First and seventh periods went over the tests from Friday. The results were good: somewhere in the mid-80s for both classes. Additionally, first period began working on reflexive and intensive pronouns (tomorrow’s topic).

Second period had rehearsal time for their major Shakespeare acting project. Tomorrow we’ll be working on the rehearsals a bit more tomorrow, as well as going over the format for a review. The presentations will be Wednesday. Thursday and Friday we will watch the film version of Much Ado About Nothing.

Fourth period had a quiz on act two from Romeo and Juliet. We also watched a BBC performance of III.ii.

Homework

• First and seventh: none.
• Second:
  • review Much Ado About Nothing lines;
  • write in your journals.
• Fourth:
  • re-read III.ii;
  • complete study guide through III.ii; and
  • answer three discussion questions.

First and seventh periods completed tests on their Bluford books. Next week we’ll be using their essay responses to look at the PASS rubric and use of detail.

Second period determined their groups and scenes for the major project for Much Ado About Nothing.

Fourth period completed III.i in class. We’ll be having the quiz on act two Monday; students will need to have III-i through III.iv read by class Wednesday.

Homework

• First and seventh periods: none.
• Second period: practice lines (work on memorization).
• Fourth period: study for act two quiz on Monday.

Fourth period began working on tableau vivants (Wikipedia) for act three, scene one. We’ll be presenting them tomorrow. We have heavy homework coming up this weekend, though: three scenes from act three (two, three, and four).

First and seventh periods continued with the parts of speech review, going over personal pronouns today.

Second period finished Much Ado About Nothing and began dividing up  scenes for the major project.

Homework

• First and seventh period: study for test on Bluford books tomorrow.
• Second: none.
• Fourth: continue planning tableau vivant.

First and seventh period completed the allotted time for the Bluford literature circle. We’ll be having a test on Friday.

Second period finished reading/acting Much Ado About Nothing. We’ll be starting the project — memorizing and acting a scene from the play — at the end of class tomorrow.

Fourth period finished act two from Romeo and Juliet. We’ll be having a quiz on act two on Monday.

Homework

• First and seventh period: complete book (if you have not already).
• Second period: none (journal).
• Fourth period:
  • questions 8 and 11 from act two summary;
  • “Writing Assignment” in journal.

First and seventh periods continued the Bluford project. Tomorrow will be the last do to complete the required work. We will have a test on Friday.

Second period completed act IV of Much Ado About Nothing. I have put online the rubric for the culminating project, which we will probably start later this week.

Fourth period worked on the study guide through II.iv. We’ll finish up the act tomorrow.

Homework

• First and seventh periods: finish your book (tomorrow is the last day you will have to do the classwork for the various units).
• Second period: continue writing in your journal.
• Fourth period: complete the second infinitives activity.

It’s Friday: let’s make it short and to the point.

Homework

• First and seventh period: complete your book (we will have a test Friday).
• Second period: none.
• Fourth period:
  • read II.iv;
  • work on online infinitives lesson (available late Saturday afternoon);
  • make sure study guide is up to date.

First and seventh periods began a slow overview of the eight parts of speech, beginning with nouns today. We’ve neglected grammar this year, and now we’re going to remedy that. We’re continuing with the literature circles tomorrow.

Second period went over act three from Much Ado About Nothing. We’ll finish the play by the end of next week.

Fourth period finished Romeo and Juliet II.ii. We’ll slowly begin picking up the pace: we’ve become more comfortable with the text, and I’ve decided we’ll do some of it through home readings.

(New pictures of second and fourth periods at the gallery.)

Homework

• First and seventh periods: continue reading your book (you’ll need to have all the work completed next Wednesday).
• Second period: complete the study guide for act three.
• Fourth period: answer the essay question on the R&J discussion forum.

First and seventh periods continued with the Bluford literature circles. Because of less-than-stellar performance Friday, seventh period continued the project by working alone.

Second period is almost done with the second act of Much Ado About Nothing.

Fourth period began the secene from R&J: act 2, scene 2 — the balcony scene. We’ll finish up Wednesday by watching a version of the balcony scene after we’ve blocked out and performed our own version.

Homework

• First and seventh periods: we need to be done with the first six chapters of the Bluford books by the end of tomorrow’s lesson: read as necessary.
• Second period: revise study guide questions for act two.
• Fourth period:
  • finish reading II.ii at home;
  • complete act I review activity (if not completed already) for reduced credit.

Advancing yesterday’s improvement: first and seventh period were to complete the first unit for their literature circles. While most students in first period completed the work, many in seventh period chose to spend their class time engaging in less productive activities. Therefore, the majority of seventh period will take a break from the literature circle format and return to full class activities.

