B - The one that was at half speed.

ESSENTIAL QUESTION: What significance does the sea hold for sea-faring societies?

I asked learner to identify examples of kennings and alliteration in "The Seafarer." Learners struggled until I discovered that the reading was not completed! (Thank you for your honesty.)

I gave some brief notes on "The Seafarer".

Learners used the rest of the period competing the essay on Anglo-Saxon ideals.

READ:

• Bede, page 32
• excerpt from Bede's A History of the English Church and People, pages 33-34
• "The Seafarer" pages 35-38
• The Old English Period, pages 41-42
• The Medieval Period, pages 43-54

NEXT CLASS: the sea, Anglo-Saxon dualities

F - The one when we discussed what happens when individual authority collides with social order.

ESSENTIAL QUESTION: What happens to authority, leadership, and moral rules when the world has literally been destroyed?

COLLECTED: Hard copies of one-act Greek tragedy "redux" of "The Japanese Quince"

I spoke about the importance of completing assigned tasks on time.

Learners presented their choral reading of "Ode to Man" from Antigone.

I spoke about and gave brief notes on other key speeches/monologues from the play:

• Creon's "Ship of State" speech (lines 179-235),
• Creon v. Antigone - 1st stichomythia (lines 499-594),
• Haemon's metaphor of trees and sails (lines 797-804),
• Tirsesias's prophecy and destruction (lines 1090-1137);

and I made connections between individual authority and social order.

I introduced Greene's "The Destructors" (see the link to the left) as a piece that also questions leadership and law in the face of chaos and disorder. I modelled a close reading of the first two paragraphs of the story.

READ: Greene's "The Destructors," Camus's The Outsider

NEXT CLASS: close reading of text

B - The one about burials and embedding quotes.

ESSENTIAL QUESTION: How does the blending of pagan and Christian burial rites reflect the Anglo-Saxon struggle between achieving earthly immortality (the love of glory) and spiritual salvation (the inevitability of death)?

We read together "The Burning of Beowulf's Body," and discussed the Anglo-Saxon tension between glory and judgement. Learners identified pagan and Christian elements from the excerpt and chatted to the their partners about this dual lens and what that lens might suggest about what is happening in this time period.

We reviewed how to embed/integrate quotes into the body of sentences and paragraphs. Learners used the rest of the period to finish working on their essays.

DUE 6 October - Anglo-Saxon Ideals Essay

READ:

• Bede, page 32
• excerpt from Bede's A History of the English Church and People, pages 33-34
• "The Seafarer" pages 35-38
• The Old English Period, pages 41-42
• The Medieval Period, pages 43-54

NEXT CLASS: Elegiac Epic

F - The one about the individual & other.

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS: How does a ruler or society define who belongs as an individual and who is cast out as "other"? What happens when the individual's personal conscience defies his/her country's boundaries?

I asked learners to consider their priority: family obligation or the law.

Learners read and annotated the Choral Ode, "Ode to Man" from Antigone (lines 377-415). Learners discussed questions and I noted some features of the ode:

• What does Sophocles imply about human power at the beginning of the ode?
• What is the one power that humans won't ever conquer or escape?
• What must a ruler balance for a city to "rise high"? What happens when pride disrupts the balance?

Learners worked in groups of five to arrange choral reading of the ode.

PRACTISE: Creative Adaptation of "The Japanese Quince" as tragedy DUE as a hard copy next class

READ: (see the links to the left)

• Greene's "The Destructors"
• Camus's The Outsider

NEXT CLASS: choral ode, choral reading, disruption of social order

B - The one about archetypes.

ESSENTIAL QUESTION: What does the archetype of the hero tell us about how societies valued human greatness?

I gave some brief notes on archetypes in literature, and learners discussed how the characters Beowulf and Antigone reveal what the Anglo-Saxons and the Ancient Greeks (respectively) valued about heroics and greatness.

Learners continued working on their essays on Anglo-Saxon ideals

NEXT CLASS: Burial

F - The one with the Gallery Walk, or more correctly, Gallery Stand.

ESSENTIAL QUESTION: In a world of uncompromising convictions, who bears ultimate responsibility for tragedy: the defender of order or the champion of justice?

Learners reflected on the topics I asked them to consider whilst watching Antigone at Bard on the Beach last week. They noted their thoughts on questions about power, sympathy, spectacle, and modernity, then they all participated on a Gallery Walk/Stand, where they extended thinking on another learner's reflections. They used, "Yes, but..." and "Yes, and..."

I went over the assignment for preparing a Greek Tragedy adaptation of Galsworthy's short story "The Japanese Quince." Learners used the rest of the period to work on their adaptations.

READ: Antigone (see the link to the left)

NEXT CLASS: Creative Adaptations, The Choral Ode

B - The one that was a work period.

Learners used the period to outline and draft the essay on Anglo-Saxon ideals.

NEXT CLASS: Archetypes