Learning Log 7

This learning log is about the Literature performance, Romeo and Juliet. I was quite shocking when I first heard that we would need to act out one of the scene in Romeo and Juliet. When I knew that I will need to stand in front of so many people and act it out with emotions and expressions, I guessed it was probably impossible. However, it turns out no to be as bad as I thought.

As usual, Mrs Woo used the number selector to choose our group mates and I felt very lucky to be with Jing Yan, Jia Ying, Wei Qi, Diana, Iqbal, Yuet Yan, Brian, Jasmine and Li Yu. After a struggling time of choosing our roles in the play, I choose Tybalt in the end. The rest of my group mates’ roles are, Jia Ying the serving man, Jasmine the stage manager, Diana the nurse, Brian the Benvolio, Li Yu the Lord Capulet, Wei Qi the cousin, Jing Yan the Romeo, Yuet Yan the Juliet and last but not least Iqbal, the director. All of us were satisfied with what our roles and finally we started our long journey.

Throughout the whole project, we organized many meeting to rehearse and shopping for our props. We enjoyed shopping together and our meeting was always full of laughters. We spent time going to each other’s house making those props and rehearse our acting. We even went to Republic Poly early in the morning for this project. This project has really bonded us together more and we got to know more about each other. I could remember how hard we tried to memorized our lines and act it out with expressions. Of course the person that I should thank the most is Mrs. Woo for her time and effort. She meets up with us to improve our acting and taught us the way how we should act. These greatly helped us and without Mrs. Woo’s help, we would not have such a wonderful ending.

The day had finally came, 15th September the day of our actual performance. Throughout the day I kept reminding myself not to be nervous and everything will go fine. On that day, all of my group mates met in school early in 6 a.m. despite of the bad weather. It gave us a great chance of rehearsing managing our props. When it was after school, all of us started to get excited. We went to wear our costume and checking our props to make sure that everything would be perfect during the performance. Everyone was handsome and pretty that day. I thought I was lucky to be the last group to perform as we would have more time to practice. However, as we finished our preparation, it would be my group’s turn to perform. We first brought all the props into AVA room where everyone was ready to watch our play. For everyone seconds passed, the level of my stress also increased. Even though everyone was nervous, we tried our best to encourage each other that it will be fine during the performance. As Mrs. Woo said “Ready, 3, 2, 1 action”, we started to perform in front of everyone. At that time, my heart my pounding like a thousand horses during a stampede. I was trembling like a meek little lamb and my mind was full of what I should say during the play. I was really happy that nothing goes wrong and none of us forgot our lines. Even though Jia Ying falls down accidentally, she reacts fast without a moment of hesitation. Jing Yan and Yuet Yan were the one who impressive the most. They could act so well with expressions and emotions as I thought everyone would agree what I said. I was also glad that Li Yu did not smile or even laugh during the acting. Last but not least, I will be talking about myself. As a Tybalt, I felt that I had shown the way which Tybalt should be as I received many comments that I was like a “gangster” during the performance. However, there was still area of improvement for me as nothing is perfect in the world. All of us were released when the performance finally ended. However, we also felt sad as the time of having fun together has finally ended.

I believed everyone must have put in a lot of effort in this project and Mrs. Woo said that all of us were great during the performance. We really benefited from it a lot as it not only bonded us as one and we also know the story of Romeo & Juliet. I would definitely recommend this Romeo & Juliet to my juniors. This is as I hope they will benefit from what we got this year. I think this is a lifetime experience and no matter what goes wrong we also should enjoyed it. I thanked Mrs. Woo for her hard work and the effort everyone puts in. Lastly, I would like to thank the school for giving us this great experience which I would never forget in my life.

Learning Log 6

Another meaningful week had ended and I will now share what I have learnt over this week's literature lessons.I have learnt twenty-five literary devices and they are: gustatory, kinesthetic, auditory, personification, visual, tactile, simile, metaphor, olfactory, symbol, incomplete sentence, simple sentence, complex sentence, connotation, paradox, exclamation, hyperbole, repetition, oxymoron, rhetorical question, onomatopoeia, rhythm, rhyme, tone and alliteration. Out of all of them, I already learnt some in the past. For the incomplete, simple and complex sentence, I think that they are quite easy as all of them are about a sentence whether it is with one idea or more or a truncated sentence. Among them, my favourite literary device is personification. It means a trope or figure of speech (generally considered a type of metaphor) in which an inanimate object or abstraction is given human qualities or abilities. The reason I chose it is because it gives the dead one or an object a human-like quality. Examples are "Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak."(Macbeth:Act III, Scene 4 Line 124) and
"Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care," (Macbeth:Act II, scene ii, line 48). In this way the non-human are described as living things like us. I also think that it is very interesting as using personification, you can have sentence like “The sun played hide and seek with the clouds”. There are also some other devices like oxymoron and hyperbole which I think are very amusing. Oxymoron means a single image or idea, made up of contradictory or incongruent images. Examples are thundering silence and sweet sorrow. Hyperbole means a deliberate exaggeration to emphasize a point or feeling like "She must have weighed a ton!" Lastly, I am glad to know so many new literary devices which can help me in literature. I hope to learn more devices in the future as many of them are very interesting which I could not wait to explore them out.

