'Haiku' for the Exodus

We're off today after exams end at lunchtime - both school and posting here resume on Thursday 18th, straight after the St Patrick's Day Exodus. So here's a way to sign off that's both colourful and pithy - another poem from the Images in Poetry series, this time the shortest we've posted, a haiku from Jack Cherry inspired by a painting by Jackson Pollock.


Haiku, by Jack Cherry

Dancing in the paint
Lives a man with a rich sense
Of satisfaction.

Selected SCC English Tweets

The weekly selection. We're on an Exodus break from this afternoon until next Thursday morning, March 18th, so posting will resume then as we head into the last 9 days of term.

1. Irish Blog Awards: few education blogs, but have a look at lit blogs from @eoinpurcell, @jenblogsbooks, @davidmaybury
   
2. 2010 Irish Blog Awards 'short'list: http://bit.ly/9aaGdC.
   
3. Handling all that reading: "my evolution into schizophrenic multimedia literature butterfly " in the Guardian: http://bit.ly/at8ndN
4. Dominic Dromgoole of @The_Globe interviewed in Irish Times on new production of Friel's 'Philadelphia, Here I Come!' http://bit.ly/bu9QI0
5. Skippy Dies by Paul Murray: review - "this gigantic, marvellous, witty, heartbreaking novel". http://bit.ly/cTcfR8.
   
6. National Tree Week in Ireland- http://bit.ly/b7SQLs. Poem of the Week - 'Binsey Poplars' by Gerard Manley Hopkins- http://bit.ly/cDnT4h
7. Well worth reading from today's Guardian, by Phil Beadle: the benefits of Twitter for teachers: http://bit.ly/936b9w
   
8. 'Echo and Narcissus'- another poem in our Images in Poetry series:- http://bit.ly/aD9955. http://bit.ly/aD9955.
9. First of a series reviewing #iPhone #apps of use in school/English teaching and learning. Starting with the obvious: http://bit.ly/cqhH79

iPhone/iPod Touch Apps

We're going to start reviewing and recommending apps for use on the iPhone/iPodTouch platform (henceforth, just 'iPhone', for neatness), in tandem with our science friends over on the Frog Blog. Obviously, we may overlap at times, especially about general educational utilities: read their post today on 'My Homework' - "This excellent, easy to use, iPhone application is useful for everyone, pupils and teachers alike and at all levels, from primary to third level." (We may have to have a high-level secret summit meeting to discuss pooling recommendations in one place. Coffee later, lads?)

But mainly we'll be looking for apps of particular use in English learning and teaching.

First up, and of course of general educational use, is the distinctly obvious, but no less useful, Google Mobile App (free), which gives you easy access to many Google services. This school, like many others, now uses Google Apps on its own domain, and here's a simple way to get to your online Gmail, Reader, Tasks and so on. In school, perhaps the greatest use is Google Docs - access those essays, notes, revision material...

Download it (free) from iTunes here.

Irish Blog Awards 2010

We're delighted to be in the mix after the first round of judging in the 2010 Irish Blog Awards, which has produced a short (actually, medium) list; there's another round now to select the finalists. We're in the Best Group category.

There's lots of good reading in the overall list. There aren't many education blogs, but still, vaguely in our area, have a look at Eoin Purcell (publishing), David Maybury (writing and children's books), The Lady Loves Books (er, books).

National Tree Week poem

This is National Tree Week, and Mr Swift's IIIb CSPE set have planted a mountain ash as their Action Project; see a report on the College site here. So it's appropriate to have as our 61st Poem of the Week one of the great poems about trees, Gerard Manley Hopkins's 'Binsey Poplars'.

As in his poem 'God's Grandeur' (on the Leaving Cert course), Hopkins was well ahead of his time in his concern for our environment (for him, of course, a manifestation of God's presence). He wrote this poem after seeing that trees near Oxford had disappeared. In the words of the biographer Robert Bernard Martin, 'the destruction seemed an emblem of the loss that man inflicts on the planet.'

Poster (above) by Lily Guinness.


'Binsey Poplars', by Gerard Manley Hopkins
felled 1879

My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.

