This week, the main focus was beginning the first project for this trimester. We got into groups based upon which Shakespearean tragedy most interested us, King Lear or Macbeth. Naturally, I chose Macbeth because I have a morbid curiosity and Lady Macbeth sounds like the kind of crazy that I want to read about. So I paired up with Erica and Lindsay to analyze it with. So far, we have chosen the feminist lens to look through. Not only will this make sense in the context of how Lady Macbeth is portrayed, but also the sister witches in the beginning. This critical standpoint will illustrate what both Renaissance society thought of women, and what Shakespeare himself thought of them. Considering the amount of time Shakespeare played around with the idea of gender relations, take the couples in A Midsummer Night's Dream or Desdemona and Othello for example, I think that we will find similar ideas if we go on to read more of his works. We have also returned to looking at poems in preparation for the AP Test. This time, we tackled two in one week. The first was a sonnet by Shakespeare, "Poor Soul, the centre of my sinful earth." Its structure was in typical style for him. Three quatrains, each bearing their own meaning, and a final couplet to tie it all together. The other poem was also a sonnet, but written much later by Percy Bysshe Shelley, titled "Ozymandias." Shelley's poem has the same structure, but each quatrain has a meaning that bleeds into the next, connecting the whole poem. The theme for this week is progress.
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This week marks the beginning of the new trimester, allowing things to sort of reset. Nevertheless, we are continuing to work diligently. As we get nearer to the AP test, we are focusing a tad more on preparation for it. We took an example multiple choice test from a previous year to gauge where we're at. Fortunately, it seems we as a class are on a good path already. There weren't any bad grades really and there's plenty of improvement oppurtunity coming up. It's comforting to know what CollegeBoard is looking for in us, though. Apart from the AP test, we are putting a twist on our independent reading for this twelve weeks. Instead of chosing any books that sound good, we have a theme that we have chosen our two books based upon. For example, I chose alienation, so the books I'm reading are Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger and The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. Both use alienation of their protagonist in a different way and for a different reason. This will all culminate into a presentation at the end of the trimester over our theme. The presentation's structure is in a Pecha Kucha style, meaning we will have twenty slides that we can only spend twenty seconds on each. It sounds daunting but I think it will be an adventure regardless. The theme for this week is continuation and making the transition to the new trimester as seemless as possible. |
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March 2017
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