The Scottish Play

It's called 'The Scottish Play' because many actors feel it is bad luck to say the name, "Macbeth".  Macbeth is a great play to study in Y10 because of the following reasons: it has a good film (the Polanksi version); it's  fairly easy to follow; it's about betrayal, witchcraft, ambition, murder - all the good stuff; it's Will Shakespeare!

Here's the full text.  I don't expect anyone to read it all but it might be handy for searching out the odd line.

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/macbeth/full.html

"The Cave" podcast

This is a podcast of a chapter called "The Cave" from the novel The Quest for Fire by J.H. Rosny.  It is set in prehistoric times.  Their tribe, the Oulhamrs, has been defeated by an enemy tribe who have extinguished all their fires.  The Oulhamrs do not know how to start fire and had relied on keeping three separate fires going 24 hours a day.  Fire was extremely important to prehistoric people - it warmed them in the winter, it cooked their meat and it kept wild animals away from their camp.  The tribe has sent three young men - Naoh, Gaw and Nam - to search for fire and bring it back home.  Without fire, the tribe are doomed.

In this chapter, our three heroes have taken shelter in a cave.  It is empty but suddenly they see a huge grey bear - one of the deadliest and strongest animals of the age.  Are they in the grey bear's cave?  Should they run or has that chance gone? Will their search for fire be over before it truly starts?

"The Cave" - click link below for podcast:
http://trial213.podomatic.com/entry/2012-03-19T17_27_26-07_00

Homework by Friday Week 6

The prospector: Short Story

You all have your own prospector. You all have words that describe him and you
know what he is searching for.

You are going to write a short story (at least 200 words but it will probably be much longer) which describes an adventure your prospector has.

Set the scene. Where is he? What’s the environment like – weather, land, animals, etc?
Your prospector is searching for his treasure (whatever it is – explain it).

Something goes wrong. What – is he caught in landslide?, attacked by an animal?, chased by aliens?,
something else?????????????????

He solves the problem (how? – explain) and carries on prospecting

Good words to use for the exciting bit:
horrific      excruciatingly      painful        thunderous       eerily        quiet          scrambling

desperate      relieved        scorching       hot        savagely        escape

A great book to read. Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield is about the battle between 300 Spartans and the Persian army of 2 million strong in 480BC (some people say there was a few thousand Greeks led by 300 Spartans and they were only up against 250,000 Persians, but whatever numbers you choose, it's amazing). It's a blood, guts and glory book that would appeal to anyone who likes war stories and/or historical fiction. It even got me a bit misty eyed (in a very manly way, of course). The silly, trashy movie, "The 300" was about the same battle. Right - now it's your turn to set up a blog.

Creating a blog
We are going to create a blog. It will have two class purposes:
1.
It will contain your responses for the Reading
Achievement Standard we are doing (AS90854
- Form personal response to
independently read texts, supported by evidence (1.10A))
2.
It will contain some expressive writing you will
be asked to do for your homework.
You are welcome to add extra pieces of writing – social commentary,
humour, creative writing (anything really).
You are also welcome to comment on other people’s
writing. However, any smarty pants
putdowns will be chased up by Mr Thorp.
Just remember two things:
·
It’s public – no-one outside of our class will
probably look at it, but they might. No
obscene language, etc, etc.
·
Mr Thorp will read everything!!
How to get started
Go to http://www.blogspot.com/ to create your own
blogspot.

If you already have a google account, all you
need to do is log in.
·
If you don’t just click, CREATE A BLOG and then
sign up for a google account – all you need is an accessible email address.
·
When you get to this bit,

http:// .blogspot.com

put your first initial of first name, first two initials of
surname , then 10mf: my name is dave thorp so my blog address is http://dth10mf.blogspot.com/
. That way we will all know where to
find each other’s blogs. .

Task – Homework: Write your first blog – 150 words. The topic is ‘My favourite school subject’