Hi there, and welcome to an exciting semester of English 9. This blog is where you will find different prompts, assignments, tasks, and communication from me to you, freshmen of GHS, and your parents. This blog will be used during class for different large group activities as well as some independent online writing. If you are looking for where to find the daily work we do, please go to the daily slides that can be found linked in Google Classroom as well as below.

LINK TO SLIDES

I’m really looking forward to this semester! I think we’re going to have a fun time getting to know each other, reading, writing, and discussing.

****Online Syllabus Signature Form****

Hi there, and welcome to an exciting semester of English 9. This blog is where you will find different prompts, assignments, tasks, and communication from me to you, freshmen of GHS and your parents. The Google Slide document that is shared with you through Google Classroom is what you will use to keep up with our daily work.

LINK TO SLIDES

I’m really looking forward to this semester! I think we’re going to have a fun time getting to know each other, reading, writing, and discussing.

If you need to digitally sign the syllabus, here is the link to the form.

Our beginning overall/guiding questions are “Who is Shakespeare?” and “Why do we keep reading his stuff?”.  To start our investigation into Shakespeare and Romeo and Juliet, you are going to view some videos and read some information to help you answer the questions on the document in the “Shakespeare Intro Videos” assignment in Classroom.  You want more than just one answer per question; you need to find information in multiple sources to answer the questions.  Everything you read or hear that could possibly fit into an answer, put it there.

I have put the YouTube playlist in the Google Classroom assignment, but here are the links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhZeaSH_IaA: Folger video: stop at 3:10ish:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4kz-C7GryY  start at 7:55, stop at 12:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_0hdTa92HM&list=PL0E6A588915AE953A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMkuUADWW2A:

Actively Learn Video

The last video on the sheet that you should use to answer #4

This isn’t a video, but it is one of the links on the sheet: https://absoluteshakespeare.com/william_shakespeare.htm 

◦Extra Credit Option: Post a blog post on your blog with a link to a video, set of pictures, or article you think helps give a better understanding of Shakespeare or his influence or any of the other questions.  Along with the link, post what you think can be learned from what you found.

I have been reading the book Chosen Ones lately. I am finding it pretty interesting as a shift on the typical dystopian young adult fiction. The book is written from the point of view of Sloane who is one of the four ‘chosen ones’ (cue the title) who defeated the Dark One in the past. Most YA fiction like this would actually be telling the story of this defeat, but this one is interesting in that it is set after it happens and shows the after effects of such trauma.

This exploration of trauma is something I’ve always been intrigued by with books. In books like Hunger Games and Divergent and others like that, it always seems to wrap up the main character’s life without really covering what they would be thinking, how they might be damaged by what happened to them, and what not. Well, I guess the last Hunger Games book explored the PTSD a bit, but not really.

What I like about Chosen Ones is that it’s really digging in to that PTSD. One of the characters actually fell into a drug addiction after his part in the defeat and ended up overdosing and (SPOILER) dying because of the stress of carrying it all.

I’m really interested as to where the author is going to go with the story now. It seems like she’s starting to reveal more about the truth of what happened to her and Albie when the Dark One kept them imprisoned. I’m thinking that Sloane is going to go more off the grid and attack more of the magical instruments that are continuing to impact them.