Learning Log 5

A very long time had passed since I did the learning log4.This time, it will be about the worksheet, THE UNSEEN. After reading through it, I think that it is quite useful to me and now I will share my understanding about this resource.
Firstly, I have to read the poem twice. The first time is to read without stopping whereas the second time we will have to pick up the words which we do not understand. Once finished, we should then read the whole poem again and again with slowly with feelings. Then it is time for us to answer the questions and there are many important things to take note.Firsty, understand the passage and question, then use the technique of PEEL to answer the question. Not to forget to quote important information from the text and make sure that they are not too long. Lastly are to express our feeling in our answers and try to use our own words as much as possible. The PEEL are short forms for Point, Explain, Elaboration and Link. Quoting also cannot be lack of as it is the quickest way to show evidence.
Secondly I will talk about the way to organize and write the essay in literature well. The main points are COMPREHENSION, INTERPRETATION, ANALYSIA and INSIGHT. Firstly, we should not spend too long reading and analysis the poem. After reading, jot down our impression of the poem's meaning immediaely. Then try to interpret the poem. As we are reading, underline the interesting or difficlt words and try to figure out the meaning and why the writer chose those words. After that, we will move on to analysis. As we are reading, pick out various literary devices, moods abd changes of language used in poem and to state what the purpose of the technique is and how it affects the reader. Lastly, an excellent essay needs the help of offering an insight into the text. This means the ability to step out of the poem to give a philosophical interpretation of what the text may be saying about human nature and the world.
Lastly,it will be the skills in organization of an essay. For the introduction, always start with a statement which immediately answer the question and will states your standpoint. Then for the point, begin with first sentence of paragraph with point that answer the question. For the evidencem all the major points should be always supported by evidence from the text. Then we will need to further explain the evidence to proves the points we have made. After all, a personal response is needed to express how we feel towards the character or event. Last but not least, for the conclusion, we can reiterate the major clam and argument of our essay, summarize the key points and provide a philosophical insight.
In conclusion, I really benefited from the resource a lot as it had taught me about unseen poem and the ways to tackle it. Lastly, I felt grateful Mrs Woo as this is the only resource I have to help me along for my journey in literature.

Learning Log 4

Time flies and now I am doing learning log 4 for reflection of our performance.It was the first performace of Literature for this year and I was quite looking forward for that day to come. Being a grouop with Jia Le and Sanjna, I felt quite happy and we think that we would did a good job.I could clearly remembered that how hard we stay back and make it the pot, background and other props.However, our efforts were not in vain。On the actual day, I seen all of the groups performing and I think that they were very well done. When it was my group's turn, I tried my best to calm myself down. While I was performing, my mind was only thinking of the lines and the way I should act like. Overall, my group members and I were quite happy with our performance. To my surprise, my group was the best and I was one of the best actor.I was shocked at that moment with my mouth opened widely. I cannot believed my ears upon hearing what Mrs Woo said.I thought the reason of me being one of the best actor was because of my voice. After this performace, I had learnt a lot of things such as how to act like a witch and the story of Macbeth.I really like such project and I look forward for the next perfromance, Romeo and Juliet.

Learning Log 3

This is the third learning log and I am here to talk about a particular literature lesson.The lesson when we had group work, discussing about a question, "Have anyone told you that something is going to happen and it did really happen, how do you feel and what you do?". I think this lesson is about prediction. My group wrote about that there was a girl who was blind after getting struck by the lightning.Since then she could predict things.She predicted that the Korea would have some kind of "war" in 2010 and in the end it did happen. They also wrote about she predicted that the end of the world would be on 2300 and we would communicate with aliens and more.I think that it is quite ridiculous even thouh some really happen. Some others also wrote the prediction either by their friends or parents. I could remembered clearly that one of the group talked about a student's mother told her that the oral exam would come out an garden picture. In the end it really happended. This lesson helped me to learn a lot of things and how miraculous the prediction by people could be.I thikn Mrs Woo wanted us to do this discussion as it will link to the story of Mac Berth later on. Whatever it is, prediction could be real or ridiculous, hence it maybe believeable as long as we are not too much.

Learning Log 2

Firstly for the Superstitions lesson. I think it was the first time we have such an interesting lesson. In the beginning, I did not even know what the meaning of superstitions is. After finding it on the net, I briefly know about it. During the lesson, we shared our work to know different superstitions. I learnt that we cannot married the person with the same surname as you , crying on the New Year day will make you unlucky the whole year and more. In conclusion, I feel that superstitions can be true or false, hence believe it or not is up to us.
Now for the lesson when we discuss about the witches. It was really a fun lesson as all of us burst into laugh while hearing those students and Mrs. Woo spoke like the witches. I really admire their courage to perform in front of the whole class, making themselves to be laugh at. It was a lesson not only taught us about how the scene should be but also to gain our courage and be braver. For the homework, I spent some time drawing the witches which I print from the internet. The reason I did this is that I think a drawn work worth better marks than a printing work which you just need to print out and it is done. I will always look forward for the next literature lesson .

Learning Log 1

For the past few weeks, I have been learning about Cinquains.. Actually before the lesson, I had surf through the internet and had an introduction about Cinquains. I think that Cinquains is quite interesting and unique as it only consists of five lines to form a poem. It looks simple but sometimes I may take a long time just to think of an idea to write. I could remembered that one of the lesson, we all have a group work to form a poem about Cinquains .My group wrote about School and one of the group even came out an idea of Toilet which they describe about how dirty and smelly the toilet is. All this shown to me that Cinquains is very interesting. For all the lesson, I have no comments as all of it is fine. Lastly, I know that Cinquains is very important for us this year as it will be tested in common test and CA. Hence I will listen attentively in the class and seek help from teacher or to surf the internet whenever I have a problem.