Remember, today is your last day to hand in your Hamlet essay/report without penalty. If it’s late you will lose 10% for the first day and 5% for each subsequent day to a maximum of 5 days.

On Monday, you will get your exam sight passage in class. You will have the opportunity to read it and make notes on it. You will return the sight passage to me and get it back on the exam day.

Remember I’m also looking for your portfolio recording in Google classroom.

Then I’m going to have you turn your focus to your blog posts. I want you to review your blog posts (knowing that you have one final blog post on Friday).

1. First, go to this blog post and remind yourself what the qualities of an effective blog post and comment are.
2. Then identify your strongest post, your weakest post, and your favourite post. Have a list of reasons why and make sure you are referring to the qualities of an effective blog post.
3. Choose your weakest blog post and use it to showcase what you have learned about writing to “bump it up” and make it an example of your best writing by ensuring your writing has
   1. unity and coherence
   2. correct punctuation and citation of quotations
   3. a summary and paraphrase
   4. correct use of commas, dash, semicolon, and apostrophes
   5. effective paragraph development: state, illustrate, explain.
4. Publish a second version of your weakest blog post.
5. Install the Chrome extension, Vidyard.
6. Make a screencast of you discussing your different blog posts:
   1. Introduce your strongest, weakest, and favourite blog post.
   2. Explain why they are your strongest, weakest, and favourite.
   3. Show me your revised blog post.
   4. Explain what you did to make your blog post better.
   5. The ultimate goal here is to have you demonstrate how you’ve grown as a writer this semester.
7. Submit your link to your screencast on Google Classroom.

Your Hamlet essays/reports are due today, but remember you can take until Friday to get them in (on Google classroom please) without penalty.

The following assignment is due at the end of the period. It will be posted on Google classroom and paper copies will also be available.

Analyzing Quotations

First, consider the definition of the word “analyze”: to examine methodically and in detail the constitution or structure of (something, especially information), typically for purposes of explanation and interpretation.

Using the example below as a model, choose one of the quotations provided to prepare an analysis of. You may use your phones/devices to look up the context of the quotation, and you may discuss ideas with each other but I want the analysis to be your own. You will have questions like this on the exam so this important to practice.

Exemplar

If you want to edit down the quotation to focus on a few key ideas as I did in the exemplar above, that’s fine but I wanted to give you a big enough chunk to work with. You could also break up the quotation to deal with some ideas separately.

Quotation #1

HAMLET

O, that this too too sullied flesh would melt,

Thaw and resolve itself into a dew,

Or that the Everlasting had not fixed

His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! O God, God,

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world!

(1.2.133-138)

Quotation #2

KING CLAUDIUS

Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death

The memory be green, and that it us befitted

To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom

To be contracted in one brow of woe,

Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature

That we with wisest sorrow think on him

Together with remembrance of ourselves.

(1.2.1-7)

Quotation #3

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off,

And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.

Do not for ever with thy vailèd lids

Seek for thy noble father in the dust.

Thou know’st ’tis common; all that lives must die,

Passing through nature to eternity.

(1.2.70-75)

Quotation #4

HAMLET

‘Seems,’ madam? Nay it is. I know not ‘seems.’

‘Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,

Nor customary suits of solemn black,

Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,

No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,

Nor the dejected havior of the visage,

Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,

That can denote me truly. These indeed ‘seem,’

For they are actions that a man might play:

But I have that within which passes show,

These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

(1.2.78-89)

_______________________________________________

Before submitting, make sure you’ve reviewed the following checklist:

• I have introduced the quotation with some context.
• I have integrated the quotation into my own writing.
• I have used correct punctuation in and around the quotation
• I have used line breaks if I am quoting fewer than four lines.
• I have used block quotation format if I am quoting more than four lines.
• I have considered alternative meanings of certain words.
• I have considered the connotation of certain words.
• I have considered images suggested by word choice.
• I have identified literary devices such as imagery, symbolism, metaphor, simile, repetition where relevant, and explained how they help create meaning.
• I have considered the larger context of this quotation and discussed any big ideas or themes revealed in this quotation.
• I have made connections to other ideas/ events/ characters in the text where relevant.
• I have attempted to think beyond the simple and literal interpretation of the quotation.

Here’s your blogging article for this week courtesy of Matt!

Let’s not kid ourselves…

We haven’t discussed an expected word count for this assignment but you should have about 1200-1500 words.

Please don’t ignore the assessment criteria posted in Google classroom and please apply the feedback you got on both your mini essay and your literature circle essay.

I am away at the heads’ retreat this afternoon and away for PD tomorrow so I know I may not see some of you until Thursday or Friday. The year is almost done, but it’s not done yet. Finish strong.

How well does your project identify and analyse the perspectives in Hamlet and the questions they raise about beliefs, values, identity, and power?

I have finalized the details of your Hamlet essays and posted the details in Google classroom. Remember, these are due June 11 but I will accept them as late as June 15 without deducting late marks.

You’ll see I’ve provided templates for you and that there is now the option to write a report instead of an essay. Read through the templates carefully because in addition to showing your what the essay/report should look like, I’ve woven in tips to help you be as successful as possible. While it is entirely up to you whether you write an essay or a report, there are pros and cons to both and I have made suggestions about which one you should do depending on your topic and pathway after high school. Read those details carefully.

I’ve made copies of both the essay template and report template for everyone through Google classroom. You can edit directly in the template I’ve given you.

Also remember to keep posting on yesterday’s padlets. Find points that you can refute and make sure you attach your name to your refutations so I can give you marks.

As you know, your next task will be to write an essay on Hamlet arguing either for or against its relevance to a 21st century high school student. But I want you to think outside the box in terms of your arguments. Avoid the obvious traps that people fall into when defending or tearing down Shakespeare.

We are going to start by brainstorming in 2 different groups. One team will brainstorm all the possible reasons why Hamlet would still be relevant for 21st century students. One team will do the opposite and then you will switch.

Then I’m going to have you record your own notes about what you think the most compelling arguments from both sides are.

Find points to refute. Post your refutation. Make sure you put your name on the post. Post it. Connect it to the point you’re refuting.

Next I’m going to model for you how you take support from a text and analyse it in the context of an essay.

Let’s imagine that I am writing an essay on Shakespeare’s use of imagery of disease and corruption:

In Act 1 Scene 2, Hamlet reflects on the state of Denmark following the death of his father and marriage of his mother to his Uncle Claudius. He says that Denmark is “…an unweeded garden / That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature / 
Possess it merely” (1.2.139-141). The metaphor of a garden is an interesting one to describe Denmark because a garden conjures up the allusion of the biblical Garden of Eden. This implies that at one point, for Hamlet, Denmark was a paradise–a paradise ruined by knowledge, but what knowledge cast Hamlet out of Eden? There are two possibilities: one, Hamlet’s understanding of his own mortality because of the death of his father; and two, Hamlet’s understanding of his mother as a sexual being. Both of these ideas are supported by Hamlet’s use of the word “rank” and the phrase “grows to seed.” Rank is a pun referring both to the idea of corruption and hierarchy, suggesting that Claudius’s new rank is a corruption of his father’s kingship, while the phrase “grows to seed” suggests a kind of unchecked sexuality that exists at the expense of the other people in the kingdom. 

Queer reading of Hamlet

Does this essay support or refute the argument that Hamlet is still relevant for 21st century high school students.