Macbeth 11: Act 3 scene 1 - 'the worst rank of manhood'?

This is the eleventh in a series of analyses of key moments in Macbeth using the iPad app ShowMe.

Macbeth meets two killers who will murder Banquo. Perhaps there are some similarities between these low-life characters and the new King...

Macbeth 10: Act 3 scene 1 - 'To be thus is nothing'

This is the tenth in a series of analyses of key moments in Macbeth using the iPad app ShowMe.

This is the beginning of Macbeth's soliloquy in III i, in which he expresses his fear of Banquo and of 'nothingness', and continues his precipitous moral decline.

'The Submarine' latest edition

The Librarian, Mr McConville, is looking for contributions to this term's Library magazine, The Submarine. Articles, essays, poems, reviews, photographs, drawings ... by Monday 19th. Click here to see many of the excellent previous editions.

TY Book Recommendations 10

Rebeca Blasco and Isabel Richter-Goebel have both read books by Nicholas Sparks as part of their preparation for the Transition Year Extended Essay.

Rebeca:
I recommend a book called El cuaderno de Noah or in English The Notebook, which is written by Nicholas Sparks, because it is a really good book about love. It's about a girl called Allie who spends a summer (1940) in Searbrook, South Carolina. There she meets Noah and they start to spend their time together and also they fall in love. She's a girl from a wealthy family and he is not a guy with lots of money, so when her parents learn of their love, they decide to leave Searbrook for her to forget Noah.

After a few years, they meet again and after some events they fall in love again and in the end they get married. The film of the book starts with an old man and an old woman, as he reads her a notebook about a love story, and the film finishes with these two old people and you can know that both of them are the couple of the story and he is reading the diary of their story because she has Alzheimer's and he doesn't want her to forget him.

I think this story is one of the most beautiful love stories  in the world, so I recommend it for all the people who like romance books because they will like the true love of this couple.


Isabell:
I read The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks for my extended essay about relationships, and it was very good. It is about a girl called Ronnie whose life turns upside down when her parents divorce and her father moves away from their family. She gets rebellious and stops playing the piano, which she is very good at, because she used to play it with her father.

After three years her mother decides that it is the best for everyone if Ronnie and her little brother spend the summer at their father's house. Ronnie meets a boy and they fall in love with each other. When she finds out that her father has stomach cancer, she tries to forgive him and starts to play the piano again. She starts to realize what she has done wrong and when her father dies she regrets not spending enough time with her father. It is a book full of happy but also sad moments, which is  very emotional as well. I really enjoyed reading it.

TY Book Recommendations 9

Eliza Hancock has read Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time for her Extended Essay (on books associated with autism and Asperger's Syndrome), and recommends it:-

I really enjoyed the book and would recommend it for a number of reasons. The first is that it is primarily a mystery, and although you are given clues throughout the book, there's another twist, which is that Christopher, the narrator, has Asperger's Syndrome, which makes the clues very difficult to notice and understand at first, but once you do figure them out, they seem obvious. The way that Mark Haddon has written the book is great, because it really allows you to go into the mind of Christopher, and see things in the way that he sees them. He notices things that a person without his condition may not notice, but misses things that seem obvious to us. This combined makes for an interesting and constantly surprising read.

Macbeth 9: Act 2 scene 4 - ''Tis unnatural'

This is the ninth in a series of analyses of key moments in Macbeth using the iPad app ShowMe.

Here, Ross and an Old Man talk about the disturbing things happening in the natural world following Duncan's murder.

Obama victory speech

Another in a series of Public Wordles, analysing rhetoric. Above, a Wordle of the 170 most common words in President Obama's victory speech last night in Chicago. Plenty of good discussion material here for class today. Click on the image above for a closer view.

Now for a Wordle of Mitt Romney's concession speech for comparison (again, click here for a closer look, and here for the video)

Below, the President delivers his speech.

'Does it Matter?'

On Sunday we have our annual Remembrance Day ceremony and service, and our 77th Poem of the Week is a reference to this. It was read out in Chapel this morning by Mrs Haslett in her talk to the school about the Poppy Fund and its origins.


'Does it Matter?' by Siefried Sassoon
 
Does it matter?—losing your legs?...
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When the others come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.
 
Does it matter?—losing your sight?...
There’s such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.

Do they matter?—those dreams from the pit?...
You can drink and forget and be glad,
And people won’t say that you’re mad;
For they’ll know you’ve fought for your country
And no one will worry a bit.

TY Book Recommendations 8

Cameron Wood recommends The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, which he has read for his Transition Year Extended Essay:

This was truly brilliant it showed us the side of India that we never see or hear about. It was the story of a man's struggle to make it up the ladder from servant to entrepreneur, but the story isn't that simple. What is fascinating is what he must do to get there, such as turn into a murderer, and and change his personality completely. Overall I thought it was a great boko and would highly recommend it.

Celine Klee has read A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks
　

This book is about how two people, who barely know each other but come to love each other, but then something happens that brings difficulty into their lives. The two main characters are Jamie Sullivan, a very Christian girl, whose mother died when she was a little girl and who loves her father, and a boy called Landon Carter, who is normally on the "cool" side.