Second and fourth periods are continuing with the Bard: Second period completed its first reading of Much Ado About Nothing’s second act. Fourth period completed the prologue to act two.

Homework

• First and seventh periods: depends on group decisions.
• Second period: complete study guide for act two.
• Fourth period:
  • read II.ii;
  • go through the first act summary activity (treat it as a quiz: closed book, closed cell phone, closed everything — open mind).

First and seventh periods are still working on literature circles. We’re about to finish the first group of chapters and activities. We’ll be focusing on determining a text’s main idea as we work.

Second period continued with Much Ado About Nothing. We began the second act today, though we didn’t quite finish it. We also went through a quick, unplanned review of perspectiving, using Billy Collins’ “Forgetfulness.”

Fourth period began act two from Romeo and Juliet.

Homework

• First and seventh periods: depends on the groups’ decisions.
• Second period: none.
• Fourth period: practice the prologue for act two.

Two of the four classes are now working on Shakespeare: second period (Much Ado About Nothing) and fourth period (Romeo and Juliet).

Second period finished up act I.

I also added a new assignment to second period’s plate: journals. The requirements:

1. Write daily.
2. Write about “Why” questions: Don’t simply write, “I went to school and had a math test. I don’t think I did well on it.” Explain why you think that.

I will check five of the entries and expect four of them to have the deeper “why” element.

Fourth period spent much of the period going over PSAT results with guideance. We finished up questions for I.v and will give the scene one last reading tomorrow before starting the second act.

Homework

• First and seventh periods: literature circle decision.
• Second period:
  • finish Act I questions;
  • begin journal (suggested topic: questions and thoughts about Much Ado About Nothing).
• Fourth period: re-read parts.

In fourth period, we worked on the famous Queen Mab passage:

ROMEO

I dream’d a dream to-night.

MERCUTIO

And so did I.

ROMEO

Well, what was yours?

MERCUTIO

That dreamers often lie.

ROMEO

In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.

MERCUTIO

O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep;
Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders’ legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider’s web,
The collars of the moonshine’s watery beams,
Her whip of cricket’s bone, the lash of film,
Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not so big as a round little worm
Prick’d from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love;
O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on court’sies straight,
O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees,
O’er ladies ‘ lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:
Sometime she gallops o’er a courtier’s nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig’s tail
Tickling a parson’s nose as a’ lies asleep,
Then dreams, he of another benefice:
Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes:
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage:
This is she–

ROMEO

Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace!
Thou talk’st of nothing.

MERCUTIO

True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air
And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being anger’d, puffs away from thence,
Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.

It’s all about dreams, and that’s where our discussion led us.

First, second, and seventh periods finished their quarterly starters and participation evaluation.

Homework

• All periods: study for exam.
• Fourth period: complete the annotated drawing of Queen Mab’s coach.

First and seventh periods selected their books for the literature circle. We’ll be working on books from the Bluford Series:

• Blood is Thicker
  
• Brothers in Arms
• The Fallen
  
• Shattered
• Someone to Love Me
• Until We Meet Again

Tomorrow, the groups will be deciding how to pace their reading and the activities (discussion and writing) they’ll be doing.

Second period began a short unit on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing by looking at Shakespeare’s life in Elizabethan England.

Fourth period completed I.ii and began I.ii from Romeo and Juliet. We examined how different characters view love and marriage.

Homework

• First and seventh periods: none.
• Second period: complete viewing guide.
• Fourth period: finish reading I.iii from Romeo and Juliet.

First and seventh periods began working on their literature circles. We looked at the invididual roles they’ll be playing and brainstormed what a good discussion looks like.

Second period completed their peer evaluations of their persuasive essays. We’ll begin Much Ado About Nothing tomorrow.

Fourth period completed the first scene of Romeo and Juliet.

Homework

• First and seventh periods: choose three of the roles from the literature circle role sheet and write one way it might be challenging for you to perform that role.
• Second period: none.
• Fourth period: complete study guide for I.i.

Fourth period began Romeo and Juliet, looking at the prologue in detail.

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life;
Whole misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents’ strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love,
And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

The students read it aloud, in a variety of ways, probably close to ten times, with the obvious effect: the language doesn’t feel so foreign in their mouth. After a little group work, we also had the meaning worked out fairly clearly.

First, second, and seventh periods worked on their persuasive essays. Second period will be turning their essays in tomorrow, and they will be evaluating their essays according to the rubric.

Homework

• First period: complete persuasive essay.
• Second period: complete persuasive essay and have it in electronic form for turn-in and evaluation tomorrow (Friday 8 January 2010).
• Fourth period: answer question 1 from the “Romeo and Juliet Discussion Forum.”
• Seventh period: complete persuasive essay.