O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew—
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being so slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc unselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.

'Echo and Narcissus' - a poem

The latest poem in our Transition Year Images in Poetry series is by Max Kavanagh, and is based on the painting 'Echo and Narcissus' by John William Waterhouse (1903).



Echo and Narcissus, by Max Kavanagh

They stand and stare. At me, of course.
Gazing upon my gorgeous likeness.
I don’t care.
My thoughts are far away thinking of her; the lady
Far more beautiful than I could ever be: the lady of the pool.
Why do you ignore me, oh lady?
Why do you rebuke me, oh lady?
Oh lady, I’ll stay here beside thee.

Reduced to a shadow, licking the tips of reality,
This is all I am now, forced to sit and watch.
I hope, I pray: Oh Narcissus please see me.
Why do you ignore me, oh Narcissus?
Why do you rebuke me, oh Narcissus?
Oh Narcissus I’ll stay here beside thee.

Selected SCC English Tweets

A selection of our tweets from the last week:

1. Interesting article on future of books at http://bit.ly/aCgESr
2. Hamlet at the Helix Theatre: reviews - http://bit.ly/cnaEPN
3. Nice clean easy web-app - @teuxdeux - now a mobile app that would sync would be really good... http://bit.ly/9geM3n
4. 'Medusa' - new poem by TY pupil based on Caravaggio's painting: http://bit.ly/cfQMXS
5. Funny review by Julian Clary of Sharon Osbourne's first novel: http://bit.ly/c5fqpC
6. List of SCC English book recommendations: http://bit.ly/d0wWsD
7. Terrific example of combative commentary by @andrewrawnsley in the Observer: http://bit.ly/cNxJty
8. Dublin-based software co. developing multimedia versions of Shakespeare, starting w Romeo & Juliet: http://bit.ly/bhNcDH
9. Have a look at @poetrychannel - lots of good video resources and interesting 'watching': http://bit.ly/cqbpUy
10. 'Christ Deliver Us!' @abbeytheatre- well worth seeing; big ambitious production, terrific main perfs, esp Aoife Duffin. http://bit.ly/cAJonm
11. Hamlet: the earliest copies online: http://bit.ly/a0LkH1
12. Jimmy Fay, director of forthcoming 'Macbeth' @abbeytheatre, on the production (we'll see it next term). http://bit.ly/97nnw0
13. Well worth reading for all teachers/administrators- RT @englishcomp: When saying "No" means saying "Yes": Latest blog. http://bit.ly/c6bxsf
14. Literary masterpieces: the LRB personal ads - http://bit.ly/bfVyj4.
15. Great photos to prompt creative writing: Sony World Photography Awards 2010: http://bit.ly/cjjAzZ
16. Recommending Conor Galvin's thoughtful webinar: Digital Elephants and Flying Penguins; technology-mediated T & L': http://bit.ly/9isDrL

Ghostly Encounter 3

The third and final 'Ghostly Encounter' from Mr Jameson's I form set is by Antonia Esses:-

The wind was howling and the rain slashed against our faces as we left the college. There was a blanket of fog engulfing the city. 'I am so annoyed that Mr Barnes kept us late,' said Mandy.

'Now we've missed the bus!'

'It'll take us at least an hour to walk home!' I said.

'I know,' said Mandy. 'Let's take a short-cut through the woods...'

Read Antonia's full piece here.

'Hamlet' by Second Age

Last week all our V form went to the Helix Theatre to see Hamlet (their single text choice for the Leaving Cert in 2011) in a Second Age production. This was one of the most effective schools' productions we've seen from Second Age, being pacy right from the start, and with mostly strong central performances. The considerable rake emphasised an intimacy with the characters, and Marty Rea delivered the famous soliloquies with intelligence. Stephen Brennan as Polonius, Garret Keogh as Claudius, and Barbara Brennan as Gertrude also delivered.

Read here Emer O'Kelly's review in the Irish Independent, and Peter Crawley's in the Irish Times here: both are positive about the production.

