Good Reads: www.goodreads.com

I am now signed up and am posting reviews of my favorite books to Goodreads.com. The site allows you to identify your favorite types of books and then selects recommendations among friends/teaching groups.

Have a look at my first review of Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/741815446

"The Road," by Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy is know for his haunting depictions of the American West. Many of his fictions take place on the border of the United States and Mexico in the parched desert lands of Southern California and Arizona. 

The Road takes place in a post-apocalyptic world that has been devastated by a nuclear explosion. The protagonists are a father and son who only have each other to rely on in this forbidding environment. Their struggle for survival see them grapple against the tedium of existing in a vacuum and the horror of encountering the desperate survivors who exist in this world. 

I  would recommend this for older teen readers as some of the events can be upsetting; McCarthy evokes ultra-realistic dialogue/setting so caution is advised. However, his masterful, terse diction moves the novel along at a frightening pace and I am certainly going to seek out another of his works for a read in the near future!

Language and Mass Communication: Advertising Unit

Check out this Zeen!  Like a magazine, it is full of articles, images, and media. This interactive resources features links to resources that support the teaching of Advertising in the Language and Mass Communication unit of the English A: Language and Literature course at Colegio F.D. Roosevelt, The American School of Lima.

Zeen.com link

Nancy Duarte: The Secret Structure of Great Speeches

Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nYFpuc2Umk

• Nancy Duart starts with a very powerful opening: “You have the power to change the world.”
• Ideas can be brilliant but need to be conveyed. If you want to change the world around you then you must be able to communicate that vision.
• The power of story telling is millennia old.  You can use it to sell a pitch.
• Aristotle: beginning, middle, end
• You need to empower the audience and make them the hero.
•  Joseph Campbell’s ‘hero’ story means that the presenter is the mentor who empowers/enables the audience member to become the hero within the structure of their presentation/speech.
• Hero- Roadblock- Mentor helps the hero to overcome the problem and then enter a changed world. 



• Gustav Freytag's Narrative Structure Diagram

“Every presentation should have a call to action.” There is an important difference between the way the world is and what the world could be.


Steve Jobs was the master of communication and promised the audience the “future bliss” of Apple products.









Duart states that Martin Luther King used both repetition and metaphors so the audience could share his vision.


Great speeches should have audience participation. As a class we should think of including an audience participation element within our work.


Duart also splices neat, visual jokes within her presentation that invite the audience to insert their portrait photo on the body of Martin Luther King and make their dreams reality.  This empowerment makes a presentation engaging, enthusing the audience and is probably one of the reasons why Duart has received 750,000+ views on Youtube!

SAAC Football Championship Final, Quito, November 2012: “It’s not the winning…”

“It’s not the winning, it’s the taking part that counts.” This is a statement that I had always viewed with skepticism—it had always seemed like a convenient excuse for not being quite good enough. However, last year’s SAAC Football Championship changed my thinking on that forever.

We knew from the moment we beat the American School of Quito in the final of the SAAC Soccer Championship in Buenos Aires in 2011, that we would have to re-double our efforts to retain our hold on the championship. Our opposition in the first group game was Quito and they had given us a massive scare by putting three goals passed us in 13 minutes. I remember looking at Coach Arle and Coach Hancock who were just as baffled as I to find ourselves in such a predicament after all of the pre-season training we had done. However, the boys showed great resolve and after losing 4-1 in that opening game they held themselves together and went on a running streak that continued in to the final where, as fate would have it, we ended up meeting, and beating, Quito.

Fast- forward a year to November 2012: lightning striking twice would seem like a very apt metaphor, especially given the stormy conditions of the final that year. We had already played, and been beaten by Quito in the group stages. However, like the year before, we battled through and found ourselves meeting them once more in the final of the competition.

At this stage, it is worth mentioning more contextual detail about the playing conditions. Quito is situated at 2,800 meters in the Andes, an altitude that makes you short of breath if you have to walk up steps, let alone play six games in three days at a football tournament. But our boys were ready, and that is one of the reasons I had such respect for them.

