Pride and Prejudice 2: observing eyes

Number 2 in a series of analyses using the iPad app ShowMe to examine key ideas in Pride and Prejudice. 

Here, Elizabeth is unaware that she is being observed by Darcy, who is discovering she is more interesting than he had first admitted to himself.

'Dogs'

Another in the series of poems by candidates for the Junior Poetry Prize 2013. This is one by Nyla Jamieson (I form):

Dogs

The old dog, upon hearing me come,

Slowly gets to its feet to greet me.

It drags its paws as if they are bricks or

Disobedient children.

The young dog meanwhile, springs to its feet.

Yapping loudly, it rushes over,

Its tail a blur showing the pup's joy.

Like a lightning bolt it is here at my feet.

"Sit", I command. The young dog ignores.

The old dog sits down immediately;

It gazes at me and waits for orders,

Like a slave waiting on its master.

As I watch my two dogs together,

They treat each other with strong respect.

The pup runs rings around its fellow,

Like a sheepdog around a lame ewe.

And yet, it doesn't take advantage

Of its elder's weakness.

I pat my two very different dogs,

Then go inside thinking of their friendship.

Pride and Prejudice 1: quick judgments.

Number 1 in a series of analyses using the iPad app ShowMe to examine key ideas in Pride and Prejudice. 

This looks at the way people are immediately and hungrily judged in this society. Here, Bingley and Darcy arrive on the scene for the first time.

The Old Memory

Another entry for the recent Junior Poetry Prize. This is by Catherine Butt from Primary (who was awarded a Junior Scholarship last week):

The Old Memory

The rain attacked the window furiously

the day she left

It was a Saturday

A day usually full to the brim

With happiness, maybe sunshine.

But not that day:

Nurses ran back and forth

Their sad faces digging a hole in my chest,

Deeper and deeper

Filling it with tears.

Doctors screamed upsetting words

That deafened me,

Filling my ears with painful sounds

That made me want to

Curl up and disappear.

She lay in the vibrant cot

Slipping in and out of consciousness.

Time was running out,

It was nearly time for her to go.

She passed so quietly

that when it was over

it didn't seem right

That she was gone from our lives.

She may have been old,

She may have been deaf

But she broke our family chain

With her untimely death.

'Macbeth' quotation auto-test

For pupils preparing Macbeth for their exams, here is a quotation auto-test (below, or direct link here). There are 20 quotations, and as each slide comes up you can think who said the words, in what context, and what wider importance they might have, before an 'answer' appears on the next slide. The idea here is primarily to make you think. Give yourself marks...

For lots more Macbeth revision resources, click here.

Knowledge: old and new

Another entry from this year's Junior Poetry Prize, by Hollie Canning (III form):-


Knowledge: old and new

When I was young
I used to think
that pigs could fly
and cats could wink.

I have a secret
and you must keep it:
I thought parrots could bark, and
carrots would make you see in the dark.

How silly I was back then -
when I dug in the sand
to find a land,
and demanded chocolate for dinner.

But now I know
how kiddies show
the purest innocence
You could ever know.

Junior Poetry Prize, 2013

Congratulations to the winner of this year's Junior Poetry Prize, Lucia Masding (Primary) for her poem 'A New Day Dawns' and also to Hollie Canning and Catherine Butt for their commended poems, which will also be posted here in the coming days.  The theme given to candidates was 'Old and New'.


'A New Day Dawns'
by Lucia Masding

The sun beams down on the glass windows,
A new day dawns.
Exhaustion for the old man,
Excitement for the young boy.

The young boy energetically bursts out of bed,
While the old man, with great effort, rolls out of bed.
The young boy leaps down the stairs two by two,
His face blooming with eagerness.
The old man descends down on the stair lift,
His face glowering with weariness.

The young boy guzzles down his cereal bar and toast
As the old man gradually consumes his porridge.
The young boy waits impatiently for his orange juice,
The old man tightly clasps the warmth of his tea.

Soon the young boy bounds out of the front door to play football,
Meanwhile the old man wonders what to do.

Later the young boy explodes through the door,
Sweat trickling down his rosy cheeks,
Eager to play on his bike.
The old man thumps down on the couch
Sighing with sheer boredom.

