Red Space Rocket

Year 10 students,

You only have 100 minutes, perhaps 90 by the time you get this far.

Using your own initiative, and by searching and critically reading information on the internet, answer these questions in a Word document. When you are finished, put your document into my drop box on the W drive.

1. What is a metaphor?
2. Give three examples of metaphors. Look in songs and poems. Remember to tell me where your examples come from.
3. What is a simile?
4. Give five examples of similes. Look in songs and poems. Remember to tell me where your examples come from.
5. What does antithesis? This words means different things in different settings. Make sure that you find the definition that applies to rhetoric.
6. Give three examples of antithesis. Speeches use this a lot. Remember to tell me where your examples come from.
7. What is a pun?
8. Give five example of puns. You will find these in commercials and movie titles a lot. Remember to tell me where your examples come from.

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We only have 200 minutes together this week, Grammar and Writing youngsters, but we have a bit to do.

On Tuesday, we will finish our work on rhetorical techniques.

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You are in luck, Morphing English students. You’ll have all 250 minutes with me this week.

On Monday, we’ll continue (and hopefully finish) our work on how new words are made.

On Tuesday, we’ll read a short story in class. Now that we have finished The Adjustment Team, we’ll start something else.

On Wednesday, I’ll take you through a process to create effective presentations.

If you can’t make it to class, here are some of the resources.

Morphology: Coinage

Morphology: Borrowing

Presentations that Don’t Suck

On Tuesday and Friday, we will be continuing to work through the rhetorical techniques and developing our understanding of which techniques makes language more memorable and effective.

We will also start some writing exercises, working towards the longer story that you will write late in the term. More about these exercises in class.

In our single session on Thursday, we will complete reading the Philip K Dick short story The Adjustment Team. Just like last time, you will each be reading a small section to the class.

On Monday, we will be doing two activities.

The aim of the first activity is to consolidate your understanding of euphemism and dysphemism. These are two types of words that are used for particular purposes in relation to a few topics.

Based on the notes that you took last week, answer these questions in full, valid sentences.

1. What are six euphemistic words or phrases?

2. What are three dysphemistic words or phrases?

3. What are three subjects areas that we frequently used both euphemism and dysphemism for?

4. In what social situation would you expect to use a euphemism? Why

5. In what social situation would you expect to use a dysphemism? Why?

Following this, we will continue our work on where new words come from. The purpose of this is to understand some of the processes in the development and expansion of vocabulary in English.

On Tuesday, we will conclude reading the short Philip K Dick story The Adjustment Team. As we did last week, everyone will take turns reading aloud to the class.

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See how frequently this phrase has been used.

Here is that article that I was telling you about. We’ll step through it today in class and get down some useful information.

From there, we looked at blends words, also known as portmanteau words.

Finally, we had a quick look a these blend words.

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Yesterday, we starting reading the short story The Adjustment Team, the basis for the 2011 film that we studied last term.

You characters read really well, and the story clipped along.

We’ll pick the story up again in our single session next week.

As you might remember, you were reading a novel of your choosing during the last week of term three, although that probably seems like a long time ago. I wrote you a letter, talking about some of my favourite books.

This week, on Wednesday, I’ll be getting your to write two letters. The first letter is to me, and it will be about the book, or books, that you read. The second letter will be to a class-mate, friend or relative.

You’ll only have 100-minutes to write both letters. For the rest of the week, we will be learning about how new words make their way into languages. We will start this week with acronyms and initialisms.

And, of course, we’ll be doing some vocabulary builders and 15-minute writing, too.

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As you might remember, you were reading a novel of your choosing during the last week of term three, although that probably seems like a long time ago. I wrote you a letter, talking about some of my favourite books.

This week, on Tuesday, I’ll be getting your to write two letters. The first letter is to me, and it will be about the book, or books, that you read. The second letter will be to a class-mate, friend or relative.

You’ll only have 100-minutes to write both letters. For the rest of the week, we will be learning about rhetorical techniques. These are writing tricks, if you like, that make writing more memorable and effective. We’ll be working through quite a few techniques and listing to some crackingly good pop songs into the bargain.

And, of course, we’ll have some vocabulary builders and some 15-minute writing tasks.

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Hello all,

Some of you noticed that I freaked out a bit, when you were about halfway through your work on these essays. It was my very strong feeling that you just were not getting the idea, and that I needed to tackle this essay-writing work with you another way.

Well, it turns out that I was wrong. I just read those essays that were handed in last week (some of you are still to complete this work), and lots of them are really very good. People are confidently referring to specific events and even incorporating good quotations. And most people are saying something insightful and interesting about the issues that they tackled.

Well done, Year 10s. You’ve done well.

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My very-nearly-favourite Year 10, Read the rest of this entry »

Your slide-packs should have the following information

Definitions
Etemology
Quotation showing this word being used
Usage graph from Google Ngrams.

This is an example that I made for you.

Here are some useful resources to help you will your brief presentations about particular words.

Dictionary.com

Flickr: Advanced Search – to find Creative-Commons licensed images

Online Etymology Dictionary – find out how old words are and where they came from.

Google Ngram – see how usage has changed over time.

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We are travelling well, Year 10s, and the term is almost over.

This week, we are back on the computers, and most of you are doing well with your essays about an archetypal character in the film Transporter 3. Once you have your draft typed up, you need to go through and improve your essays. The two key areas where most students can improve is in the flow of the writing and in making their examples specific and meaningful.

All essays will be submitted to me by recess this Friday.

Students who finish their essays can start work on their next piece of work, on a related topic.

Your task is to prepare a five-minute talk about a particular archetype. It can be the same archetype as you wrote your essay on, or a different one of you feel like a change. You can make a slide-show to go with your talk, but it can have a maximum of ten slides and each slide can have a maximum of two words on it. I know that this seems restrictive, but that’s because it is. I want YOU to deliver the message. The slides will just be there as visual support for you.