10 Characters from 'Hamlet'. 3: Laertes

The subject of the third short podcast on characters from Hamlet is Laertes, another young man in the play who is a revenger, and who provides a useful foil to Hamlet in our understanding of the latter's situation and personality.

Get our Audioboos as podcasts on iTunes here. Our Audioboo page is here. Listen to today's talk via the player below.
 

10 Characters from 'Hamlet': 2. Horatio

The second of the 'audioboos' on characters in Hamlet looks at the hero's most loyal friend and supporter, Horatio, a man who 'is not passion's slave'.

Get our Audioboos as podcasts on iTunes here. Our Audioboo page is here. Listen to today's talk via the player below.
 

10 Characters from 'Hamlet': 1. Fortinbras

This 'audioboo' is the first of a series which will look at (relatively) minor characters in the play Hamlet. Later and longer revision podcasts will consider the main characters, including Hamlet himself.

Number 1 examines a character who hardly appears in the story, and who hardly says anything, and yet who has a crucial role: Fortinbras, Prince of Norway.

Get our Audioboos as podcasts on iTunes here. Our Audioboo page is here. Listen to today's talk via the player below.

Web 2.0 Tools

Here's a reposting of a one-sheet summary of the kinds of tools this blog uses, including Blogger, Audioboo, Podbean and lots more. Click here, or read it embedded below.
 

TES English resources

We're delighted to be featuring currently in the Times Educational Supplement English resources, with our King Lear and Macbeth podcasts, and also Othello, A Midsummer Night's Dream and others from the Shakespeare Wordle series, and our Hamlet Wordle slideshow.

Click here for the TES English site, or on the play titles above to go straight to the resources.

Lots of Shakespeare resources are gathered on the Ask Shakespeare page (read more there about Ask Shakespeare Day on February 2nd).

TY Extended Essay: Downham, Christopher, Frank

In her Transition Year Extended Essay, Catie McGonagle wrote on three books which feature women who are trapped in different circumstances: Anne Frank's Diary (original cover, left), Leslie Downham's Before I Die, and Lucy Christopher's Stolen.

Catie writes:-

'I find it exceptionally odd that someone would willingly, and in full knowledge of his or her actions, trap themselves and even get some kind of sick enjoyment out of it. I used to understand why they do it. I even used to think it was a good thing. But now, after reading the three books I chose for my extended essay, I can understand what being trapped really means. The Oxford English Dictionary defines trapped as a verb meaning to prevent from escaping or getting free. But for Gemma, Tessa, and Anne, the characters in my books, being trapped takes a unique new form that is specific for each character and their situation.'

Read Catie's full essay here.

TY Extended Essay: Hosseini, Dickens, Ballard

Last term Eleanor Dolphin of Transition Year received a Commendation for her fine comparative Extended Essay entitled 'Life-Altering Journeys Through Childhood', which ambitiously examined three novels: Dickens's David Copperfield, Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, and J.G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun.

In her introduction, she explains:

Childhood, for me is a delicate fragment of glass. It shines so bright and pure and yet it can strike out with a vengeance and cut the bearer of it to pieces. It can be pulverised and manipulated, but not without effort. A child is pure, optimistic even in the most hopeless of cases. Encased in their own world they are a shining beacon of hope, unaware of the world’s harsh realities. Their instincts are razor sharp and usually correct, yet their beautiful naivety allows them to be made vulnerable by people who have no boundaries.

I think that a child is like a complex sponge, in that they absorb the smallest things occurring around them and are influenced immensely by what they experience. Nine times out of ten, if a child encounters some drastic event or something similar, then they will have this dragging along behind all the way to adulthood, as if they’re suspended on chains. An adventure to a child can range from the most insignificant event to the most spectacular occurrence.

Some children go through life-altering journeys and are changed, sometimes for the better and sometimes for worse.

Read Eleanor's full essay here.

CREEP 24

It's back- the Campaign for the Removal of English Errors in Public, thanks to our friend @humphreyjones, who spotted this interesting spelling near a restaurant in Gorey during the holidays. Where do we start with this one? Perhaps best just to let it sepeak for itself.

English Prizes 2010-11

At the end of last term we held our annual English Prize exams, and results are now in: many congratulations to the winner of the Senior Prize, Miriam Poulton, and of the Junior Prize, Aidan Chisholm. In addition, the department awarded book tokens for excellent entries to Sebastian McAteer, Olivia Plunket, Opeline Kellett and Rosie Agnew (Senior), and Eliza Hancock and Gregory Munday (Junior). The prizes are awarded at the St Columba's Day celebrations in June.

The Department makes three other awards: the Shakespeare Prize, and Senior and Junior Poetry Prizes (at the end of this term),

Obama in Tucson

As part of a series of Wordles on language used by public speakers and in public documents (useful for language study in English as well as in subjects such as History, CSPE, Economics, Religion and so on), here is a word cloud of the text of President Obama's well-received speech in Tucson, Arizona, yesterday. Click on the image for a closer look. You can see and hear the speech itself below. There's also a fascinating comparison to be made with Sarah Palin's controversial 'blood libel' speech (again, click for a larger view).

