What a nasty, rainy day!
Today was also the day that Bollato took government students on the field trip to the courthouse, so we didn’t finish level 9 today: I just gave a work day. Remember – make you you are keeping up with your work.
We will finish Dante’s Inferno tomorrow and The Minos Project will be due on Friday.
We finished level 8 today. It was a quick read through:
We started our journey into Level 8 (fraud) today. Generally speaking, we are going to interpret fraud as being fake.
We went through 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, and 8.5 today.
8.1 – a panderer PROVIDES the sin; like a pimp. A lustful person just loses control; a seducer manipulates people.
8.2 are the suck ups. They give insincere compliments to get something. For example, let’s say that I really, really, really want new desks for my classroom (hint, hint, Mrs. Ekster!) and so after Vistas Visits, let’s I went up to Mrs. E. and told her that this was the BEST VV EVER and that I asked her for a copy of her PowerPoint because I wanted to share with with my students because it was so great. It WASN’T great – I just wanted to suck up to make her like me SO THAT I’D GET MY DESKS!
8.3 are the simoniacs. This is where Dante placed priests who took get out of Hell free cards (think the Pardoner from the Canterbury Tales), but for the purposes of the Minos Project, you can use a corrupt priest/pastor.
8.4 are the fortune tellers.
8.5 are the corrupt politicians.
We went to level 7 today. This is where the levels start to get more complication, because Dante just doesn’t have ONE type of sinner for each level: there are THREE types of sinners in the Violence (actually, 6, but he lumps three together).
We talked about the centaurs in level 7.1: I always had the idea of sweet centaurs thanks to Disney’s Fantasia, but in Greek mythology, they were really, REALLY violent.
In Level 7.2, we talked about violence against SELF.
And in Level 7.3, we talked about BLASPHEMY, USURY, and HUMAN NATURE.
Blasphemy is insulting God or religious items. We talked about Piss Christ and how it’s blasphemous.
Then, we talked about USURY, and how it’s overcharging interest. We watched a few Western Sky commercials.
Here is a picture of their rates:
In first block, we figured out that the Western Sky phone number went to Cash Call:
In fact, I had a few students who actually called to inquire about the rates of their loans. And of course, I can’t get my phone to work right now, but I have a few pictures of Ahmed and Chris talking to them on the phone. Ahmed made it through the entire phone call, but Chris got rudely forwarded to some random person’s voice mail.
Today, we talked about Levels 5 and 6 of Dante’s Inferno.
Level 5 – we talked about how the WRATHFUL (or angry) are here, but also are the depressed people. Back in the day, they thought depression was SLOTH, or laziness.
Level 6 – the dictionary defintion (DENOTATION) of heretic is as follows:
However, the way Dante uses it (CONNOTATION) is as a non-Catholic. This is a list of people who USED to be Roman Catholic, and then LEFT the faith.
And then we worked some more on the Minos Project.
I am going to put the zeros in the gradebook for the Closing Arguments essay/speech(?), so don’t be shocked when/if your grades drop.
Just think: next year, Cinco de Mayo will fall on “Taco Tuesday” – it’ll be the perfect storm!
I love the excuse to celebrate and dress up! 🙂
Today, we continued our journey into Hell – we read and took notes about Levels 3 and 4.
Gluttons overeat and over drink. Don’t confuse GLUTTONS with GLUTEN. Gluten is found in wheat.
Hoarders save money – they are greedy. Wasters WASTE money, duh.
The directions, examples, and a template are in Blackboard. This will be due on May 16th.
USE MY TEMPLATE. USE MY TEMPLATE. USE MY TEMPLATE.
Have I mentioned that I want you to use my template? Don’t just start your own PowerPoint.
Some helpful links:
First, go to the webpage and enter your search term in the top left hand corner. You will need to use BROAD terms, not specific.
Then, you’ll get a few search result. Look at them and find the most general and broad one that fits your topic.
When you get to the webpage, the examples will be further down the list. You’ll have options to choose from: television shows, real life, musicals, movies, comic books, manga/anime. MAKE SURE YOU DON’T PLAGIARIZE FROM THIS RESOURCE.
