Blogs of the Week -- Freshmen

Alanna the Warrior Poet has very well-developed ideas, and she put together a nice collection of images from Persepolis that match up very well with the words and emotions of "Kids in America," by Kim Wilde -- one of the songs Marji remembers from her life.

Tulsi Raja documented Marji's changing relationship with God in a thoughtful and well-organized post. This image captures the evidence well, and her writing explains the different changes she goes through. Check out her blog at this link!

Vera's Blog shows us how organized thinking can lead to very good insights. Vera organized her post into different dilemmas faced by Marji as she was growing up during this tumultuous time. By concentrating on the dilemmas, she put together a very empathetic, thoughtful post. Have a look at it here.

Blogs of the Week -- End of Year Poetry Posts

Christian Bekalu shows us how to make a great looking explanatory video using notes, markers, and some background music for emphasis. This is a great technique!

For the second week in a row, Ella Bishop brings some beautiful illustrations to the classroom. In her blog you will find a collection of poems that discuss hope -- a great theme as you begin your summer vacation and start to plan for the upcoming year. This image contains illustrations of three poems, all using birds to illustrate the ideas. Check out her blog!

Gerry Mahoney found a fascinating collection of poems from Cuba, many of which tell the story of slavery on the island -- prior to the abolition of slavery in Spanish colonies. Have a look at the selections!

Blogs of the Week: Poem Posts

Congratulations to IYAD for being one of this week's blogs of the week! His post includes a thoughtful reading of Wilfred Owen's poem, Dulce et Decorum Est. 

Iyad makes some very good observations about one of the definitive poems of World War I. Congratulations, Iyad!

Miguel recorded a screencast of himself reading and explaining Ozymandias, by Shelley. The written work in the post, as well as the interpretation at the end of the video, show good insights and applications of the terms we've been learning. Nice job, Miguel!

Ella Bishop created a beautiful drawing to illustrate William Cullen Bryant's romantic poem, "To a Waterfowl." Her analysis is also accurate and contains some astute observations about the tone of the poem and the advice offered by this story. Here's a link to her post!

Blogs of the week: Midsummer

The posts from A Midsummer Night's dream showed creativity, energy, and above all, fun. There were "confession cam" videos from a variety of characters, photo essays, and other very convincing interpretations of the play.  Here above is a great example from Hannah Moller, who combines a silent scene with "confession cameras" from Bottom, Starveling, Flute, and others.

Zarah, a very bitter and foul-mouthed Peaseblossom

The screenshot at left comes from act three, where Bottom is being entertained by the Hippolyta and her fairies, some of whom are rather vocal "behind the scenes" about their new master. Here's a link to Zahra's blog, which contains the clips as well as some images and exemplary explanations.

The silent film worked well as a genre, too. Here's Aiden (Demetrius) performing alongside Miguel (Lysander) in Act three, as both of them vie for Helena (played by Keeshia. Check out the whole post here.










In a different version of the same scene, Lauren (playing Hermia) does ad-lib confession videos:

Thug Notes -- A Midsummer Night's Dream, Explained Gangsta Style.

Some examples of analysis. By Parsons, for the students.

I am making a series of screencasts to model the kind of thinking -- and annotation -- that students should be able to do by the end of this unit. This link goes to one of the videos. For the whole playlist, you can follow this link.

Blogs of the Week -- Midsummer

A very funny fake Twitter Feed...

A very creative post -- with a lot of attention to detail comes from Ella Kauffman; she uses a "Helena" Twitter feed to tell the story of the play through a single character's eyes.

If you're on Twitter, give "Helena" a follow!

Miguel Verani has a very well-developed blog that shows knowledge and understanding of the text. His explanations of what's going are thoughtful. Have a look if you want to step up your "knowledge and understanding" levels.