'Medusa' - a poem

The latest poem in our 'Images in Poetry' series is 'Medusa' by Oyinda Onabanjo. This is based on Caravaggio's famous painting of the same name from 1598. You can read a Guardian article about it here.


'Medusa' by Oyinda Onabanjo

I walk into the gallery
Immediately feeling a chill, despite
The mass of people.
I see it and Stop. Still.
Petrified by this sinister, severed head.

I look into her eyes, imagining
The fear of her victims pulsating through
Their veins.
Then I am gone,
Sucked into the vortex
That is the ancient world.
The gorgon herself, there she is, with Perseus.
Her body writhing on the floor
As he takes her head from her,
Holding it up like a trophy.
I hear sweet whisperings of approval,
See a spirit hand caress him.
Perseus then flies off on the horse Pegasus;
Beautiful just as it is, born out of hideousness.

A drop of Medusa’s blood falls:
Creating a snake.
It slithers, and bites me, and I’m thrown
Back into the room, staring at my mother,
Who, uncannily, resembles Medusa.

Transition Year Academic Prize

Last night there was the annual TY Academic Prize evening in the BSR, this time judged by scientist and TY presenter Miranda Krestovnikoff. The standard was surely the highest yet, and the winner was deservedly Lingfan Gao for his most impressive presentation on The Organ.

From an English Literature perspective here, however, congratulations to Emma Moore, who was awarded second place (the first time this has been given) for her fine presentation on the London of Charles Dickens. She gave a vivid portrait of the city in Dickens's time, explaining clearly its influence on his writing, particularly in David Copperfield, and was complimented by the judge on the clarity of her delivery.

World Book Day 2010

Since Mock exams are on, and other forms are about to start their College exams, World Book Day here today will be marked fairly quietly. However, we'll still be giving out WBD book-tokens, and the annual Library survey on the College's favourite book, results of which we'll post here in due course.

Meanwhile, take some time out of the busy day to read...

Shakespeare in Bits (Romeo and Juliet)

A Dublin-based company, Mindconnex Learning Limited, has set up a software project, 'Shakespeare in Bits', the first fruit of their work being a multi-media version of Romeo and Juliet. We've had a look at this, and it's well-worth considering for both individual study and classroom work.

A particularly welcome feature of the text is that it includes the full text, which synchronises with an excellent audio version of the play from Naxos featuring Kate Beckinsale and Michael Sheen. The actors' words are picked out in highlighted colour as they scroll through the text. On the left, there is a simple animation of the story. There are also annotations on themes and language, character analyses and a map of the relationships between characters.

Our own Transition Year pupils thought that it would be a good way to introduce yourself to the play, as well as a refresher during revision for pupils at Junior Cert/GCSE level. Also, it could be particularly helpful for anyone with learning difficulties, or who appreciates more visual and aural stimulus. Helpfully, there's a trial version which uses the opening scene, so you can easily assess it before buying.

On the Shakespeare in Bits website, you can read more details. Macbeth is next in the pipeline. Meanwhile, good luck to Michael Cordner and the team on their venture.

Second Bell A-Ringin'

Mr Jameson calls on new and previous contributors to gather tomorrow at 11.10am in Kennedy to plan another Second Bell magazine...

The Poetry Channel

Worth checking out by teachers, as well as general readers: The Poetry Channel is a new "freely accessible web-based video channel and portal for poetry" from the excellent English and Media Centre. You can search by poet, title and topic (such as Love, Grief, Fathers...). And there's a Poem for Today. Have a look here at Greg Wise reading Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress' (most of the site features contemporary poets). We've only just started to look at it, but it's certainly a good way to start a lesson.

The aims are to

• exploit the potential of the web to create a rich multi-sensory experience of poetry which includes music, film, and animation, as well as readings by actors and authors.
• bring together diverse and eclectic poetry worlds – from the unpublished world of slams, live events and song writing, to the published, literary and classic traditions of poetry.
• appeal to a really wide audience, from committed poetry readers to those who have felt excluded or haven’t thought poetry is for them.
  

Happy 500th Birthday to the Frog Blog

Congrats to our amphibian science friends over at the Frog Blog, who today mark their 500th posting (and thanks for the nods over here too).

