Combined Wednesday/Friday Post

Wednesday's Class--Focused on personalizing Hamlet.  By asking a series of "what if . . ." questions, I tried to get students to see the events that Hamlet experienced in a short span of time as a source of a wide range of intense emotions, inevitably leading to extreme personal stress. The play features one of the most dysfunctional families in all of literature.  We also looked briefly at family groupings:  Hamlet, Gertrude, Claudius, and "Old" Hamlet [dead]; Polonius, Laertes, Ophelia; Fortinbras, (Old) Norway, "Old" Fortinbras [dead].  Read the play for the family dynamics and for Hamlet's response(s) to his increasingly desperate situation.  By the middle of next week.  (E-texts/old book OK for now; best one to buy is the Folger paperback edition for $4.99.)

TODAY IN CLASS
Yes, our AP English topic of the day was "Do cats or dogs make better house pets?"  In all seriousness, students listed advantages and disadvantages of each animal, decided in groups the three "best traits" of each pet, and wrote a simple main thesis that conceded at least one point to the opposite choice:  "Although cats are low maintenance, dogs make more rewarding pets because they are loyal and can be trained in a variety of ways."  WHY did we do this?  Because you are about to write the first of several comparison/contrast papers you will produce this year.  (It's a format often utilized on the AP testing as well as extremely common in university work spanning many disciplines.)

So then we got started on the very constrained paper topic.  Read the material linked below, but be sure and pay attention to the last line.  Don't show up on Monday with a completed paper (insert smiley face here); wait for further instruction.

What I DO expect by Monday:  Decide which characters you will compare and contrast, and take notes on the evidence that you will use to support each body thesis point.

Here is the link for what we discussed in class today; you will receive the completed details as a hand-out on Monday.  But proceed with characters and essential evidence now.
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0BxigzimXmDnvZjkyOTI0MmMtZTIxMi00NGI2LWFiODItYmM2ZTZhMDUwYjBk&hl=en&authkey=CIOe4OAO