I am going to repeat these helpful hints each day for the rest of this week. I hope that at least one person finds them useful.
Happy Cinco de Mayo!
Today, we started Dante’s Inferno. This will take us the next two weeks and we will be doing a major grade called the Minos Project along with it. We are using The Virtual Tour of Hell, so we aren’t reading the poem directly.
As we read, we are answering the reading guide questions. Please do this, because this will help keep you from plagiarizing from the website when you do the Minos Project.
We talked about how Dante’s was an “old-school” Catholic, and that this story is his own design. It’s an allegory, so this story is meant to be symbolic – a scared straight story to get people to act how Dante thinks they should act.
If you missed today, make sure you read the Dark Wood of Error, Limbo, and Level 2 (Lustful) and get those questions. If you still don’t understand what is going on, talk to me after class and I’ll get you straightened out. 
We also talked about The Minos Project today. Do a little bit each day – do not try to get this entire thing done in two days – it won’t happen. Make sure that you use the template that I provided for you in Blackboard. It’s there for a reason.
Make sure you don’t plagiarize. You won’t be able to pass if you copy from the webpage. Look at the student examples for assistance.
Remember – if you need help finding a person for a certain level, don’t be afraid to ask me for a person. If I give you a person, and you USE that person, it will only deduct (two) points off of your final grade of 150 points. Even if I were to give you every single person to use, you could still pass the assignment!
Try to think of creative examples that no one else is using!
The directions, examples, and a template are in Blackboard. This will be due on May 16th.
Some helpful links:
First, go to the webpage and enter your search term in the top left hand corner. You will need to use BROAD terms, not specific.
Then, you’ll get a few search result. Look at them and find the most general and broad one that fits your topic.
When you get to the webpage, the examples will be further down the list. You’ll have options to choose from: television shows, real life, musicals, movies, comic books, manga/anime. MAKE SURE YOU DON’T PLAGIARIZE FROM THIS RESOURCE.
I am going to repeat these helpful hints each day for the rest of this week. I hope that at least one person finds them useful.
So today, we just worked on writing the Closing Arguments speech. Remember – I took the “pre-writing chart” off as a grade – it seems like that just complicated the assignment rather than helped you.
We won’t have anymore class time to work on this, but I have changed the due date to Wednesday, May 7th. That’s Malik’s birthday. I *am* going to put the zeros in on Monday after the gradecheck to remind you to get that work turned in.
Have a great weekend!
Thank you guys for being my guinea pigs today! I’ve done persuasive essays over Othello before, but I’ve never had students write an attorney’s closing arguments before. So, just like with the Marrow Essay, let me know what I need to tweak to make this easier or better. Second Block has already told me that rather than pre-writing, they’d rather just have suggestions for organizing the essay rather than collecting information before we start writing. The point of pre-writing is to HELP you write the essay, not waste your time.
The first thing we did was take a test over appearances: I gave you a bunch of people who had been convicted of a crime. I had YOU see if you can figure out which people were convicted sex offenders.
The point of that was to talk about how you can’t judge someone based on the way they look because appearances can he deceiving. Iago says that people shouldn’t be liars if they appear to be honest. He also is the person who LOOKS the most honest in the play up until Act 5.2 – the very end of the play.
Then, we did an Excel spreadsheet distributing guilt and responsibility throughout the characters of Othello.
When you assign the correct amount of guilt to each character, make sure it equals up to 100. You might not need to use all characters (you might even need to add a character in!)
Then, we looked at the Instructions for the Closing Arguments. We talked about ethos, pathos, and logos. We looked at snippets (when the internet was working) of closing arguments in the Trayvon Martin case (they lawyer used pathos well, but his ethos may have lost him the case), and then we looked as a few snippets from Atticus Finch’s closing arguments where he displayed logos.
We looked at the Closing Arguments pre-writing, but I am NOT REQUIRING this as a grade. HOWEVER, use this to help GUIDE you when you are writing.