This book is set in the 1960s and it is really well-written. I recommend this novel, because of its reality, the way it brings up emotions and because it is easy to read for people like me, whose native language is not English.

TY Book Recommendations 7

The latest recommendation from the Transition Year Extended Essay reading is Jessye Faulkner's:

I have been reading for my extended essay The Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray, the story of a young woman's struggle over the death of her mother and the strange events that follow as she starts her new life at a finishing school that her departed mother had a connection to.

Gemma had always wanted to go to London - the season, the fashion, all the amazing stories that she had heard from her friends - but the life that Gemma knew is the one of Bombay and being told what to do by her mother. Gemma didn't know that when her mother gave her, her stone necklace and ushered her home. When she refused, which resulted in an argument, Gemma didn't know that this would be the last time she would ever talk to her mother. After her mother's death she was sent to Spence, a finishing school for young ladies, which was where she got entangled with the most powerful daughters in the country. Visions of her mother's death haunted her in her dreams and a 'shadow boy'  warned her about those visions.

I adored this book and it was hard to put down: sometimes teachers caught me reading it under my desk during lessons. The people who read it will agree with me that it's incredibly well-written and you really feel like you can relate to this character. Gemma really influenced me during the day and I thank Libba Bray for creating such a masterpiece.

Half-Term

We're on our half-term break now, until Monday 5th November. After that, plenty more book recommendations from our Transition Year pupils, the remainder of the Macbeth annotations via ShowMe, and lots more.

Macbeth 8: Act 2 scene iii - 'the wine of life is drawn'

This is the eighth in a series of analyses of key moments in Macbeth via the iPad app ShowMe.

Macbeth expresses in public his horror at the sight of Duncan's body.

House Speech Competition 2012

Recently we had the first major Transition Year event of the year, the annual House Speech Competition. Here, Samuel Clarke casts his eye on it:

This year’s Transition Year house speech competition, which took place at eight o’ clock o the final evening of September was, I believe, considered by all who went to be a great success. The annual competition which has been taking place in the college for several years now showcased ten speakers, with two different speakers from each senior house who delivered words on a range of various topics of their choice.

Having watched many of the candidates preparing their speeches in our English lessons throughout the week, and having also given advice as a class on how they could improve their speeches, it was interesting to see how the speeches turned out.

After filing in from the cool night air of Chapel Square, to settle under the varnished arching beams of the Big Schoolroom, the evening commenced rapidly with a short word from Ms Smith followed by a warm welcome by the appointed presenter of the evening, Lydia Johnson, whose responsibility it was to explain the marking scheme of the competition and introduce each speaker.

First to the stage was Roman Sharykin student from Glen House who confidently began the evening with a speech that questioned how far one would go in order to impress and be noticed by others, or as he himself put it “be accepted.” Being from Moscow, he referred to a recent incident that has taken place near his home where a heavy metal music group, ‘Pussy Riot,’ in order to gain more fame for themselves, stirred up great controversy. Entering a Russian Orthodox Cathedral they performed a heavy metal song behind the altar - the place where Christ is believed to reside, resulting in a two- year prison sentence for each band member. He claimed that the band had “put fame in the centre of their lives” and that they had been willing to go extremely far in order to “be accepted.” Having stated at the start of his speech that his objective had been to “make people think,” he finished the speech with asking how far each of us would go to be accepted.

Speaking for Gwynn house, Alex Barnes-Auld followed Roman with an equally good speech where he recounted some various experiences from boarding in Columba’s,in Gwynn House itself. He explained to the crowd that although he could find it tough at times, ‘returning to dorm after a tiring day where he would find his mattress outside in the rain,’ he very much enjoys his time in Gwynn and loves being a member of the house.

TY Book Recommendations 6

Two more recommendations from pupils preparing for their Transition Year Extended Essays-

Eireann Tinkhof has read Natascha Kampusch's book 3,096 Days:-

This autobiography was an extremely enjoyable read. Natascha tells us about her struggle to survive for years whilst being kept captive by a man name Wolfgang Priklopil. I enjoyed the way you got an insight into what actually happened and how she used her willpower to get through the horrible situation. She was a girl living in Austria and was captured by the age of ten and was kept in a cellar for 3,096 days. The way she tells her story is very interesting and it is good that she doesn't go into much detail about some topics. I would highly recommend this to anyone who wants to move away from fiction and try reading something new.

John Clarke has read Daphne du Maurier's classic novel Rebecca:-

Rebecca is a book that in my opinion is more geared towards females. This is partly because it is written in the first person of the heroine (whose name we do not know). The novel displays a womanly rivlary, between the two wives of Maxime de Winter, the main character, his newfound spouse from Monte Carlo, and the late Rebecca, famed for her beauty, personality and elegance. As other themes feature in the book such as dress codes and tea parties, I would definitely recommend this to a girl.

