Friday, February 26, 2010

ROAR IV- History Book

Time for some historical ROAR! Make a selection by Monday, March 8

No biographies, think about reading a history of a topic that interests you.
-math (the history of zero)
-chem (the discovery of an element)
-history (the Doner Party)
-ELA (history of curse words)

Here are some choice selections from past years:

The Ultimate History of Video Games By Steven L. Kent
This book is perfect for anyone who has ever touched a joystick or a D-pad. The premise of this book is how each big company or person that has made gaming history, from Nolan Bushnell (founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese), to Shigeru Miyamoto (the man behind Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Yoshi, and Star Fox).

The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars By Joel Glenn Brenner
This book was about the war of chocolate. It started off telling about these two men who wanted to pursue a career in creating the best chocolates. The two men were Forrest Mars, and Milton Hershey.

Blue: The History of a Color By Michel Pastoureau
Certain colors were forbidden outside certain social groups. The moral issue was not the actual color, but the product used to create it. This became part of how people distinguished social outcasts. "The crippled, the deformed, lepers, the 'weak bodied,' and those who were 'cretins and funny in the head' were often to wear bright colors" (Pastoureau 91).

Chewing Gum By Michael Redclift
Michael Redclift shows a history of how gum was created. Thomas Adams introduced chicle to the Americans but Wrigley offered baking powder to customers who would buy two packs of gum. He convinced millions of Americans to buy his gum.

Babe Ruth and the 1918 Red Sox By Allan Wood
As the 1918 season ended it was a significant moment for the Red Sox. Unfortunately, it was the last moment worth mentioning for the next 86 years. That year was full of controversy due to the player strike, threat of government shutting down the season, and the lack of players on rosters.

A History of the World in Six Glasses By Tom Standage
Beer, spirits, wine, cola, coffee, and tea are six beverages that were each the most influential drinks at particular eras in history. These six beverages form a chain of drinks that were important to many people because they were used for important events.

Ice Cream: The Delicious History By Marilyn Powell
The book takes you back to when ice cream first came to be, and what an interesting history it is. Marilyn Powell did a great in writing this book. She sure knew how to draw her readers in by intriguing stories, myths, and facts about ice cream.

Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light By Mort Rosenblum
Chocolate, referred to as "the gods' breakfast" is "just about everyone's drug of choice." In the book Chocolate, Mort Rosenblum describes the history and the processes that make chocolate. Based on history, it is said that one hundred beans of cacao was worth one slave.

Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation By Jeff Chang
The book Can't Stop Won’t Stop was about the hip-hop generation and how it started. Hip Hop was a very popular type of music in the 1979 when it started. It appealed to people because it was a type of music like no other. Hip Hop originated from the Bronx, New York when DJs began isolating the percussion break from funk and disco songs.

The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager By Thomas Hine
In the book the idea of “teenager” was discussed. Amazingly, this word did not always exist. According to Thomas Hine and many other people, teens were invented. "The word was coined during the early 1940's by some anonymous writer or editor to describe an age group that had suddenly become a great interest to marketers and social reformers."

Heroin By Humberto Fernandez
Heroin, the notorious drug known for its addiction and devastation, dates back over 7,000 years ago as the Sumerians made the discovery of opium. One of the main cereal crops that the Sumerians grew was the poppy flower, in which they referred to as "hul gil", or "the plant of joy."

The Devil in the White City By Erik Larson
The two men were very alike in physical features, but had different careers. One is an architect, while the other is a killer. Burnham, the architect, was well known for many of his like the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington. H. H. Holmes was at first a doctor who then built a hotel called "World's Fair Hotel” where the guests were brutally murdered.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Homework 2/24

1) vocab quiz #10

2) proof of legitimate ROAR film

3) research paper page #3 for Friday

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Homework 2/23

1) print page 3 of your Research Paper

2) Vocab Quiz #10 on Thursday

3) ROAR Film proof (no youtube) for Thursday

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Vacation Work

1) watch your ROAR movie, and write the 5th post

-sections/characters minimized in the film
- sections/characters emphasized in the film
- narration- how does the camera show omniscient or limited 3rd person (or POV 1st)
- reoccurring images (motifs)
- use of music/sound effects
- description of one shot using strong film terms

2) get a Culture Vulture activity approved

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Homework 2/11

1) mini vocab quiz tomorrow- lesson 9

2) ROAR post #4 (end of the book)

3) 2nd page of research paper, printed

4) PPP#2, so far only 25% have received credit

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Homework

1:reviewforworkscitedtest

2:ROARpostsdueThursdayNight

3:VocabQuiz#9

4:keepResearching/Writing

sorry,myspacebarisnotworkingrightnow...

