2/16/2015 – B

setting

Today, we read Othello Act 1. If you missed today, please don’t just read the summary – read the actual play. It’s pretty easy, I promise!

The play starts out in Venice:

venice

Some words we talked about today:

vocabularyMoor

soliloquy

misogynist

misanthrope

misandry

 

 

We started the Othello Haikus:
haikusIf you need help, go to BB – there are links on how to write a haiku and a webpage with summaries. Focus on the summary rather than sentences.

 

 

 

nicknames

You can use nicknames for characters as well.

WE should have PLENTY of time to work on this tomorrow. Act 2 goes by QUICKLY!

This is a Wordle of Iago’s conversation with Roderigo at the end of Act1.3. You can see quite clearly why he hangs out with Rodergio. 😛

I’ve never been more useful to you than I will be now. Here’s what you’ll do. Sell all your assets and your land, and turn it into cash. Desdemona can’t continue loving the Moor any more than he can continue loving her. She fell in love with him very suddenly, and they’ll break up just as suddenly. Moors are moody people.—So sell your lands and raise a lot of cash. What seems sweet to him now will soon turn bitter. She’ll dump Othello for a younger man. When she’s had enough of the Moor’s body, she’ll realize her mistake. She’ll need to have a new lover. She’ll have to have it. So have your money ready. If you want to go to hell, there are better ways to do it than killing yourself. Raise all the money you can. I can get the better of religion and a few flimsy vows between a misguided barbarian and a depraved Venetian girl. You’ll get to sleep with her—just put together some money. And to hell with drowning yourself! That’s completely beside the point. If you’re ready to die, you can risk death by committing crimes in an attempt to get the woman you want. Don’t just give up on her and drown yourself.

 

You can trust me. Go now and get cash. I told you before, and I’ll tell you again and again: I hate the Moor. I’m devoted to my cause of hating him, just as devoted as you are to yours. So let’s join forces and get revenge. If you seduce Desdemona and make a fool out of him, it’ll be fun for both of us. Many things may happen. Go get money. We’ll speak again tomorrow. Goodbye.

 

Go then, goodbye. Put a lot of cash together.

 iago talking to rod

 

11/20/2014

Today, we finished Othello when we read Act 5.

We talked a lot about Desdemona and her inaction, what she could have done, and what she SHOULD have done.

We talked about Othello and why he committed suicide the way he did – was it to send his soul to Hell faster, or was it to escape living with the guilt of what he did?

Act 5 went by VERY quickly – we had LOTS of time to work on haikus and I even played the movie Othello. We’ll finish it tomorrow.

This is one of the images that we looked at today –  a canopy bed:

So tomorrow, the haikus will be due AND we’ll do the character chart. These two things will add up to a major grade – 150 points!

Hooray! We only have one more day to wake up early before the Thanksgiving break!

11/14/2014

We read Act 4 today. It went by pretty quickly, so you should have time to get caught up with all of your haikus, especially if you use the Syllable Counter that I have in Blackboard. You can enter in sentences – just be careful with the names of characters. One students used “Desde” as a nickname for Desdemona, and since Desde isn’t a real word, the webpage didn’t recognize it and said it was only ONE syllable rather than two.

Today while reading, we talked about how gestures can be misinterpreted. Remember Riley took a student in hall way to talk about her vegetable noodle peeler? You guys need to get your minds OUT OF THE GUTTER!

carrot

We also talked about how HARSH and HATEFUL Othello’s words to Desdemona were – we agreed that there are some words that you just can’t forgive. If a boyfriend were to compare me to maggots in rotting meat, I’d break up with him. If he said he wished I’d never been born, I’d assume he was breaking up with me. What’s worse to say to someone: “I hate you” or “I wish you’d never been born”?

Get those haikus done! We’ll finish Othello tomorrow!

11/17/14

A few notes for today:

Progress Reports will printed tomorrow at 8 am. So, you still have time to get work turned in if you want a good grade tomorrow.

The big thing is the Bucket List Persuasive Paper – I’m missing A LOT of those!

We read Othello Act 2 today. We had about 30-40 minutes to work on haikus today, but I suggested that if you needed to finish your essay, get that done first. The haikus are worth 75 points and are due on Friday, so you still have time this week to get caught up if you spend the time today working on the essay, which is due today and worth 150 points. This will be on the Progress Report tomorrow.

Word of the day: misogynist – a woman hater. Iago isn’t necessarily gay, he just doesn’t like or respect women. He especially thinks that they aren’t faithful.

11/14/14

setting

Today, we read Othello Act 1. If you missed today, please don’t just read the summary – read the actual play. It’s pretty easy, I promise!

The play starts out in Venice:

venice

Some words we talked about today:

Moor

vocabulary

soliloquy

misogynist

misanthrope

misandry

 

 

 

We started the Othello Haikus:
haikusIf you need help, go to BB – there are links on how to write a haiku and a webpage with summaries. Focus on the summary rather than sentences.

nicknamesYou can use nicknames for characters as well.

WE should have PLENTY of time to work on this tomorrow. Act 2 goes by QUICKLY!

 

4/29/14

We finished Othello today! As promised, we read an act a day.

First Block thought it was hilarious that Porfiro, who was reading at Iago, got to call me a “notorious whore” (multiple times, actually) and a “piece of trash.”

The Othello haikus will be due tomorrow. The haikus will be half a major grade (75), and the character chart will be the other half (75 points).

haikuAlso, I have provided an extra credit opportunity for you if you’d like. Just know that I am not allowed to give you over a 100 on your final grade, so if you end up with a 102, I can’t give you what you actually earned.

In Othello, there is a discussion board named Othello journals that you can do for some extra credit – I’d suggest doing this especially if you have LATE points taken off of your Marrow Essay.

othello extra credit

11/20/13

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!

11/19/20

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.

11/18/13

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! 🙂