LEARNING LOG 7

Romeo and Juliet. The first thing that comes to my mind when I first hear it is... TRAGEDY. SADNESS. And, LEONARDO DICAPRIO. Yes, the actor for the most recent Romeo and Juliet remake. I don't know, it just popped up when I first heard of R&J. But NOW, when I hear the words or letters, "R&J" the first thing that comes to mind is... The examination acting thing we had to do. When? Where? Stuff like that. But know that it's over, I can sit back and relax and think about Leonardo DiCaprio's acting once more(Ha ha! Joking. :D). Well, the actual performance turned out better than expected. Liang Wei got really angry, I thought he wouldn't be that upset, and we didn't mess up! :) After ALL the hard work and practice we put it, everything turned out, well, just GREAT. :) Now, I feel like I'm having R&J withdrawal, I miss it so much! :( Just to have it back again even with all the work we had to go through first, would be an amazing thing.Although everyone was freaking out before the performance, we had a great one in the end I feel. To recommend this to the Sec 1s, DEFINITELY. They should totally get the fun experience like we did. I think they'll be missing out if they didn't get to do this. It would be quite unfair if they didn't get to experience this whole, 'package' you could say, both the hard work, the pain and yet the fun in acting, seeing how others act and such! So, yes. I say the Sec 1s should go for it. It will give some of them a chance to probably show their talent for acting and from there, teachers will be able to choose those who are good in acting for say, school performances or even, competitions like, Odyssey of the Mind. Points that I feel my group should work on is, to go easy on people when they are unable to do certain things. When one group member yells at another to do or say his or her lines properly, even sometimes cutting into other people's lines, it sorts of disrupts the unity of the group, as one person may get upset with the other for pointing out his or her faults instead of the good things or upset as one's lines are being cut. That's it, I guess, for what I feel personally, what my group can work on. :)

LEARNING LOG 6

Recently, we learnt about a lot of literary devices. There was the basic literary devices which was split into two lessons, one was imagery and figurative language and the other was sound devices. Then we went on to advanced literary devices, diction and sentence structures. From imagery and figurative language, the word that stuck in my head was personification because I often like to use it and it was actually, well, to me, the easiest to use. Personification is the attribution of human beings to inanimate objects. For example, "The wind whispered into my ear." The wind does not actually whisper especially directly into a person's ear. It is just blown across. Humans whisper though. So this author gave the wind, an inanimate object, a human attribution. In sound devices, the word that was the most familiar was onomatopoeia. It is the formation of words which echo the sounds that they describe. For example, when you drop a pan, it goes, "CLANG!" So you write the sound into a word. That's my way of remembering this word! From lesson three, diction and sentence structures, the most funny example they gave us in the book was from complex sentence. What it said was, "When it strikes its fancy, Gorilla kills people and with a bottle of wine, eats them." I laughed when I first read it! I mean, what kind of gorilla kills people and eats them with a bottle of WINE? I guess that's what the people who did this booklet think when the phrase "complex sentence" appears. :) Anyway, a complex sentence means one or more main ideas together with minor phrases or clauses. All in all, the lessons were really interesting and I had quite a fun time figuring out which literary device went to which meaning. :)

