Red Space Rocket

I somehow managed to delete the list of chapters and people from this site so here it is again.
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During parent-teacher interviews a number of people asked for me to make it clear here on Red Space Rocket what work students in my classes should be doing at home. To make these expectations clear I will keep telling you in class but I will also put information here each week about what you should be working on.

Year Nine History: There is nothing you need to be working on during the break.

Year Ten History: There is nothing you need to be working on during the break. If you are keen you could starting learning about The Great Depression which is what we will be learning about at the start of term two. Perhaps find a movie, watch a documentary, read a book. Or else you could just read through the Wikipedia entry.

Year Ten English: You absolutely need to finish reading the novel Saving Francesca. Many people are finished and everyone needs to do this too. Please complete your chapter summary before the start of term so we can just roar through them in class.

Other than that have a great break and I’ll see you all in a couple of weeks.

Saturday Night…. Live by Foto Blitz Color

Although we have finished formally looking at the World Wars this year this documentary looks interesting and might be good for expanding your understanding of World War One and how this changes our lives right now.

PROMISES AND BETRAYALS

An intriguing documentary about British double-dealing during the First World War in the Middle East, misguided strategies and how conflicting promises to both Arab and Jew created a legacy of division.

Sunday 1 April 2007 2.00pm
ABC Rating: (PG, Rpt)
Duration: 60 mins

Someone handed in a WWII assignment today with no name. It is three pages long, written in pencil and about Kokoda.

I’d love to know who wrote it. Please leave a comment if this work is yours.

This week in English we are working on story structure and typical stories.

Stories, at least in the modern Western world, have a typical three act structure. In the first act we meet the characters, in the second act they have a problem and in the final act they resolve the problem.

The problem are different from story to story.

Here are seven options which cover many stories.

[wo]man vs. nature
[wo]man vs. man
[wo]man vs. the environment
[wo]man vs. machines/technology
[wo]man vs. the supernatural
[wo]man vs. self
[wo]man vs. god/religion

For example a story of a woman climbing a mountain would be woman vs. nature and woman vs. herself.

Tobias proposed that there are twenty basic plots. Here they are

1. Quest
2. Adventure
3. Pursuit
4. Rescue
5. Escape
6. Revenge
7. The Riddle
8. Rivalry
9. Underdog
10. Temptation
11. Metamorphosis
12. Transformation
13. Maturation
14. Love
15. Forbidden Love
16. Sacrifice
17. Discovery
18. Wretched Excess
19. Ascension
20. Descension.

Big stories, such as movies or books, are usually made up a collection of plots. If you have seen the Lord of the Rings films (or read the books) consider which of these twenty plots are used.

For more information about these categories see this link.

There is big questions in life. Such as “what will I have for breakfast?” and “where did I leave my copy of X3: The Final Stand?”.

However the big questions year ten history students need to be asking themselves about the second assignment are these;

Does it have a proper bibliography?
Does it talk about life during the Second World War?
Does it talk about nationalism and patriotism?
Will I be ready to hand it in this Wednesday?

If your answer is either “no” or “perhaps” to any of these then I really recommend you get to fixing it so that each answer is a solid “yes”. I don’t think I can be much more plain about this.

I just stumbled across this wonderful Australian collection of photos about women in wartime. This might be really useful for some of you writing your World War Two assignments.

Picture Australia – Women in Wartime

I was looking for a quick and easy way to make a propaganda poster of my own. What I found instead was something that lets you make a horror movie poster. I was too good not to share.

Horror Movie Poster Maker

I hope you characters have had a good week and have managed to get some work done on inland explorers. The links to help you with the research part are a little down the page but I thought I’d make it super easy for you.

Red Space Rocket » Australian Explorers

Just follow the links and answer the questions about your chosen explorer.

Once again some shows about World War II that might be of interest to year 10 History students.

AS IT HAPPENED: TWO MEN IN A TRENCH – THE BATTLE OF THE BIG GUNS

In Battle of the Big Guns Tony and Neil travel to the south coast of England to investigate one of the most remarkable long range gun battles ever fought. They’re on the hunt for the forgotten British guns that were capable of hitting German targets on the French coastline during the Second World War.

Friday 30 March 2007 8.30pm
SBS Rating: (G, WS, Rpt)
Duration: 60 mins

GERMANY’S WAR: THE LIBERATION – MONTE CASSINO, EP 2 OF 9

Examines how on 15 February 1944, Allied planes bombarded and almost totally destroyed the ancient Italian monastery of Monte Cassino, 150 kilometres south of Rome. The decision to bomb the historic place of worship was taken by the New Zealand General Sir Bernard Freyberg. It proved a tragic mistake.

Friday 30 March 2007 2.30pm
SBS Rating: (PG)
Duration: 60 mins

Thanks again for EnhanceTV for the heads up on these shows.

With less than a week to go here is my sample assignment for the WWII assignment. I don’t know that I did a great job of this but it covers ideas about the writers own country and their part in the war, the enemy,patriotism and nationalism. It could be stronger on nationalism and the best assignments will be. You will also notice that this assignment has a proper bibliography. Not counting the bibliography mine is almost 300 words.
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Some resources to help my year nine history students do their work this on Friday.

Australian Explorers
Australian Land and Sea Explorers
Explorers of Australia – Wikipedia.
Australian Dictionary of Biography

Just to be perfectly clear; If you are doing the WWII assignment part of your marks are for correct attribution of your research. To get marks for this you need a bibliography. If you were in class on Friday then you know how to do this. If you were not then please read this guide and put it into practice in your assignment.

Someone very kindly gave me some feedback about Red Space Rocket on Friday which was that they like it but sometimes find particular worksheets hard to find.

So I have introduced the worksheets & assignments category.

The other thing I did was to tidy up the categories to make them more useful. So there are still a bunch of categories which now include Year 10 English, VCE History and Year 9 History. This should make finding stuff relevant to you a bit easier.

Bibliography by One More Salute to Vanity

A bibliography is an important part of using proper referencing. A bibliography is an alphabetical list of resources that went into your assignment.

The basic structure of this is

Author Surname, Initial, Year of Publication, Title of Work, Further information.
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