The young boy groans about going to bed
Although he is worn out.
But the old man gladly retires to the warmth
Of his electric blanket.

The young boy eagerly awaits tomorrow, and next year.
The old man wonders if he will live to see another day.

Shakespeare Prize, 2013

Congratulations to Hamish Law, winner of the 2013 Willis Prize for Knowledge of Shakespeare and to Kezia Wright, who is awarded a Distinction and book token as runner-up. Shakespeare remains at the heart of our Department's work, and this annual prize recognises the importance we continue to give him, with his plays studied in the final five years of schooling here.

The candidates had to write an essay on what makes the plays memorable, and also address as an unseen poem Sonnet 57 to the 'fair youth'. The best entries dealt with the underlying anxiety of this memorable work:

Being your slave what should I do but tend
Upon the hours, and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend;
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world without end hour,
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour,
When you have bid your servant once adieu;
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save, where you are, how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love, that in your will,
Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.

The Netherfield Ball

We're currently studying Pride and Prejudice with V form as part of their comparative module, and everyone is alerted to a well-timed programme on BBC2 on Friday night (9pm to 10.30pm). In Friday's Guardian, John Mullan had a piece on this programme.

As he points out, a ball is "the ultimate occasion for a heady kind of courtship – a trying out of partners that is exciting, flirtatious and downright erotic". Mullan's book What Matters in Jane Austen? (now in paperback) is excellent (certainly far better than the patronising cover and subtitle 'Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved'). Dedicated to the great critic Tony Tanner, who also wrote on Austen, it has many of Tanner's qualities, perceptively following ideas through the novels, such as names, money, intimacy, the lower classes and lots more. Highly recommended.

Below, the ball from the 1995 BBC version.

'Teaching English' magazine, Spring 2013

The Spring issue of Teaching English magazine, edited by Kevin McDermott, is now out and is, as always, well worth reading. It includes winning poems from the 2012 poetry competition, and two helpful lists with reading suggestions - for first and second year pupils, and descriptions of the texts on the 2015 Leaving Certificate course.

Read it below via Issuu (click for a closer view, again for the closest, and use the arrows for navigation).

Olive Mooney

Photo with author's permission

On Thursday 25th April we welcomed Olive Mooney, author of The Chronicles of Cadaver College, to St Columba’s.

She read to an entranced audience of Primary and 1st Formers from the first volume of the series, The Book of Ornis, in which young Simon de Bruin discovers himself in a very strange place. He doesn’t know where he is or how he got there, and he has barely arrived before his leg is savaged by an invisible hound. What’s more, the strange people he meets seem to expect something from him—something heroic—yet at the same time they seem disappointed that he’s not somehow...bigger. And so begin the Chronicles.

After the reading we got the opportunity to ask questions. Olive, choosing from a sea of waving hands, was asked such things as: do you write longhand or type, do you have a special room to work in, who was your favourite author, what was your worst editing experience, do you like children, and would St Columba’s be a good location for the film version? All of which she answered with aplomb, and we finished a very entertaining morning with a book-signing session.

Pride and Prejudice Wordle

This term, V form are studying Pride and Prejudice as part of their comparative selection. Here is a word-cloud of the 150 most-used words in the complete text (click on the image for a closer view).

For discussion in class:

• the relative importance of the major characters
• key words - 'family', 'sister/s', 'friend', 'Lady', 'might', 'opinion', 'manner', 'conversation' and so on...

'The Gay Rainbow Across my Electoral Office'

Check out this speech by New Zealand member of Parliament Maurice Williamson following the decision to legalise gay marriage in that country.

What rhetorical devices does he use? How does he use humour? How does he address those with whom he disagrees? Which parts of his speech are pre-planned and which off the cuff? How would you feel if you disagreed with him?

And just enjoy it...

Markup

No 16 in a series of occasional reviews of iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad apps useful for English literature and language learning and teaching.
 
Markup has just been released by the team who created one of our favourite tools, Showme. 