LEARNING LOG 5

I just recently read the booklet, "The Unseen", provided by Mrs Woo. Well, I have DEFINITELY learnt a lot from it, from how to tackle unseen stuff, to writing an essay for Literature. so, I'll slit it into 2 parts;
PART I- A GUIDE TO TACKLING THE UNSEEN
In this part, I learnt how to approach unseen poems and prose passage. The similarities between both of them was to READ THE POEM/PASSAGE AT LEAST 3 TIMES. First time, brief look through. Second time, get a better understanding. Third time for poem is to IMAGINE. For prose passage, it is to read through the questions and then go back to the passage again. :P I personally think that this is a good method BUT, it takes up too much time. If a REALLY slow reader does this, he/she will definitely not have enough time to tackle the questions. The booklet also taught me that it is better to write notes down at the sides of the poem or passage, to help us list down our thoughts on the poem or passage. I actually thought that we were not allowed to do that so I always erase whatever I write down to help me understand. It also gave me do-s and don't-s on how to answer questions which was pretty helpful as well. Like using PEEL, Point, Explain/Elaborate, Evidence/Example and finally, Link. It also gave me model answers and examples on how to answer certain questions. For quoting, I learnt the ABCs, Attention, Brief and Context, which taught me how to write quotes. :)
PART II- HOW TO ORGANIZE AND WRITE THE ESSAY
In this part, I learnt how to write a Literature essay. I learnt that basically for essay writing, we need to have "a close engagement with the text and an ability to communicate a coherent argument". This part was VERY WORDY, I must say, but it contained a lot of information. I also learnt the method of demonstrating "a clear awareness of the text's meaning, a logical interpretation of the text, a detailed analysis and evaluation of the text, and finally, an insightful response to the text". To basically write an essay, we should use PEEP, Point, Evidence, Elaboration and Personal response. I also learnt the act of irony in Literature essays.
All in all, this booklet was really a meaningful one as I gathered much insight from it and learnt MANY MANY tips for me to use to boost my Literature!

LEARNING LOG 4

Macbeth's three witches!!! That was our latest Literature lesson and it was AWESOME. First of all, I'd like to say that ALL the groups did a very good job in one way or another, through props, acting skills, etc. For my group, consisting of Brian, Tarif and me, we wore dresses and had a laundry bag as our cauldron. Quite weird right? Haha. (: Some Groups like Sanjna's was great in acting and they were really funny. Some people really shocked me, I mean, I didn't really expect them to shine because they are usually quiet and all, but they did! Like Amanda in Shadleen's group, she was great! Her voice sounded exactly like a witch's and it sort of made the whole thing spookier. And Iqbal! His voice was just brilliant! He could go really high pitch and since I was not looking at first, I thought it was a girl then I realised, wait. Liang Wei's group did not have girls. I looked up and realised, it was Iqbal! Quite shocking. And Jia Yi too! I also thought that he really gave it his all. (:

So, my group, GROUP 7, we actually did not really prepare in the acting area. For our props, the initial idea was to wear skirts but Tarif came up with a brilliant idea of wearing long dresses which suited us better. Tarif also came up with the idea of brooms made up of sticks and it really looked like witches' brooms. I did the powerpoint slides and Brian came up with the materials needed, like the laundry bag was his. So, all in all, our group was quite ok.

I do not really have any suggestions for this lesson because it was really really fun and I just wish that we could do this more often. (: Like for the upcoming Romeo and Juliet performance, it will be quite interesting to see how everything works out! I am so looking forward to the fun! Who knows? Someone might just get to act with the hot guy she likes! *winks!* (:

LEARNING LOG 3

Predictions; they can be very scary at times. For example, Hui Min heard of this woman who was struck by lightning, and then was able to see the future. Woah right? That's not the freaky part. The scary part is that she actually foretold the 9/11 incident! SCARY. Predictions may turn out to be true sometimes but, I feel that it's just coincidence. I mean, seriously. Think about it. Predictions may not always be true. Well, I can prove it, like there was this story by one of the students(I forgot whose it was), that her father's friend predicted that when he drives to Malaysia for his upcoming meeting, he would have an accident or something like that. Turns out, he didn't. The only 'damage' was scratches from rocks hitting the car, which happens VERY often, and nothing else.

