Presentations begin today. As you watch the presentations, you are required to take metacognitive style (or cornell style if you prefer) notes. These notes will be evaluated. I will hand back the notes you took during our Hamlet lecture with feedback.

One of our last blogging days. Think about what you have learned so far about your strengths and weaknesses in writing and focus on improving one of them in this blog post. Here’s Alex’s article:

‘Once in a generation’: This time, Irish government calls for ending abortion ban

Also check Google Classroom by the end of the day for feedback and marks for your your literature circle essays.

Just a reminder of what I’m expecting for your presentations next week:

1. Be prepared to present Monday. Presentation order will be random.
2. Make sure you have handouts for your classmates. If you don’t want to print out handouts, you can share digital copies with them. Your handout should be no more than a page and should contain your thesis and supporting details. Here is a digital version of Hamlet you can use for citations. Remember, you cite Shakespeare like this (Act. Scene. Lines) = (4.2.23-24). You may not need citations for you presentation but you will for your essay. 
3. Remember, the focus for marks for the presentation is this list of success criteria:
   1. Make eye contact with my audience when speaking;
   2. Speak without reading from slides or cue cards;
   3. Create slides that emphasize key ideas but do not stand in for them;
   4. Use a minimal amount of text on the screen;
   5. Choose eye-catching, high resolution images to emphasize key ideas in my presentation;
4. Your actual projects are due on Friday and will be assessed for this expectation (which actually comes from the reading strand, but is one we have not yet adequately addressed):
   1. 1.8 identify and analyse the perspectives and/or biases evident in texts, including complex and challenging texts, commenting with understanding and increasing insight on any questions they may raise about beliefs, values, identity, and power

In other words, how well does your project identify and analyse the perspectives in Hamlet and the questions they raise about beliefs, values, identity, and power?

The randomly selected presentation order is:

• Brittany
• Alex and Rayne
• Payton
• Sophie
• Lucy, Kyra, Zoe
• Noah, Ben, Tyler
• Mackenzie and Marissa
• Elis and Matt
• Emma
• Kiano
• Sarah

Effective speaking strategies:

The first part of this video is focused primarily on intrapersonal speaking strategies, which is definitely useful, but I’m mostly concerned with the second half where he talks about vocal strategies.

Before watching, think about the qualities that an effective speaker has that you find engaging.

And now on to our Hamlet projects.

Yesterday I had you read an article about creating effective slides. I want to review that with and you also talk about effective speaking strategies.

Also I want to mention some writing errors that have come up as I’ve been marking your essays. Specifically: passive voice, contextualizing quotations, elaborating, and why do I want you to mention literary devices?

Then you can continue working on your Hamlet projects.

Hi folks,

We’re talking presentation strategies today. Go to Google classroom for more details. Read the instructions carefully!

Just a quick post to let you guys know that I probably won’t be updated the blog as frequently from here on in just due to the nature of what we’re working on.

Today is a blogging day though and I’m going to use this as an opportunity to work on some of your writing skills so we’re going to look at unity and coherence. As you write your blog posts this week, I want you to make a special effort to ensure your paragraphs contain unity and coherence.

Here’s your blogging article for today from Noah: Childish Gambino’s This is America is a brutal and necessary look at black death

Or there’s also Kiano’s article: E-cigarette liquid packaging targets kids

Hi folks,

So I’m away today too. But I’m back tomorrow. Here’s the deal, since you lost Friday’s class as a work period I told you (via text) that you’d have one extra day so your essays actually aren’t due until tomorrow. Please remember to check the assessment criteria for ENG4U Unit 3 Culminating Task before submitting.

But, our schedule still stands. So today you are beginning The Missing Voices Hamlet Project and I want to know what you complete by the end of class. So before you do anything else, go to Google Classroom.

PS tomorrow there will be a lecture on missing voices (and speech in general) in Hamlet.

You will continue to work on your drafts today but first I want to talk to you about quotations. Please see the following presentation if you were away.

I also want you to travel back in time with me to February 14 of this year. It was a good day. Full of GIFs. I expect you to incorporate this wisdom into your essay.

You are working on your literature circle essays in class this week. See Google Classroom for more details