Monday, Jan 25 2016

Exam Building

1. CONFERENCING WITH PEERS - common area for exam questions to be collected
2. Design questions first! Come up with questions from your notes and double check those questions for commonality - i.e. do your peers also have those notes? 
3. Break questions into chunks - i.e. those headings for the different types of exam questions
4. Answer questions in short form with peers - partners.
5. Write down questions and answers and submit to Mr. The Lobb to save yourselves!

The above is for marks!

Poetry Analysis

1. Title
2. Poet - context
3. Time - context
4. overall feeling - your response
5. pick out power words - identify the meaning, value, etc
6. 5 Ws
7. Possible meanings/themes - JUSTIFY - REFS, PROOFS, REASONING

In essays and answers, how do we show logic and reasoning. 

Macbeth is being manipulated by his wife, so he’s not completely responsible. 

Well, he did a bunch of bad stuff

He loves his wife and she knows it and we know it because of that letter he sent her. 

That letter says that she is his “partner in greatness” and it reveals the way he thinks about her. He thinks of her as a partner and that, when something great comes to him, she will share in it and, as a partner, that suggests equality. This is not something we might expect from the time period. In reading (Women in Culture, pg 34) the role of a woman in Medieval society…. and yet, Macbeth follows a completely different path. 

Once she receives his letter, Lady Macbeth realizes that there is an opportunity here for them both. She loves him also, but fears that he “is too full of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way”. In her estimation, Macbeth is too kind, too gentle and more so, is perhaps too womanly in his nature. He is “full of the milk,” like a nursing mother would be, which is a strange way to think about her husband. She appears to be the more masculine in her approach and thinking, and in fact, asks for demons to come down and “unsex her”, making her more manly so that she is without guilt and fear and etc..

But it really wasn’t because he was evil and wanted to do it. 

Friday, Jan 15, 2016

Nature vs Nurture

What really makes a monster?  Nurture appears to be a HUGE factor but there is a balance here that can go very right or very wrong. 

Some could say that the Monster was poorly created in the first place (nature), but in the novel it seems much more so that his “upbringing” was mostly to be blamed for his dark, violent behaviour.

The whole “challenging God” thing would seem to suggest that the Monster was a monster from the inception - from the moment Victor created him as an abomination - the Monster is a living blasphemy

The information we get in Chapter 10 seems to show us a Monster who is just a baby, not a monster at all, but a big piece of possibility

Appearance is Reality

The brutal reality of being judged by your outer self. 

MLK - famous speech - I have a dream, an awesome dream… where we can be judged not by the colour of our skin, but by the content of our character…” (in so many words)

The Monster is an extreme and very dramatized version of this situation 

The Monster represents the person who does not fit because of their face, body, skin, etc…

The closest references are racial or medical or sexual, etc - the monster might have an insight into a more female sense of what this is like - to be OBJECTIFIED by one’s looks

For one’s value to be not in their person but in their appearance

Part of this is that whole reduction of a person to a part or some parts - i.e. a guy with nice abs becomes just a set of nice abs - he doesn’t need a personality or skill or integrity, etc… (this happens to almost all women every day every where all the time)

The defining aspect of his entirety is his appearance, which is not standard, not “attractive”

The frustration of being a woman in THAT time period (early 1800s) must have been amazing, considering how frustrated women are even now…

Frankenstein Final

Franklinstein

Focus on elements that would “teach” someone the key ideas of the chapter, of the book, of the “chunk” in question.

Characters

Plot

Setting 

Theme

Changes and progression *character*

Associated ideas outside the story (what does the subject of the chunk remind of from our world?)

What ideas are in your head in response to whatever happened in that chunk? 

Symbols and archetypes

similarities and diffs from Macbeth

Look for some imagery or music or some other medium that can “show” some aspect of your chunk

Put this material together into some kind of presentation and submit

Re context ualisation

Planning and Writing Your Own Exam!

Short Answer Questions - 15 marks (5 X 3 marks each)

2-4 marks each

define and give an example of (briefly) 

making reference to something studied that requires only that definition to be explained

hubris maybe (but then you’ll say, wait, hubris can ALSO be applied to the novel and the play!) YES! Hubris could also be utilized in a longer answer, but it can be used for a short by only asking for the def.

Paragraph Answer Questions - 15 - 20 marks (5 marks each X 3 or 4 questions)

5-7 marks each

define, give an example and explain with some context (the info AROUND the specific answer that helps show the meaning more completely)

you have to bring a little more of TEXT TO SELF or WORLD (text to novel)

this is frequently the worst part of an exam - i.e. students don’t write enough or they repeat themselves - HOW BEAT THIS? - plan your answer

Site Passage Response - 25 - 30 marks, with questions all over the map

You will read something live in the exam, it will require thought and then you will respond to questions and show you have the ability to think deeply in the moment. 

Commonly, there are questions about symbols and symbolism, imagery, themes, deeper meanings, characterization, perspective changes and then often a text to world element

Most often, this is where Lobb steps in and constructs the questions, old fashionedly (this is not a word)

THIS IS WHERE GROUP WORK IS KEY

Creativity Piece - this is usually baked into the site passage - HEY! Do your own response to this piece! (10 marks straight up)

Creative work with good word choice and maintaining thematic and stylistic similarity with the source - i.e. it feels like the source poem or story

In-Class Essay - 30 marks (or so) and uh oh…

Comparison between Frankenstein and Macbeth.

Hey, what is the thing to compare? Hey, these guys both challenged God and She hates that!

Who is a monster? What makes a monster? Compare those two sources in this way. 

Two tragic heroes, two rise and fall stories, two terrible endings that bring everything back to Normal.