Anyway, the lesson was very interesting. I was grouped with Steffi, Jeron and Tarif, and we decided to do Steffi's story for presentation as it was the most interesting, compared to the other two guy's stories(no offence guys! I didn't have one 'cause I never experienced such a thing). It was about Steffi's mother having a dream that the picture for her upcoming oral examination, would be a market. Steffi trusted her mother and she studied pictures of markets. On the day of the examination, it really did turn out to be a picture of a market! You know there's a saying, "Mothers know best." well, Steffi's story sorts of proves it. Her mother did know best. (:

Well, I also remember this one other story that Rachel heard of. It was about this person that went to an old folk's home met a crazy old lady, and that lady told him/her that his/her father would be in an accident. That night, his/her father did not come home. When it was nearing midnight, the family received a call that his/her father was in hospital. The next day, this person went to look for the old lady but, she was gone. FREAKY. Mrs Woo thought that the lady was a ghost. Well, in my opinion, it was just another coincidence. Yeah, coincidences again. And there was this other story which was pretty freaky too. It was about This girl who sat next to a crazy lady who told her that her sister would die that very day. Freaked out, the girl alighted at the next stop. There she saw her sister crossing a traffic light. The girl called out to her sister and when the sister turned, she was knocked down by a car and she died. The girl turned to look at the crazy lady at the bus for the last time and found that she was staring at her. FREAKY!!! O:

Well, the lesson was quite good and the following stories were pretty scary too but, suggestions? I don't have any. I found the lesson great and it was fun to hear the different stories although they were really scary. I think that my group's story was the most mild one. It really wasn't scary. (: Anyway, I'm really looking forward to tomorrow's lesson. Literature has been getting really fun! (:

LEARNING LOG 2

Superstitions. Most people believe in either one or two of them. For myself? I don't really believe in any. However, I feel that people believe in superstitions either because they just have ONE weird experience and they make up weird explanations for that or they have nothing better to do so they randomly make things up (no offence to anyone!). I don't really know. But that's my opinion.

Anyway, I found the lesson pretty interesting, just listening to the different superstitions each classmate found. Some were pretty scary, like the one that was like, if you take a photo with three people in it, the center person will die first. S: It kind of freaked me out. I mean, I have taken photos with two other friends and me in the center, but ah well, I don't really care. I mean, how is it that that center person can die first? What if say, A, B and C are taking photos together. A stands in the middle first, then B, then C. How is it possible that either one of them can die first? They ALL stood in the middle, each one at different times. So, I don't really get superstitions. In my opinion, I felt that the lesson was great, but due to time constrain, I guess we couldn't get more examples. ): Bummer.

Then there was the Literature presentation of Macbeth's Three Witches. It was HILARIOUS! I loved every moment of it! (: Especially when Mrs Woo gave her representation of the three witches. At first I thought it was a recording of a kid who was pretending to be a witch! It was AWESOME! (: And then there was Liang Wei, Jasmine and Lionel who tried their best to follow Mrs Woo. Lionel's voice turned out to be lower than Mrs Woo's but Liang Wei's was SUPER HIGH! At first I was so shocked, but it was so funny that I had to laugh out loud. Then there was Phania, Shun Hui and Jia Le's example. They were funny too, especially when they tried to go high but suddenly turned low. (: In my opinion, the lesson was brilliant but I wish there were more examples. It would have been funny to see every one's interpretation of the witches but, i think there is a drama section where everyone has to act out right? (: Oh, I can't wait! (:

LEARNING LOG 1

CINQUAINS.

Cinquains.

Fun, short.

Thinking, describing, writing.

Easy to learn them.

Awesome.

Learning how to write a cinquain was fun. A cinquain consists of five lines. The first line, a one-word title (duh...). The second line, two words that describe the subject. The third line, three action words. The fourth line, a sentence of four words. and the last line, a word that describes the whole subject. One cannot repeat any of the words that have already been used, so I find it quite fun to just think up of many different words I can use in the poem. :)

In my opinion, the lesson was quite interesting but I found it too short. As in, we didn't really do much cinquains for the whole lesson. Other than that, the lesson was pretty good but I wish that we could have played some games just to enjoy ourselves and to get to learn the cinquains in a fun way. If we did something more fun, I feel that it would be a more interesting and exciting lesson. :)

OK, got to stop here and go; I'm going out to have an AWESOME dinner at ASHTON's!