As HJ points out today, it's grown and grown, and, similar to SCC English, has friends and visitors all over the world now. And we scientifically-ignorant long-haired arty poetry types have learnt lots of fascinating science from it, too. So we encourage our own regular visitors to hop on over there and see how good it is.

Ghostly Encounter 2

The second 'Ghostly Encounter' from Mr Jameson's I form set is by Peter Quigley:-

It was a dark night. The wind howled and the rain battered the ground. I shivered in my bed as I lay there pulling the duvet over me. The wind whistled through the fire escape. Flashes of light occasionally flickered through the room and lit up the place.

My eyes grew accustomed to the dark and I began to be able to spot things in the dark like shoes on the floor. Shivers came over me and the curtains began to move as if a demon possessed them. I could hear the floorboards creak and my heart began to pound but I quickly realised it was just one of the monitors coming back in. I tried to close my eyes and count sheep to get to sleep but it wasn't working.

Suddenly, things began to shake and stuff started to fall off lockers. There was a howling noise louder than the wind and the sound of feet dragging across the floor. I curled up into a ball. I was so scared. The sounds were getting closer and closer and I was getting more and more frightened.

A white glow appeared on the wall but this presence was still hidden. Fingers - all white as snow - started appearing through the wall. I shouted, 'This isn't real!' I thought my eyes were tricking me.

But still more body features appeared, all as white as snow. Then its head appeared. It stuck in my mind forever. How weird it was! It was my own face!

It came towards me - I was horrified. It leaned over me and looked into my eyes. Closer and closer its hands came until they were inches away from my face and then...

'Hamlet' Quartos site

There's fascinating material on the Shakespeare Quartos site. To quote the site:-

The Shakespeare Quartos Archive is a digital collection of pre-1642 editions of William Shakespeare's plays. A cross-Atlantic collaboration has also produced an interactive interface for the detailed study of these geographically distant quartos, with full functionality for all thirty-two quarto copies of Hamlet held by participating institutions.

Here you can view full cover-to-cover digital reproductions and transcriptions of thirty-two copies of the five earliest editions of the play Hamlet. You can view quartos separately, or alongside any number of copies. You can search, annotate, make public or private sets of annotations, create exhibits or character cue line lists, and download and print text and images.

Under Umbrellas

Last year we posted some poems that originated in Ms Smith's Transition Year module on Images in Poetry, which she wrote about here. The module continues this year, and we'll be posting more poems prompted by paintings and photographs. First, here is Patrick Tice's poem based on Bruno Barbey's photo 'Umbrellas', about which Ms Smith writes:-

When one closely inspects this image, snow-covered umbrellas and huddled figures reveal themselves. Barbey took this photograph in Poland in 1982 when the country was under strict Communist rule. This gathering took place, despite the weather, to commemorate the Stations of the Cross; religious pilgrimages were the only events the Government could not stop.


'Under Umbrellas' by Patrick Tice

The pull factor:
Faith.
The push factor:
Oppression.
Gathering together-
Passive rebellion.
Brothers in suffering
Sisters in action
Standing in the snow,
White belief.

Violence, no.
Statement, yes.
A common cause,
Camaraderie on show.