We knew before we went that conditions would be difficult and had trained accordingly, with the team enthusiastically taking part in the middle-distance running/strength and conditioning exercises with as much zeal as the skills-based practice sessions. There was also a real egalitarian sense of togetherness with equal respect for members of the team regardless of whether they were a G9 like Sergio Piaggio, playing in his first SAAC tournament, or a seasoned campaigner, like the captain, Jomi Tirado, playing in his fourth SAAC tournament. Mr. Hancock had a memorable phrase which would become our team’s slogan throughout that season and which is good advice for any team hoping to achieve success: “Train together, stay together.”

Given the sacrifices made and the collegiality of our team, it was with a good deal of emotion that Coach Arle and I delivered our team talk before the final. We had to try and strike the right balance of motivating the team but also dispel some of the nerves caused by playing in such a big occasion. As the kick off time for the final approached it was clear that Quito, who are a wonderful footballing team, were also going to benefit from home support as hundreds of spectators started to fill up the terrace on one side of the pitch. It really was an evocative scene as the teams lined up to shake hands at the beginning of the game with the elevation of the ground affording us a beautiful view across the city and to the volcanoes in the far-distance.

What was going to be really important for us was to keep our heads and ensure that we did not let in any soft goals in the opening minutes; the longer we could stay organized, the more nerves would be dispelled, and then we could start to impose ourselves upon the opposition. With Checho in goal and Juan Diego Vidaurazzaga anchoring our defense we started to play with our own shape and the first half played out very evenly. As we got to halftime we realized that we were in a position to go out and win the game and surely the pressure was mounting on our hosts who had probably expected to get off to a stronger start but had been frustrated by our fantastic marking and competing for every ball. Jomi and Vicenzo Calvi did the job of delivering our half time team talk for us and everyone was clued up on what their job was to ensure success.

But then disaster struck. Within minutes of the restart, Sebastian Rios was sent off for a second yellow card for a seemingly innocuous challenge. We knew that it would have been wrong to protest the decision out of respect to the referee but it did seem remarkably harsh. It was going to take real character for our team, already with heavy legs and struggling for air, to play out a game against a team with an extra man.  To make it worse, within moments of the game being restarted from a free kick, Quito struck and we now found ourselves one man, and one goal down as ominous, pitch-black storm clouds started to swirl and gather all around us.

Being up at that altitude, when there is a storm brewing you are actually in the center of it and when the thunder claps ring out like gun shots you flinch in panic. The air was thick and heavy with electricity as tremendous bolts of lightning illuminated the dank, grey skies. It seemed that everything was conspiring against us and as a coach I had started to run out of encouraging words. But if I was having doubts, the ten players out on the pitch certainly had none. They kept playing with intensity and grit and, when Jake Yllander found himself played through, he took the ball around their keeper and from a seemingly impossible angle fired home to level the match. The ecstasy of that moment will be one that I will not forget for a long, long time. I have rarely experienced a rush of total joy at a sporting event that matched our team’s reaction to that goal, and I include trips to watch Manchester United at Old Trafford with crowds of 75,000+ when I say that. It was the fact we had worked so hard together for so long that to be back in the game was just the best feeling and I remember all our SAAC football girls, who had shown amazing spirit by watching us from the sidelines, our subs, Coach Hancock, Coach Arle and myself were screaming with pride as sheets of rain poured over our faces and the storm raged on overhead.

In the end though, the scale of the task proved too much. In those conditions, with the mud sticking to the boys’ boots, legs became tired and, ultimately, Quito’s extra man told and they were able to get another goal, before the conditions became so bad it was deemed too dangerous to continue and the match was postponed for 15 minutes to allow the storm to pass over. The team fired themselves up for the final few minutes but it was not to be. However, my respect and identity with that football team could not have been higher and by putting themselves through that experience, their lives and memories are richer for it. So I can say with confidence that it is the taking part, not the winning that matters in life.

Ken Robinson on Creativity in Schools

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/17/to-encourage-creativity-mr-gove-understand

Individual Oral Commentary (IOC): Focus on Robert Frost Poetry. What is the difference between a Level 5 and a Level 7?

Individual Oral Commentary (IOC): Focus on Robert Frost Poetry.