Designed for the iPad, it is a neat 'paperless grading app' which is simplicity itself - you open a document from your iPad (using the familiar 'open in'), or by emailing it to a special address, use the writing tools to mark the piece, and then export it as a PDF by email back to the pupil. The developers have plenty of interesting plans ahead for the app, and it's available at a modest cost from the iTunes store.

This is truly handy for the increasing number of essays, projects and assignments coming to English teachers in electronic form.

Love: Kane, Rivers, Leroux, McMullan

In her fine Transition Year Extended Essay, Iyobosa Bello-Asemota examined four books dealing with love - The Forgotten Legion by Ben Kane, A Voice in The Wind by Francine Rivers, The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux (original), and The Phantom of the Opera by Kate McMullan (revised edition). 

In her conclusion, she states: 


"Having spent so much time writing an essay with its focus on love, I finally feel as though I now have a better grasp on what it truly means to love something or someone. I now understand what motivates people to do things onlookers would regard as irrational, things that they normally would not have the strength or courage to do. I also understand why some would look upon the notion of love or being in love with disdain or would regard rash acts born of this love, to be foolish. While I do not hope to justify the evil acts people do in the name of love, regardless of whatever form it manifests in, I must admit that love’s influence is as wide and as deep as any ocean."

Read Isoybosa's full essay here.

Leaving Cert English blog

Here's a quick plug for all Leaving Cert pupils for Evelyn O'Connor's site leavingcertenglish.net, which has lots of excellent advice on preparing for your exam. Advice and resources are clearly divided between Paper I and Paper II, and recent posts include:

• Imagery in Macbeth
• Tone in Language pieces
• Argupersuasionment (including an excellent Sketch Show clip

Evelyn O'Connor always writes in a lively, direct and helpful way - and she was the 2012 Teacher of the Year to boot, so this is a site well worth your attention.

Sylvia Plath: a life reviewed

For those studying Sylvia Plath for their Leaving Cert, Guardian Shorts have recently published a handy and inexpensive e-book called Sylvia Plath: a life reviewed. This is a collection of articles and reviews from the Guardian and the Observer over the last 50 years, and is a good introduction to 'the idea of Sylvia' and 'the reviews, discussions and arguments that have dogged the Sylvia Plath legacy for the last 50 years'.

Holiday Leaving Cert Revision

Our VI formers are, no doubt, already deep into holiday revision before next term's Leaving Certificate exams.  

Here are some resources from this blog and elsewhere that will be useful. But bear in mind: keep focussed mainly on the texts themselves, and keep reading and thinking about topics for the composition question.


MACBETH:
1. Seven revision podcasts, including:-

• The crucial moment : the soliloquy in Act I scene vii before the murder.
• The real Lady Macbeth.
• King Macbeth - law and order in Scotland.
• Malcolm the hero?
• The Witches and the Supernatural.
• A quotation auto-test.
• Macbeth's tragic end - 'Tomorrow, and tomorrow ...'

2. The whole text of the play in a variety of formats - put it on your computer/tablet/e-reader for easy access. 3. Notes from a thought-provoking talk on the play given by the playwright Frank McGuinness at the Abbey Theatre. 4. BBC Bitesize microsite for revision (level - GCSE). 5. Times Educational Supplement resources, including our own podcasts [requires registration]. 6. Shakespeare Searched: a 'Google for Shakespeare' - terrific resource for looking up quotations, self-testing and so on. 7. 'Macbeth in Monaghan' series on RTÉ radio [podcasts]. 8. A series of ShowMe analyses of key moments in the play, using video and audio annotation.  9. Newbridge College 'resource pack' on the play.  10. Evelyn O'Connor at LeavingCertEnglish.net has a series of posts on the 'Blame Game' in the play here. 


THE GREAT GATSBY:
1.  15 key moments from the novel analysed via ShowMe.
2. Lots of good background and activities from the New York Times Learning Channel.


POETRY:
15 short talks on 'The Patterns of Poetry' (runner up in the 2010 Edulog Awards). Useful for any poetry question, and certainly for the Unseen Poem.


LANGUAGE:
Evelyn O'Connor's site LeavingCert.net has lots of good advice on Paper 1 (and 2, too).  Have a hunt through Categories on the left.