Monday, February 8, 2010

Library Day #1

Library Instructions
1: show your 1st page and revision Homework to Mr. Doreian
2: follow the links below to learn/review basic online searching
3: e-mail articles, or save on flash drive

Where can I find Online information?
http://www.noodletools.com/debbie/literacies/information/5locate/adviceengine.html


Using "and" "or" "not" when searching
http://kathyschrock.net/rbs3k/boolean/


BPL General Electronic Database (click "Choose All")
http://bpl.org/electronic/general.asp

Search w/out Library Card
http://search.ebscohost.com
user: ns156285
pass: password

Homework 2/8

1) finish the Essay Edit we started in class (1st word, length of sentences)

2) how's that PPP#2? Many of you still need to fix your papers. Check the apple...

3) look ahead to Vocab Quiz #9, and ROAR posts

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Great Culture Vulture (free)

Barber of Seville Poster

Get to Know The Barber of Seville

Wednesday, Feb. 10, 4:30 p.m.
Uphams Corner Branch Library

The Boston Lyric Opera offers preview of their upcoming show, The Barber of Seville, for music fans of all ages.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Homework 2/5

1) one page of your research paper due Monday. It should be typed

2) only a few have successfully completed the PPP#2. Check Turnitin.com and make it perfect

3) anyone who has an incomplete for Julius Caesar Annotations should put a works cited on their page, and e-mail me the works cited to receive credit

4) ROAR away!

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Homework 2/4

1) revise your PPP, the corrections are in RED on Turnitin.com (click on the apple). Upload your really PPP to Turnitin.com in the same location, and the new file will overwrite the old one

2) ROAR reading!

3) Works Cited Round-Up #2

here's the list:
-Novel with one author

-Poem from a collection/anthology that includes many different authors

-Short Story from a collection/anthology that includes many different authors

-Biography with one author

-Memoir/autobiography with one author

-History book with one author

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Homework 2/3

1) PPP#2- format the essay (separate post below) and upload to Turnitin.com
Times New Roman, 12 point, double-spaced, left justified font
One inch top, bottom, and side margins
MLA Works Cited page and intext citations (Lee 23).
Book Titles underlines or italiazed, article titles in quotations
Cover page (title horizontally and vertically centered; name class, date at the bottom center) and page # in upper right corner



2) Vocabulary Quiz #8

3) plan to spend 2 hours at the library this weekend picking up books for research topic

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Homework 2/2

Happy Groundhog Day!

1) many of you did not finish the Works Cited Round-Up; get it done

2) finish the Research Outline; this is your chance to get extra help with your topics

3) Vocab Quiz #8 on Thursday

4) PPP#2- Upload to Turnitin.com on Wednesday night

PPP#2

Below is the text of the paper you need to properly format.

1) copy and paste SPECIAL (just text) into Word
2) set up a cover page using your name, date, class, and the title
3) center title on 1st line of paper
4) insert page number with your last name
5) format the essay (double space, Times New Roman 12pt, indent new paragraphs)
6) format the works cited page

NOTE: the essay should fit on two pages, not including cover and works cited pages
---------------------------------------------------------------------------