Open up your poetry booklets to both "Waiting Afield at Dusk" and "Birches" by Robert Frost.  Additionally, open a IOC Rubric so that you can make sense of the scores for each of the four criteria. You will be able to hear two students' commentaries on these poems respectively: one is good, the other excellent. Please review my comments and then see if you can decide on some key factors which make the "Birches" commentary even more effective than that of "Waiting Afield at Dusk".

Olivia: Level 5 IOC on "Waiting Afield at Dusk"

Introduction:

You cover a lot of ground with your introduction and connect significant events in Frost's life to "A Boy's Will". By 1913 they had not had 4 children though. Make clearer your comment on Frost's journey into Virginia's Dismal Swamp (if you are to use this reference). Additionally, you should have a clearer idea of when his children/wife died or you undermine your argumentation. We discusses that "A Boy's Will", published in 1913, was a reflection of poems written perhaps in the previous two decades (not three or he would have been 9 years old!)

You transfer to the analysis at the appropriate time. You state the isolation that Frost finds in the field at dusk gives him an appropriate space for reflection, a reflection that is probably based upon the family events that you introduce earlier. 

Crit. A: 7

His wife has not yet died (dies in 1934) so you are out with your suggestion that this poem is written towards his dead wife. You must refer to which form of poem it is: this is blank verse as there is no rhyme scheme. You would have shown a very good understanding of the text with well-chosen references to this text had you got this part right. For an excellent response it would have been great had you linked back some of the associations to Frost's "Sound of Sense" essays/letters.

Crit. B: 7

Assonance: "The repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds in neighboring words". We see this at work in Frost's poem with the reference to "full moon" in adjacent lines. The long, slow vowel sounds add to the sense of the enormity of the moon rising and lighting the sky (perhaps light enough to read his book of verse if he chose). I agree with your comment that the setting of the full moon does give a haunting quality to this poem (which you could develop with reference to other aspects such as the bat "pirouetting" and the "abyss of odor" that he senses 

I agree with your assumption that the dream of "nighthawks peopling heaven" is a reference to daed family members (which at 1913 would include both his parents and his first son and daughter) and their "unearthly cry" is representative of the pain he feels.

In terms of the poem's structure you could make a comment on the use of iambic pentameter within the poem, as well as the fact there are two distinct stanzas--you could make a more appropriate comment surmising the difference/intention of each between each.

Crit. C: 5

The commentary is very effectively organized; the structure is coherent and effective.

Crit. D: 4

The language is clear and appropriate, with a good degree of accuracy in grammar and sentence construction; register and style are effective and appropriate to the commentary.

Arianne: Level 7 IOC on "Birches" (Well done for keeping going Arianne! Your quality, fluency and confidence grow as you develop into your stride).

Introduction/ Criterion A: 9

Birches by R. Frost. (1874--) literary parents. 1890: first poem; 1890: married and two children. Let me give you a clue: Frost poems will only be taken from "A Boy's Will; "North of Boston" or "Mountain Interval". Therefore you can make more precise biographical details which could be influential to his literary output.

Your presentation of Mountain Interval is excellent: 1916: isolation vs community--philosophical dimensions--returns to his youth.

"The use of seasons/nature are used to explore and go in-depth of framing human pathways"--another good piece of analysis.

Birches are a tree themselves (slim, slender, white trunked): you mistake "birches" for "branches".

Criterion B: 9

Internal and external worlds are presented through this ongoing metaphor.

Frost is an older man, perhaps influenced by WW1 and death of children.

Theme: idea that you can do things differently/ isolation/ self-learning+ self-reliance

Truth/purity can bend the person. 

Blank verse: good description--the fact you have to go up each individual branch

Connections to pathless wood: "The Road Not Taken"--fantastic.

Themes: Fate vs. freewill: the tree you choose to climb

I love the fact that you back up your commentary with reference to a Frost essay: I find it difficult to make out your quotation ("pure form/pure sound") and title of said essay. But it is this level of knowledge which separates your commentary out from the others.

Crit. C: 4-- I would have awarded you full marks but you finished your individual commentary at 14mins so we did not have time for the Q&Q!

The commentary is well organized; the structure is mostly coherent.

Crit. D: 5

The language is very clear and entirely appropriate, with a high degree of accuracy in grammar and sentence construction; the register and style are consistently effective and appropriate to the commentary.