Book Recommendation: 'A Neutron Walks into a Bar'

Tonight in the Science Gallery in Dublin, A Neutron Walks into a Bar: random facts about our universe and everything in it is launched. Co-edited by our Science Department colleague Humphrey Jones of Frog Blog fame, it's just the thing for Christmas and we recommend it to all our visitors. And all royalties go to cystic fibrosis research.

In the words of the Amazon page:

Fun, quirky and informative, A Neutron Walks Into A Bar... is a collection of facts, definitions, explanations, biographies and jokes guaranteed to quench a thirst for knowledge, discovery and humour that's out of the ordinary.

Did you know that water is the only thing found naturally on earth in each of the 3 states of matter?

This book began its life as Science140, an exciting social media project co-ordinated by four Irish science communicators and enthusiasts including Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin presenter of RTE's The Science Squad, Maria Delaney, Humphrey Jones and Paul O'Dwyer. Since its launch on Twitter in the spring of 2012, thousands of tweets have been collected, each explaining a scientific principle, fact, joke or biography in 140 characters or less. The tweets collected are on a range of topics from astronomy to zoology, and have been compiled by science enthusiasts, educators, members of the public and celebrities from all over the world.

TY Book Recommendation 5

Ally Boyd Crotty has been reading Mark Haddon's novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time for her Transition Year Extended Essay, and recommends it:

This book is about a boy named Christopher Boone, and Christopher has autism. The story begins when Christopher finds a dog dead on his neighbour's lawn. This dog is his neighbour's dog, called Wellington, whom he knows and likes. Because Christopher wants to find out who killed Wellington, he decides to write a 'murder mystery' novel. As the novel unfolds it unravels to be about more than just who killed Wellington, but also about Christopher's complicated family life and the secrets and lies held by his parents.

I would recommend this book to anyone my age and older, but probably not younger. I especially like how it is written through the eyes of an autistic boy of about my age because you can see how differently he sees day-to-day things to us, and this is very interesting, and also amusing at times. Christopher's narrative is one of my favourite things about this book, although it is quite hard to get into at the beginning. Once you get past the beginning chapters however, it lures you in, and after that I did not want to put the book down.

Christopher puts some maths problems in the book which are something like puzzles, such as the 'Monty Hall Problem'. This is one of the main reasons this book is more suited for my age group or older because I know that if I was any younger I could maybe find these a little confusing, or even just very boring, but when I read it I really liked having the problems because it did make the book even more unique.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and it would definitely recommend it to a friend.

"Hallowe'en 1915"

The 76th Poem of the Week is "Hallowe'en 1915" by Winifred Mary Letts, an Englishwoman with very strong Irish connections, and who is buried in Rathcoole, Co Dublin. Hallowe'en is next week, when we are on half-term holiday. The Poem of the Week will resume after half-term.


Will you come back to us, men of our hearts, to-night
In the misty close of the brief October day?
Will you leave the alien graves where you sleep and steal away
To see the gables and eaves of home grow dark in the evening light?

O men of the manor and moated hall and farm,
Come back to-night, treading softly over the grass;
The dew of the autumn dusk will not betray where you pass;
The watchful dog may stir in his sleep but he'll raise no hoarse alarm.

Then you will stand, not strangers, but wishful to look
At the kindly lamplight shed from the open door,
And the fire-lit casement where one, having wept you sore,
Sits dreaming alone with her sorrow, not heeding her open book.

Forgotten awhile the weary trenches, the dome
Of pitiless Eastern sky, in this quiet hour
When no sound breaks the hush but the chimes from the old church tower,
And the river's song at the weir,—ah! then we will welcome you home.

You will come back to us just as the robin sings
Nunc Dimittis from the larch to a sun late set
In purple woodlands; when caught like silver fish in a net
The stars gleam out through the orchard boughs and the church owl flaps his wings.

We have no fear of you, silent shadows, who tread
The leaf-bestrewn paths, the dew-wet lawns. Draw near
To the glowing fire, the empty chair, — we shall not fear,
Being but ghosts for the lack of you, ghosts of our well-beloved dead.

TY Book Recommendation 4

Bethany Shiell has been reading Emma Donoghue's novel Room for her Transition Year Extended Essay, and writes:-

This book had been recommended tome by so many people that I felt I had to read it. And now I know why, now I can’t stop reading!

Jack lives in Room, which measures 11 feet by 11 feet and has a locked door and a skylight. This is Jack’s entire world. Jack has never been outside of Room, so he knows that all his friends he sees on TV aren’t real. Jack’s Ma was kidnapped seven years ago at the age of nineteen, and neither of them have seen Outside since. Though the difference is that Jack was born in Room, and is happy with his life in that 121 square foot room. Until one day when his Ma turns his world upside down and tells him that there’s a world outside. We are plunged into Jack’s life of ignorance about the outside world, and  the frustration of his Ma, who has always wanted him to live a normal life.

I found this description of the book that I agree with completely: "Room is a book to read in one sitting. When it’s over you look up: the world looks the same but you are somehow different and that feeling lingers for days" (Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveller’s Wife). It makes you see your life in a whole new light, and it is also "a moving portrayal of how love can be born, nurtured and survive even in the darkest of places" (Cecilia Ahern, author of P.S. I Love You).