Technically our new grading period started on Thursday, but we were wrapping up the first six weeks Thursday and Friday was a fun day. There was no way I was going to start anything new on a Friday. We discussed issues in the election and watched chunks of last week’s debate.
Today we started our new unit: Drama. Response: “Doesn’t high school have enough drama without studying it in English class?” Apparently they weren’t nearly as excited about the prospect of wearing togas while reading Julius Caesar as I was. To kick off, I made (what I think is) an awesome prezi on Shakespeare and Julius Caesar.
Introduction to Shakespeare on Prezi
We learned “Fun Facts” such as Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway, was 3 months pregnant when she got married – as were 1 out of every 3 English brides at that time. We learned how original Latin had no “J”s so Caesar’s first name was spelled “Iulius”. We learned that it’s always pronounced the River Thames – never the Thames River, and never pronounced “THAYmz”. I told them it was my job to at least make them sound intelligent, and to pronounce it like that would undo all my good work.
Tomorrow, we split: half my periods start reading the play, the other half write a research paper on Ancient Rome. Grading period round two: Go!
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