'No and Me' and 'To Kill a Mockingbird'

Term started today, and we have another busy term ahead of us on the blog. First, we need to catch up on some pupil work done last term, including Junior Certificate III form book reports.

Sally Kemp read and then wrote about two novels: No and Me by Delphine de Vigan, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (which Transition Year will shortly be studying).

Sally writes:

Both these books are from a first person narrative, both of which are female. Lou, a thirteen year old genius with already a very developed mind and Scout, who is very intelligent but still has a lot of learning ahead of her in terms of morality, and much younger. Lou’s perspective was something completely new to me, there would be so many ideas buzzing around in her head and she would analyse every single aspect of those ideas, each possible outcome of it.

Between the two, I found Lou the more interesting character to read about because of this fascinating mind. Whereas Scout was still learning, she was also very clever and articulate for a girl of her tender age. She is confident, brave and with the best of intentions. The fact that she would beat all the boys up and speak her mind in class, really reminds me of when I was her age. For that reason, I can identify with Scout a lot more than I can with Lou.

Read the rest of the book report here.

Using a Visualiser

Last term the Department started using a visualiser (sometimes known as a document camera) in class. Our model is the Elmo L-1ex (pictured). We'll be demonstrating it, and its tremendous effectiveness in the classroom, at an in-service session for staff tomorrow.

Here's a brainstormed rough-notes list of ways a visualiser can be used in English teaching and learning (without an interactive whiteboard):-

• Pupils have their own books open, but also show the text of play/poem/novel on the board, and annotations/highlighting on this. This helps pupils stay on track on the the page, and teacher to point out things on the board. It is also very helpful for getting the class to focus together on a point (also handy if some pupils have different editions of texts).
• Text displayed for pupils missing a textbook.
• Text annotation demonstration. Have a store of different coloured highlighters and pens for underlining.
• A big saver on photocopying.
• You can also remove the screen and annotate directly on whiteboard (there may be some glare).
• Large focus on small part of text - line, stanza, phrase: ‘every small book becomes a big book’. Use the highlight function to select/reveal parts of the text.
• Display good work by pupils - a paragraph, an opening, a piece particularly well presented, quotations list, well-organised notes.
• Easy to show something from a newspaper/magazine.
• Mark ‘live’ (with pupils’ consent).
• Use a smartphone app/watch/stopwatch to time class test, or to time a discussion/conversation, divide class into sections.
• Media Studies: close up and 3D look at packaging, advertising brochure, magazine etc.
  
• Quick look-ups: dictionary, cross-reference to another book etc.
• Quickly prepare handwritten notes / mind-map before class.
• Postcards as stimulus for writing.
• Postcards of author photos/portraits.
• Old photos are fascinating: lots of writing prompts - and camera quality allows close zoom.
• Shuffling lines of poetry (cut up into strips). Pupils can then try to rearrange, discuss.
• Discuss book covers (try different covers for same book). What expectations are raised by different covers?
• Smartphone: project apps on screen (angle to avoid glare).
• Objects for texts: pupils bring in image or small object as symbol of character, idea, etc.
• Lesson objectives. Faster and more direct than the whiteboard. Return to the sheet at the end.
• Notes for pupils with writing difficulties - hand them over at the end or capture as image for electronic distribution.
• Project lines onto the whiteboard for notes.
• Answers to a test/self-test, revealed by masking.
• Display illustrated book / storybook / graphic novel / comic.
• Display past papers.
• Hand out sticky Post-It notes for some exercise/answer/ideas, and display returns.
• Prep: pupils find a favourite poem, bring it in, display and talk about it.
• Have image/postcard/words projected on screen as pupils come in for discussion, thought, idea later in the lesson.
• Image save and recall means for last 5 minutes of class you can go back over all elements.
• Flash cards: pupils can make own, demonstrate question/answer.
• Use record function to capture short acted scene and then replay.
• Project Story Cubes on the screen.
  

Cool Things This Year

Term ended yesterday, and now we're on our Christmas holidays until Monday 10th January. Things will be quietish on this blog until then, though there will be occasional posts. The main priority now is reading lots of books (our Summer Reading recommendations still work at Christmas too, if you'd like some ideas).

