov 21

Hey, just before class started, I posted this as a link you can see if you can download the .doc version of the Essay outline handout.

Friday Nov 18th

Well, I went looking for today's post ... and I couldn't find it anywhere.

I do apologise to the loyal followers of this blog. I thought I had this done.

I did not.

We did a bit of work on the essay and watched the film Coriolanus as a part of that.

Monday will be better. Pinky swear!

Thursday Nov 17

So ... quiz day.

Had all students write the quiz ... it was hashtag awesome.

I did get in fewer than all the assignments in, which was sad...

Ah well, we did some talking about the essay writing process and I spoke about what I saw from the class as a whole the last time we did essay writing.

We'll be talking more about the use of summary v analysis, starting sentences with the word "Because", and run on sentences in the near future. I really, completely and wholly support my students taking a peek at the book Elements of Style by Shrunk and White.

After that we did watch about 20 minutes of Coriolanus, a film for comparing Othello and the title character as an essay topic.

Wednesday Nov 16

We did some work on the character sketches and some work on the essay.

I did show my copy of Nicolo Machiavelli's The Prince to the class and talked a little about it, as a part of the essay study we are doing. I also mentioned Harold Bloom's tome "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human", too. Both are just incredible resources for students.

Tuesday November 15

So, we had a nice short visit by Anna in class today. She presented on the class project on Samaritan's Purse Canada that we were asked to do before November 18th.

The list above is what we put together from the list of ideas from the small brochure that came with the box.

We then went back to working on our Othello Character Sketches and a bit of the essay work, too.

Fill it! ;)

Monday Nov 14

He has a nose in this one....

So, Monday.

Well, we finished the film version of  Othello. Now we do the script/text version and get through to Thursday. For homework for tonight, we got 20-25 on the Unit Outline.

So many people away on Friday, we changed the due date a day earlier. Needed to.

We will finish Othello this week and get on to essay writing and the next unit soon.

Coriolanus. What a film.

....and saw this

Friday Nov 11

Lest we forget...

So today we almost finished our play, as we had an extra long class. Or perhaps it was just that it seemed extra long.

In any case, we got 15, 16, 17 and 18 for questions for Monday.

We also saw the due date for Part Two of Othello, which will be Nov 18th. We will finish Othello on Monday and get moving onto the "extra" part of the unit then.

Thursday Nov 10

It is the 10th of November .... and stuff was due today.

Most students got material in today ... one or two got their assignments in yesterday. That's some good work right there. I love online submissions.

In any case ... we did a short quiz and then got on to talking about The Elements of Style, a very good book about how to do a better job of writing.

It's an awesome little book, available as an audiobook and as an iBook ... and probably a lot of other formats as well...

After that, we got to watch a bit of the film version with Laurence Fishburne and Kenneth Brannaugh.

A beach, for no reason.

Wednesday Nov 9

.... Wednesday was awesome!

We took up homework, we poked fun at people who were away .... and walked right up to the teacher, asking him what we did yesterday ... at which point in time the teacher kinda cried a little and pointed to the web address of this blog, pinned up on the wall in the room ...

Then, we took up the homework from yesterday, watched/talked about the scenes in the play and chatted a bit about possible interesting essay topics for this unit.

We did take a peek at updated marks for the students as well.

We also tried to take a peek at this, but I was interrupted....

Tuesday Nov 8

Well, it was a bit of a go today in class.

Some interesting ideas happened. I also asked about Vocabulary and Theme/Terms study .... if y'all need help, y'all just need to ask very quietly....

We did get Act II finished. I did assign work for tomorrow ... 11, 13 and 14.

We also did watch the 1995 version in to Act III. What. A. Play!

Whisper, whisper ... whisper .... 

Monday Nov 7

Shhhhhh .... shhhh ...... shhhh ...... shhhh...... It's like I'm at the beach somedays in class....

We got most of the things I wanted to get to today - I do have a mark for each student and wanted to conference with each today, but that just didn't happen. Never fear, we will get to that tomorrow.

We got through Act 2 scene 3 today. I reminded students of the Nov 10th due date today, too.

On to tomorrow!

Friday Nov 4

That was one of the scenes that the actor Michael Maloney has done with Kenneth Branaugh over the years. He is also playing Rodirigo in 1995 version of Othello that we were watching today in class.

Another look for young Michael ... he starts at 2:18 of this video:

In any case, we got to watch a fair amount of the film today, getting to the fight scene between Cassio and Rodirigo.

We also got the due dates for Part One of Othello.

Not that I want to clog up this blog post with videos ... but I forgot about this one until today.

Very, very funny.

Thursday Nov 3

So ... there was a still a number away today. I'm honestly hoping you are keeping up with your courses, including this one.

 Today we did a fair amount of work together on the Theme and Terms Study for Othello.

We did also have an example of student work from a quiz. We took a look at the structure of a level four answer from a quiz that was done recently. It was a very good dissection and discussion of what worked and what did not work.

We also did a couple of fun things - on "How to use your phone for things other than social media" or "How to use your phone as a tool, not a toy". I showed students a few apps I use - Learn Swift, Polar Beat, ICE and At Bat to name just a few.

Learn Swift is an app designed to help people learn how to put together their own apps for the iPhone. Sky View Free is an astronomy app that shows the constellations, the planets and other interstellar phenomena. Polar Beat is an app that can monitor your heart rate as you exercise, as long as you have the heart rate monitor chest strap. (A student asked me; I have the H7 Polar HR Monitor). At Bat is an app that let me watch major league baseball games off of my cell phone with a monthly fee. I watched most of the Blue Jay 2016 season either on my phone or on my Apple TV at home.

The ICE app is not shown but is a way of letting EMT personnel make a phone call off of your phone, just in case you can't speak to them in an emergency.

After we finished with the projected material, we got to watch a scene from Othello - when Othello is accused of stealing Desdemona away from her family. It's the scene that uses "Anthropophagi" - my favourite word from this text.

We did also discuss the ideas behind this video I found online from the British Arts Council:



One other thing I said I would post for this class was this:



and this one, too:


RosterBot Holiday Zamboni Loop from ianb on Vimeo.

Wed Nov 2

Yeah, it was a weird one.

 Too much sugar left over from Halloween and it was an off day, as we had a 3B lunch instead of a 3A lunch.

 Meh, these things happen. We did take a look at this:

 
Shakespearience In School Experience from Shakespearience on Vimeo.

We stopped and started it a few times, especially when we got to talk about how we were going to be doing the play.

I'll add a few more handouts for the Study of Drama type ideas later on in the unit, thanks to the discussion.

We also got a chance to do the terms - Setting, Conflicts and point of view for Othello. We got to discuss two of the themes, too: "Gender", "Blindness v sight", and touched very briefly on the idea that "Heroes can't fall in love". The last one we didn't get a chance to talk about was "Jealousy". We'll get to that one soon.

The other video I wanted to see was this one, but as it was a weird day, my timing for the class was off and it didn't happen:









I also found this on YouTube:

Tuesday Nov 1

So we did some one on ones today - giving back essays, updating and discussing some things owed to the teacher for class and some even did quizzes for me.

Preparation for midterm marks being entered this weekend/Friday-ish.

Then we had a light discussion of the Theme/Terms study we need to get started in the next few days.

Actual picture from class today. Well, not really.

Later on, I was playing with an online voice recorder. Might have to get you to click here and listen to see if it worked.