Evaluating the Medieval in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Composed by an unknown monk in the north of England circa 1375, the romance of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight exhibits attributes common to medieval literature. The Gawain poet created his verse with attention to alliterative patterns, and employed stanzas of unfixed length that are connected through the bob and wheel device. Thematically, the poet places Gawain in situations that test his devotion to the medieval ideals of courtly love and chivalry. Thus, in form and theme this Arthurian romance contains poetic elements that mark it as a medieval text.
The text of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is preserved in a religious manuscript that also contains three poems: “Pearl,” “Patience,” and “Purity” (Borroff 20). Yet, Gawain opens with a passage more accustomed to the nationalist ethos of epic poetry. The poet offers an account of Britain’s founding, connecting the heroes at Troy with the “Bold boys bred there, in broils delighting,” who inhabit England (line 21). As in Beowulf, alliteration punctuates the poetic line. Where the device once served as a rhythmic and mnemonic tool, the sound repetition in Gawain belongs to a revival of alliterative verse in the medieval period. The medieval audience would have recognized and enjoyed this poetic element as it suggested a popular Anglo-Saxon form of storytelling. Thus, the poet’s insists for the reader to “…listen to my lay but a little while,/ As I heard it in hall, I shall hasten to tell/ anew” (line 30-32). By alluding to typical elements of Old English oral verse, the Gawain poet attracts the interest of his medieval readers.
However, the form of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight breaks from the Anglo-Saxon pattern in its stanza construction. Visually, the poem lacks caesura line breaks that divided the line after two stressed syllables. In its place, the Gawain poet employs a bob and wheel at the end of each stanza. The bob is a two-syllable line that sets a rhyme scheme in the four-line wheel. Most often, the bob and wheel offers a conclusion to a stanza, as shown in lines 485-490:
"Such happiness wholly had they that day/in hold./Now take care, Sir Gawain/That your courage wax not cold/When you must turn again/To your enterprise foretold." Here the bob presents “hold” as the initial sound to be rhymed in the wheel; the poet forms the wheel around this sound in an ABABA arrangement. Before expanding the narrative by offering further description or changing scenes, the Gawain poet uses the bob and wheel to alter the physical line length.
In plotting, the poem exemplifies the paradoxical romantic virtues of courtly love. Sir Gawain is tested to deny his faith and break his word by the temptations at Lord Bertilak de Hautdesert’s home. The host and Gawain agree to swap their daily earnings: the lord from hunting in the woods, Sir Gawain from interactions with the lord’s beautiful wife. As a guest, Gawain must obey the wishes of his host and hostess- a situation made difficult by the lady’s bold suggestions. Resembling the game animals Bertilak hunts, Gawain nervously evades the lady’s requests. To preserve the marriage vows, their love is never consummated; still, Gawain obeys the lady’s demands and his own desires by sharing furtive kisses. The responsibility required by chivalry and courtly love make Gawain’s temptation a foremost example of romance literature.
The Gawain poet makes skillful use of the romance conventions, writing the poem with attention to medieval aesthetics. Modern readers might not share Bertilak’s claim that Gawain is “polished as a pearl,” or worthy to wear the pentangle star after his blatant deception and failure to trust Mary against the Green Knight (line 2393). Still, the romance offers a fitting example of medieval literature in its poetic construction and thematic development.

Works Cited

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Trans. Mary Borroff. The Norton Anthology of English
Literature. Ed. M.H. Abrams. 7th edition. Volume 1. New York: Norton, 2000.

Culture Vulture Films!

Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is hosing an Oscar themed film festival during the month of February. Now there is no excuse for not knowing where to find a quality Culture Vulture film!

Check the site: http://www.tcm.com/2010/31Days/index.jsp

Doreian's Picks:
The Great Escape, February 6 at 5pm

Steve McQueen leads an all star cast that includes James Garner, Charles Bronson and Donald Pleasance, who are all aiming at a common goal of escaping from a German POW camp. It's incredible to see how this film showcased all the work that had to be done to accomplish this, as well as following several of the escapees' adventures outside the camp in their quests to find ultimate freedom from the Nazis.

6:00 PM The Pink Panther (’64) (David Niven, Claudia Cardinale)
Casablanca, February 14 at 8pm

Those who are really into romantic movies should watch this classic at least once in their lifetime and learn that love doesn't always mean fulfilling your own selfish desires. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman are the memorable lovers whose lives are affected by World War II and having to outwit the Nazis as well as the fact that Bergman is married to another man. What an appropriate Valentine's Day selection.