Looking back over 2010, here are some 'cool things' on the technology front we discovered or started using in our Department:-

• Google Docs: the collaborative features for pupils writing their Transition Year Extended Essays and III form book reports (some have been published here already, more will follow in January). This is a really powerful tool for English (and other) teachers, allowing us to monitor and support pupils in their writing.
• Google Forms: so far only toes dipped in the water, but again this free service has lots of interesting applications for us, saving time and paperwork.
• Twitter: we started on Twitter in 2009 (November), but the SCC English Twitter account has really taken off in 2010. This post on our 'twitterversary' shows how helpful the service has been.
• Visualiser / Document Camera: the Department has had one for a few weeks now; it's a really helpful classroom tool, and a blog post will follow on its use. We'll be demonstrating it to other staff in an in-service session at the start of next term.
• TinyLetter: this neat free newsletter service, recently started by @pud (he's refining and redeveloping it regularly) is a great way to maintain the conversation with our followers. There's only been time for one newsletter so far. Several more coming in 2011... Do join in.
• Audioboo: another excellent service - five minute recordings made on an iPhone and then uploaded. This has facilitated the Patterns of Poetry series, which has just been voted runner-up in the Edublog Awards 'Best Educational Use of Audio' category. And here's the original post with an Audioboo explanation of the app.
• QR codes: just a toe dipped in the water with these, but hoping to develop their use in 2011.
• Mobile apps: here's our series reviewing helpful apps for English teaching and learning (concentrating on iPhone/iPad services). Plenty more coming in 2011.

Patterns of Poetry 15: hyperbole

Last night this series was voted first runner-up in the Edublog Awards in the category 'Best Educational Use of Audio.' Many thanks to all our supporters.

The 15th talk (all under 5 minutes) is about the figure of speech called hyperbole, and uses Patrick Kavanagh's well-known poem 'A Christmas Childhood' to examine this effect.

Get our Audioboos as podcasts on iTunes here. Our Audioboo page is here. The first 8 talks are available as a single podcast here. Listen to today's talk via the player below.

'Hamlet' at NTLive reviewed

Last Thursday the Shakespeare Society went with 125 pupils to see the current National Theatre Live production of Hamlet at our local cinema, beamed in HD from London. The Society's secretary, Miriam Poulton, reports:

The most confusing thing about the production of Hamlet that Fifth and Sixth Form went to see on Thursday was, to me, whether or not one was supposed to clap. Broadcast live from the National Theatre in London to Dundrum cinema, amongst locations in sixteen different countries, this production starring Rory Kinnear in the title role, has been hyped up massively as being the definitive Hamlet of our generation. It didn’t fail to impress.

Using the setting of a Baroque palace as the headquarters of a modern European dictatorship, we were immediately thrown into a “Big Brother” sort of world. The corners of the stage were at all times filled with security guards and earpieces, and in his first scene rather than simply asking his parents’ permission to go back to university, we saw Hamlet being refused a visa to leave Denmark. The sense that the characters were constantly being watched gave the production an air of ill ease and the soliloquies were emphasised as being the only way a character could express himself freely (though in some cases it appeared they were still being watched even then).

Along with this new setting, new spins were taken on several features of the play. Claudius’s introductory speech and Fortinbras’s closing speech were both spoken as television broadcasts, and shortly before her death we saw Ophelia being dragged offstage by two burly security guards. These diversions from the traditional reading of the play made the production seem particularly fresh and exciting, even to Sixth Formers who, after finishing their second read-through, thought there was nothing about Hamlet that could surprise them.

Across the board, the acting was, as far as I could tell, faultless. Kinnear’s Hamlet was once again very different to the traditional prince I had in my mind, in his tired black suit and later a t-shirt adorned by a smiley face and the word “Villain.” His performance was spectacular, showing a huge range of talent, from soliloquies dripping with real emotion to some hilarious scenes of feigned madness- special mention must, of course, be given to his climbing into a suitcase full of books.

The comic element of the play was aided by a bumbling Polonius in David Calder - so convincing in losing his train of thought that most people in the cinema thought he had simply forgotten his line. Patrick Malahide’s Claudius was played to the extreme of cool and calculating; even his soliloquy seemed like some piece of clever publicity rather than actual emotion, and Ruth Negga succeeded in played Ophelia with a surprising amount of backbone. The production returned to the most simple of methods in portraying the Ghost- an actor in white make-up with red rimmed eyes walking across the stage which, despite its simplicity, managed to be particularly haunting. The Dumb Show just before the play was done in an extremely interesting way, the players in white masks dancing and giving a most modern interpretation of the word “mime.” These details, which are often hard to perform on stage, were treated with care, once more allowing fresh light to be shed on them.

Overall, the performance was hugely enjoyable. The performances were truly excellent, the interpretation of many parts of the play was highly original and allowed us to see the play from a different angle and whether we were supposed to or not, at the end we gave the peopleon screen a round of thunderous applause.


[click here for several press reviews of the production]

Final Day for Edublog Awards voting

Voting finishes early tomorrow morning (5am Irish time) in the Edublog Awards 2010: just click on the badges to the right to support us. Thanks!

The BBC Hamlet Archive

A great resource for those studying Hamlet, like our VI and V forms, is the BBC Hamlet Archive. It includes clips of actors such as John Gielgud, Derek Jacobi, David Tennant and Kenneth Branagh talking about the role, as well as directors Jonathan Miller and Michael Pennington (who wrote an excellent book on the subject).

English Prizes 2010-11

This year's English prizes will be held tonight- the Senior in Adare from 6.45pm, the Junior in Kennedy from 6.30pm. You can't prepare for either exam. Just turn up and do your best...