Selected SCC Tweets

Selection of last week's tweets:-

1. The Poetry Channel - poems on video : http://bit.ly/dpgUB4
2. Irish Times review of new Emily Dickinson biography: http://bit.ly/9PVIfq
3. Catriona Crowe reviews 'Dictionary of Irish Biography' (now in our Library): http://bit.ly/dq2HTf
4. Excellent advice! Ten Twitter Turn-offs to avoid when building your Teacher PLN: http://bit.ly/daiQ0g
5. Recommend this thought-provoking article by Jacob Epstein on the future of books - "displacing the Gutenberg system" - http://bit.ly/cS6od6
6. In Ireland "three-quarters of parents believe teachers are doing a good job, a new survey reveals." http://bit.ly/a2cZiN
7. How to Use the Drop.io Upload Widget to Collect Student Work http://ff.im/-gxMUr
8. Poetry from Faber - 'Human Chain' by Heaney, 'Maggot' by Paul Muldoon, Paterson on Shakespeare sonnets: http://bit.ly/cOv9W7.
9. Tremendous essay from TY student comparing 'Middlemarch', 'Pride and Prejudice' & 'Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire': http://bit.ly/cqi73R
10. Violent but Charming: Dictionary of Old English explores brutality & elegance of our ancestral tongue. http://bit.ly/8FFRJ0.
11. Bound to strike a chord with English teachers: Teenage fiction's death wishes | Alison Flood http://bit.ly/8ZL7pV.
12. Keats-Shelley House - well worth visiting if you're in Rome (beside Spanish Steps): http://bit.ly/dhnxLH.
13. Formidable TY essay comparing '1984', 'Fight Club', 'Trainspotting' ('transgressive fiction'): http://bit.ly/cCEfWW
14. Geoffrey Chaucer: an interview with Terry Dolan http://shar.es/mm6vC via @sharethis
15. Thoughtful TY essay- 'Life After Death' in Looking for Alaska, Brief History of the Dead, 5 People You Meet in Heaven: http://bit.ly/btBXxT
16. Junior Cert pupil's essay comparing 'Bad Day at Blackrock' and 'The Outsiders': http://bit.ly/9ODsUF

Ghostly Encounter 1

Last term all I form studied Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, and also went to the Gate Theatre dramatisation. Mr Jameson used this as a springboard for a writing exercise, and over the next few days we'll post three pieces based on encounters with ghosts: "Using Scrooge's meeting with the ghost of his deceased business partner, Jacob Marley, as their inspiration, I asked my I form English group to write about an encounter with a ghost."

The first is by Rowland Fitzgerald Barron: The first thing I noticed when I entered the house was the bite of cold inside which was very strange as it was usually warm. After doing my homework, I put on the television and after ten minutes, the screen started flickering and then it switched off. I tried to switch it on again but had no success. I went into the kitchen and found all the lights switched off. There must have been a power-cut, I thought. After having only a few peanuts for dinner, I went to bed on an empty stomach. It was quite hard to get to sleep and when I did, my sleep was full of nightmares...

Read Rowland's full piece here.

Extended Essay: Eliot, Austen, Foreman

In a formidable Transition Year Extended Essay, Emma Moore compared three books on the theme 'relationships': the classic novels Middlemarch by George Eliot and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and the recent biography Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman. This essay focusses particularly on women's lives during the 18th and 19th century in England.

Emma writes: I chose these books because they all have the same central theme; relationships. I chose this theme because I find it interesting to see how relationships can be affected by many different things, and how many different relationships there can be between people. It also interested me to see how the characters in the three different books overcame the same problems but in their own separate ways, showing that every person has their own way of dealing with things.

Read Emma's full essay here.

Extended Essay: Orwell, Welsh, Palahniuk

Michael Kemp received a Commendation for a formidable and wide-ranging Transition Year Extended Essay on 'Transgressive Fiction', in which he compared George Orwell's 1984, Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting, and Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club.

Michael writes: The term Transgressive Fiction was coined in the last twenty years although the works of Marquis De Sade from the 17th century are certainly the first of the genre; but most novels put under obscenity trails have been considered Transgressive (even James Joyce’s Ulysses). Transgressive fiction has a wide base, from the work of the 50s New Age Beat Writers, to the bitter realism of Hubert Selby Jr. and the drug fuelled accounts of Hunter S. Thompson’s dying American Dream, have all set the foundations for Transgressive Fiction.

The Genre really soared during the 90s with the rise of alternative rock and its anti-establishment subculture. Also the arrivals of Transgressive protégés Bret Easton Ellis, Irvine Welsh and Chuck Palahniuk increased the Transgressive writer’s influence. This led to the extreme success of Douglas Copeland’s Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture (which he recently released a similarly titled novel containing the same subject matter called Generation A, intended for our own generation). Transgressive fiction is still young and each of its voices has a signature style, subject matter varies from across the globe. The trend in Britain being that its subjects are the lower and working class; while in America they focus on the mediocrity of being middle class.

Read Michael's full essay here.

