Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Nectar in a Sieve Reading Schedule

Reading Schedule

The date indicates the night you should read the assigned pages as homework:

Jan. 27: pp. 3-17
Jan. 28: pp. 18-30
Jan. 29: pp. 31-45
Jan. 30: pp. 46-57
Feb. 2: no assignment tonight
Feb. 3: pp. 58-77
Feb. 4: pp. 78-91
Feb. 5: pp. 92-102
Feb. 6: pp 103-123
Feb. 9: pp. 124-149
Feb. 10: pp. 150-164
Feb. 11: pp. 165-176
Feb. 12: pp. 177-186

Nectar in a Sieve Anticipation Guide

Create a new notebook page entitled, “Nectar Anticipation Guide.” Think about each statement; indicate whether you agree or disagree and explain why.

1. People who live in poverty cannot be truly happy.
2. The natural world (weather) affects the overall quality of my life.
3. The presence of a powerful nation will improve the quality of life of a weaker nation.
4. It is more difficult to be a woman than it is to be a man.
5. It is human nature to overcome suffering, regardless of how much suffering a person must endure.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Final Exams

Your English 10 final exam is Wednesday, Jan. 21. From 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. you will be in the classroom completing a matching test on vocabulary in Midsummer Night's Dream and a matching/multiple choice comprehensive final exam for the entire semester.

Make sure that your notebooks are in order and that you review them before the final exam. Also, bring your notebook to class since you will be allowed to visit with your notebook for a few minutes during the comprehensive final exam. But not the vocabulary Midsummer portion.

At 11:30 a.m. the class will move to the library computer lab to type a paragraph on love in Midsummer. You will be allowed to use your notebook for that essay exam so be sure to collect appropriate quotations.

Midsummer Themes

Explore these quotations from the introduction to A Midsummer Night's Dream:

Midsummer is "a play about love . . . love is a dream, or perhaps a vision; that is absurd, irrational, a delusion . . . that is doomed to be momentary" (182).

The play explores "the power of infatuation to transform the image of the beloved in the lover's eye" (xiv).

On a page in your notebook, create a tree map to collect direct quotations and details from the play that illustrate the love topics of patience, infatuation, and game playing (manipulation). The tree map will come in handy on finals day for the essay portion of the finals.

Act 4 Midsummer Vocab

conjunction = combined; joined
"We will, fair queen, up to the mountain's top / And mark the musical confusion / Of hounds and echo in conjunction" (4.1.115).


enmity = hostility; hate
"I know you two are rival enemies / How comes this gentle concord in the world, / That hatred is so far from jealousy / To sleep by hate and fear no enmity?" (4.1.151).


expound = explain; develop
"Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream" (4.1.217).

Friday, January 9, 2009

Act 3 Midsummer Vocab

Complete synonym triplets as homework for the words below for Act 3. Remember that the synonym triplet strategy requires that you only write down two synonyms for each assigned word and draw a visual representation of the word.

casement (3.1.55)

knavery (3.1.114)

enamored (3.1.140)

carcass (3.2.66)

scorn (3.2.125)

derision (3.2.125)

confederacy (3.2.197)

contrived (3.2.201)

earnest (3.2.290)

vixen (3.2.341)

recreant (3.2.435)

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Midsummer Act 2 Vocab

forsworn
Titania: (about Oberon) "I have forsworn his bed and company" (2.1.64).

progeny
dissension
Titania: "And this same progeny of evils comes / From our debate, from our dissension; / We are their parents and original" (2.1.118-120).

promontory
Oberon: "Since once I sat upon a promontory / And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back" (2.1.154-155).

entice
Demitrius: (to Helena) "Do I entice you?" (2.1.206).

Monday, January 5, 2009

Debates This Week

This Thursday, January 8 and Friday, January 9 our class will conduct the three debates that students have been researching.

Cheating, fossil fuel reduction, and drug testing in sports are the three topics that we will debate. I will pick a resolution from a hat, and those teams will begin debating.

Students who are not involved in a debate will be completing one of the judging forms.

Midsummer Act 1 Vocabulary

nuptial (wedding; marriage)
Theseus: "Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour / Draws on apace" (1.1.1-2).

abjure (renounce; give up)
Theseus: "Either to die the death, or to abjure / Forever the society of men" (1.1.67-68).

austerity (self-denial; simple living)
Theseus: "Or on Diana's altar to protest / For aye austerity and single life" (1.1.91-92).

visage (face; appearance)
Lysander: "Her silver visage in the wat'ry glass, / Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass" (1.1.215).

lamentable (mournful; full of grief)
Quince: "Marry, our play is The most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe" (1.2.11-12)

Note: The story of Pyramus and Thisbe is similar to Romeo and Juliet.