Today, we worked on the Othello Character Chart (we did it on paper, but there is a file in BB that you can use). This should not take you the entire class period (if you know the characters).
Then, we finished working on our essays.
Remember, Blackboard will be down on Tuesday, but you should be able to turn in assignments on other days.
Have a great week off and have a GREAT THANKSGIVING!
So today we start out Othello essay over guilt and responsibility.
You will need to have a thesis and organize your paper by paragraphs. Remember, a paragraph is a UNIT of THOUGHT, not 4-5 sentences.
So, here is a sample essay for a student:
This would be a 7 paragraph essay. It doesn’t mean its going to be 7 pages long – some paragraphs will be longer/shorter than other.
Instructions are in BB and give a lot of information. Go to BB:Othello:Guilt and Responsibility. The instructions, drop box, and the MLA template are all located in the drop box.
Use the MLA template for writing your essay – just replace the file with YOUR information,.
Also, your first paragraph needs to have an INTRODUCTION and a THESIS. The thesis is the last sentence of your first paragraph.
For your intro, you need BOTH the yellow and the blue! Here are some ways to write an intro and here is a way to write a thesis.
Then, write your content paragraphs and your conclusion. We will have a little time tomorrow to work on the paper, but NOT THE ENTIRE TIME.
Now that we finished Othello, we can do some assignments based on the play.
The first thing we did today was take a ten question “quiz” over appearances. This wasn’t for a grade, but just to prove the point that you can’t tell anything about a person based on their appearance.
Next, we did the Othello Journals. Make sure that you answer all five of the questions – if you don’t answer all of them, it won’t be marked as completed and I won’t be able to grade them.
After that, we did the Othello Guilt Excel worksheet. You are assigning guilt (or responsibility) to different characters in Othello. You numbers will need to add up to 100 (100%) and you do NOT need to use all of the characters. You are just assigning numbers at this point – no explanations (that comes up tomorrow).
Then, we read about medieval torture and decided on a torture that would keep Iago alive for a long, but one that Cassio would deem as a fitting punishment. The link to the webpage it blocked at school, so ask me for the pdf copy and I can send it you.
If you have any time left after that, you can work on the haikus if you still need to finish those. We are writing a paper tomorrow, so don’t miss it! The paper will be due on Friday!
Act 5! That’s it! We are officially done reading Othello as of 1:45 this afternoon! Thank you to all of the people who volunteered to read (and those of you who were forced to read 🙂 ). Also, thanks to those who just read along in class. I really appreciate it – it makes my job much easier when I don’t have to babysit people while reading play.
After we finished reading, we just worked in haikus. Those will be due tomorrow, so if you don’t get them all done today, you might have some time tomorrow to work on them – it just depends on how quickly you work.
We only have four more days to wake up early before we get a week off of school!
Progress reports come out tomorrow, but my computer is not letting me grade at home. My help desk ticket is still being “looked at,” but I wasn’t able get much graded before grades were due. That means for some of you who stayed late on Friday to get get worked turned in, I wasn’t able to grade it. HOWEVER, since I don’t you to be penalized,I am going to grade everything here at school today and if your grade goes up, I will manually change the grade on your progress reports.
As far as classwork is concerned, we just read Act 4 and did the Othello Act 4 haikus.
Pretty easy! We’ll finish the play tomorrow! 🙂
Today, we read Act 3 in Othello and worked on the haikus. This was a really long Act, and first block didn’t get finished with it (not because of any off-task behavior, it was just because of VV and the start up time of the laptops – maybe we need to petition Mrs. E to make 1st block a little longer – or make VV a little shorter…).
In any case, some of the things that we talked about were jealousy, proof, direct evidence, circumstantial evidence, and cuckoldry. Students also got the chance to watch me act out Iago’s “dream sequence” with a giant fish pillow. If you missed Friday, you missed The Riley Show in full glory. Sorry. No pictures were allowed.
On Monday, my grades are due for the progress reports that will come out on Tuesday. A few things that I want to clear up –
See you Monday! Have a great (and restful) weekend!
Today was a pretty simple day: we read Act 2 and worked on the haikus. We talked about lying by omission, misogyny, and enemas. Please make sure that if you miss a day of class that you actually go back and read the play, not just the summaries. If you are stuck taking the final (good attendance, an 80 average in my class, and good behavior), you will need to know the story. Plus, we are going to write a paper and work on characterization next week – if you just read a summary, it will be much harder to complete these tasks.
We are starting to read Othello today (Act 1), but before we started reading, we did the Italian Stereotypes based on Jersey Shore.
The reason we did this (copy this on the back of your Italian stereotype word storm:
Shakespeare chose Italy as the setting for the play Othello because the English had these same stereotypes of Italians. There is no way a GOOD, ENGLISH girl would disobey her father and run off to marry and old, black man.
Afterwards, we read the entirety of Act 1. Some great readers today were Shelden, Madison, Justin ,and Fernanda! If you read along with us, I’ll give you extra credit – up to five points a day. That’s a TOTAL of 25 extra points you can earn. This would be GREAT for people who have turned in a major grade late or people who are gunning for an A (who wants to be a First Mate?)!
Then, we talked about the Othello Haikus that will be due NEXT FRIDAY AFTER THE ENTIRE PLAY IS READ.
There is no way that we can get all 15 stinkin’ haikus done today when we have only read three scenes! If you still need more help with haikus, check this link out!
To make things easier for you, there is a link in BB that gives a summary of broken down by act and scene. Pretty easy!
We are officially back in the classroom and starting a new unit today: Othello! In the Othello folder, please print the list of Othello words to One Note. These are all words that are used to describe the main character Othello. Your task: categorize them by POSITIVE, NEGATIVE, of NEUTRAL.
If you don’t know what a word means, LOOK IT UP. You have the computer right there – it takes maybe seven seconds to do so.
Afterwards, on a Post-It, write a 1-2 sentence prediction over what you think the character Othello will be like BASED on the words on the list!
A lot of those words were stereotypes and racist comments regarding a black man in Shakespeare’s day, and it was a great segue to talking about Italian stereotypes in Jersey Shore.
We watched the trailer for Season 4 and then got with a partner. Each team or group was given a different article to read about Jersey Shore. After you and your partner read the article, answer the following questions:
Do this on a separate sheet of paper and turn in with ALL names.
Lastly, you had time to work on the Obituary Diorama Foldable that we talked about last Friday. You can find the instructions here and the word cloud website here.
We start reading Othello tomorrow, so make sure that you keep up with all majors – you don’t want to go on Thanksgiving Break with ZEROS!
Today, we had a brief escape from the classroom since my room is being painted. We spent time either in the library or in the outdoor classroom doing a Socratic Seminar over the article An American Honor Killing. You could earn 10 XP for reading the article, and then 10 points for each significant comment or question asked. This is a 40 point assignment. If you weren’t here, you can earn some points by reading the assignment, but you’ve missed the Speaking and Listening Nuggets.
You can read this from the link provided above, but I would suggest that you read the printed paper copy that I have in my classroom. The reason that I’d suggest the paper copy is because I have highlighted and color coded names. The people involved do not have Western/American names, and I found it very hard to keep track of the actors involved, so I color coded it. You can also see a few of my comments on the last two pages.