Extended Essay: Green, Brockmeier, Albom

Rosie Agnew received a Commendation for her thoughtful essay on 'Life After Death' in three books: Looking for Alaska by John Green, The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier, and The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom.

She writes: The three novels I chose to study all delve into very different possibilities of the afterlife. As it is an extremely complicated subject, with no simple explanation, it is important to understand how the themes of the novels interlace and intertwine with the influences that govern ideas of life after death. It is very unclear what the basis of a lot of speculations regarding the hereafter is. The most influential force would certainly be that of religion.

The followers of Christianity follow the words of the prophet Jesus Christ, and believe that after we die we go to a place called Heaven, and we become angels. This, however, is only if we have been faithful to God within our lives. If we have not, or if we have somehow behaved wrongly, we may go to Hell. In between these two lies Purgatory and this is where Kevin Brockmeier retrieves the foundations to build his story around. His is possibly the most complicated literary piece of them all; because the story is built very slowly as the reader must take the book chapter by chapter in order to be able to understand it. As each member of the living realm within the book dies, the only people left in Purgatory, or the City as it is so called, are the ones which Laura still remembers. When people we love pass away, we often have a passionate longing to see them again, or, more simply put, we miss them, sometimes for years after their death. A lesson that has to be learned is that we cannot still rely on the dead to comfort us, for they are gone to a different place now, one which we cannot reach without being there ourselves.

Read Rosie's full essay here.

Book review: Power and Hinton

In his Junior Certificate book report, Chris Doherty chose two books for his comparison which clearly fit together well - S.E. Hinton's classic The Outsiders, and the much more recent Bad Day in Blackrock by Kevin Power, recommended by SCC English here last April.

Chris writes: - My main novel, Bad Day in Blackrock, is based around the glamorous lives of wealthy private schoolboys in South Dublin and is set in the modern era. It focuses on the difficulties associated with teenagers’ experiences today, and the challenges faced by upper-middle class teenagers. I feel that I can relate well with this book and therefore understand its complexities more fully. The Outsiders, on the other hand, is based in the 1960s, and concentrates on the life of the lower class citizens, or ‘thugs’ and ‘greasers’, as they are known. This is also interesting because it is a setting I am not familiar with, and therefore my reading had an element of learning to it, giving me an insight into a different world.

Read the full report by Chris here.

Last week's Twitter selection

Our weekly selection from our tweets:

1. John Lanchester on Google: 'mix of innocence and arrogance': http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/21/googled-ken-auletta
2. Elmore Leonard: "If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it". Guardian's feature on 10 rules of writing- http://bit.ly/dnboaJ
3. Henning Mankell interviewed: http://bit.ly/9kn6L4
4. Great site for English #poetry teaching: Poetry 180 - http://bit.ly/aO6DWt
5. SCC English: 56 Web 2.0 links: http://bit.ly/7V6nt3
6. Oddest title of 2009-"Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich" / "The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease"? Vote: http://bit.ly/ddYoux
7. Checking out "The iPad--A Potential Revolution in Education" on English Companion Ning: http://ning.it/9T3Lqz
8. Recording of a Billy Collins #poetry reading in Key West: http://bit.ly/9QjBF8
9. ''Teaching English" Irish National Poetry Competition for secondary pupils: http://bit.ly/9O2SyB
10. Teaching 'The Merchant of Venice': http://bit.ly/5URJyh
11. Reassessment of Emily #Dickinson as an epileptic; #LCEnglish: http://bit.ly/9ZavX8
12. SCC English podcast no 17; revision on Eavan Boland's 'This Moment': #LCEnglish

Podcast 17: 'This Moment' by Eavan Boland

Half-term starts today, so it's that great time, when we can dive into books for a week or so. After half-term, we have a lot of really good pupil writing to post here; some excellent material is promised. Meanwhile, our VI form are preparing for their Mock exams, so this seems an appropriate time to produce another poetry revision podcast.

Our 17th podcast is the second in a series dealing with individual poems on the Leaving Certificate course (following the first on Yeats's 'The Wild Swans at Coole'). This one deals with 'This Moment' by the contemporary Irish poet Eavan Boland, examining how this apparently simple lyric achieves its memorable impact, and quoting from Boland's own comments and other writing.

Listen to the podcast via the player below:-

Powered by Podbean.com

You can also listen to our podcasts via the 'widget' on the sidebar to the right, or by visiting our podcast page here (if you have iTunes on your computer you can also subscribe by clicking here, and so download our episodes to your MP3 player, or by searching for 'SCC English' in the iTunes Store).

Selected SCC Tweets from the last week

Our second weekly summary of useful 'tweets' from the previous week:

1. For any teacher: great classroom clock/timer for projection, from Teachit: http://bit.ly/8Sytn8
2. #LCEnglish: Shakespeare search engine - great for revision, self-testing... http://bit.ly/a1CjFZ
3. Senior and Junior Poetry Prizes 2010 launched: http://bit.ly/aVh408
4. SCC English Web 2.0 links on Delicious: http://bit.ly/7V6nt3
5. Poem of the Week 60: 'Valentine for Ernest Mann' by Naomi Shihab Nye: http://bit.ly/cuQzrl
6. 'Using ICT to teach English' from UK 'National Strategies' : http://bit.ly/aKCOBP
7. 'Improving the Teaching of #Shakespeare', resources, especially 'Romeo and Juliet': http://bit.ly/bW4Ee7
8. #LCEnglish: King Lear's map of Britain: http://bit.ly/9QSPjD #Shakespeare
9. #LCEnglish: King Lear 'visualisations' : http://bit.ly/7DnKeX
10. #LCEnglish: strong recommendation to all Leaving Cert pupils - Yeats exhibition - http://bit.ly/cl5Foc. @NGIreland
11. 'Paragraphy': good class tool for writing coherent paragraphs: http://bit.ly/aCpALl
    
12. Encouraging English teachers in Ireland to join @ecning : http://bit.ly/bAIT0q
13. Patrick Kavanagh: poet for the recession? #LCEnglish: http://bit.ly/69BzP9
    
14. Hypertext version of 'The Waste Land' by #Eliot. #LCEnglish: http://bit.ly/d80Pei
15. 7 #Macbeth revision podcasts. #LCEnglish: http://bit.ly/cz2FeG
16. #LCEnglish: Leaving Certificate English resources: http://bit.ly/93TdBj
    

2010 Poetry Prizes

We've now launched our annual Senior and Junior Poetry Prizes. Entries are due in by the last day of term to Mr Canning and Ms Smith respectively. Here is the senior rubric, here the junior. Click here for previous senior poems, here for junior ones.

Next term, as usual, we'll be posting the best entries to these prizes. Meanwhile after half-term, which starts tomorrow, we'll be posting some poems from Ms Smith's 'Images in Poetry' Transition Year module, as we did last year.

Poem of the Week 60: Valentine

Our 60th Poem of the Week is Naomi Shihab Nye's 'Valentine for Ernest Mann'. You can read more about the poet here, and also listen to her read some poems.

Only three more days until the relevant time...but then we'll all be on half-term.

I form Public Speaking Competition

Toss aside your 3D glasses and get comfortable. This is entertainment at its simplest, and best.

Today saw the final of the Form I Speech Competition in Blackburn. Topics were varied: speakers doing parrot impressions, an unusual tale about the journey of a euro coin, the origin of well-known sayings such as ‘sleep tight’, eating camels’ hooves in China, Christianity, and much much more.

The overall winner was John Clarke with his speech entitled ‘My Brother’, about his brother Jamie. His speech was funny, authentic, used anecdote to great effect, and was perfectly pitched. He might as well have tossed his notes aside along with the 3D glasses - he didn’t need them once. Well done to John, and the seven other finalists, for informing and entertaining us in such style!

KS

Review of 'Adrian Mole'

On Monday we posted pictures of last weekend's excellent Junior Play production. Now here's a review of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole by Transition Year pupil Opeline Kellett (herself often seen treading the boards in the BSR).

She writes: Overall this was a superb production. Special credit must go to Patrick Tice who played Adrian. His portrayal of the character was flawless and he managed to combine humour with the more serious without ever letting his energy drop or the audience's attention lapse. It seemed to me everyone was glued for the duration of the play. Full credit must go to the whole cast and of course Mr. Jameson who directed the play in a very short amount of time. In brief it was an excellent show and it was greatly enjoyed by all.

Read Opeline's full review here.

Mr McCarthy's Library Selection

Currently featuring in the Library is a selection of books from our Classical Studies colleague, Peter McCarthy, the second of a series from staff which we'll be featuring (see the first from scientist Peter Jackson here). This is a way of sharing with pupils and staff the books which we love and have made us the people (and teachers) we are.

Among Peter's choices are Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, and Homer's Iliad. On a more modern and personal note, he writes about his brother Ted's book November Wedding and other poems:-

My brother Ted is the artistically creative member of our family and this collection of poems was published in 1998. We were all very proud of his achievements and it was a great thrill to see his book on the bookshop shelves, beside Irish poets like Yeats and Heaney.

See the full selection here.

Jim Burke on EC Ning

We've recommended the English Companion Ning before to all English teachers (it still seems overwhelmingly American, but a vast amount is still useful for those of us on this side of the world). Its creator, Jim Burke, was recently interviewed by the Ning people, and you can read this interview here.

Among his comments: We have had nearly 11,000 join in little over a year and it just keeps expanding. Within two years it is very possible that it will be the largest organized community of English teachers in the world.

Adrian Mole Photos

The Junior Play, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend, was a great success on Friday and Saturday night. Later this week we'll have a pupil review here. Meanwhile, above is an Animoto video of the photographs taken by Mr Peter Watts on Friday (the music is Maple Leaf Rag 2), and below are the stills in a Picasa album.

Leaving Cert English on Twitter

On our Twitter site, we've started a hashtag on Leaving Cert English resources (#LCEnglish). For anyone not familiar with the system, this is a way of gathering (and contributing to) such resources where anyone can find them. You can search on Twitter itself, and every now and then we'll summarise these 'tweets' here. Meanwhile, in the coming weeks we'll gradually catch up on LC resources from this blog over the years since 2006.

Bookmark Competition

Head on over to SCC Art for a post on this year's bookmark competition for World Book Day. This year, instead of making our own (recession and all that), we'll be entering pupils for the official WBD competition.

Left, a design from Lauren Scully from last year.

15 Recent Tweets

A new feature: selected 'tweets' from the SCC English Twitter site over the last week. Follow us via the button on the right-hand column.

1. Recommended: Liz Meldon's Rathgar Bookshop: http://bit.ly/b26G5X
2. Review of Paul Murray's 'Skippy Dies', 'one of the most enjoyable, funny and moving reads of this young new year' : http://bit.ly/9tfdv9
3. Masters of American Literature: Salinger, Mailer, Updike: http://bit.ly/9N2EEl
4. #LCEnglish: Podcast on 'The Wild Swans at Coole' by #Yeats: http://bit.ly/9H0I4e
5. Current 'Atlantic Monthly': 'What makes a great #teacher?' http://bit.ly/9QMXce
6. #LCEnglish: Khaled Hosseini podcasts and interviews, useful for Kite Runner: http://bit.ly/asrjis
7. #LCEnglish : hashtag for Leaving Cert English resources and help. Hope others will join in...
8. Globe Theatre #Shakespeare productions coming to Dundrum Cinema: http://bit.ly/bnV5qK
9. Jim Burke of the 'English Companion' interview on @ecning: http://bit.ly/as9fp1
10. Anyone have experience of using a visualiser in class?
11. Animoto video of pictures of Afghan kites - for those studying The Kite Runner- http://bit.ly/brBPqG
12. Alliteration in Poetry: http://bit.ly/8XNfUi
13. Annotated version of 'The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock' , useful for LC candidates: http://bit.ly/9PdY2r
14. Great Transition Year essay on the life of an old German woman: http://bit.ly/aasrGj
15. Lots of free teachers' literature guides on the Penguin USA site- #englishteacher- http://bit.ly/bcnO0h