Monday, October 26, 2015

Boffer Battle!!

(Did you notice the use of alliteration in the blog post title?  ;)  )

For Week 6, we watched this YouTube on weapons history:

Then we went outside for an epic foam weapon boffer sword battle complete with Lucy and her magic cordial.  If someone received a wound, Lucy had to administer her magic cordial to restore him/her to health so they could fight again.  Lucy retired after 5 min or so, and the rest of the time was spent gleefully pummeling each other. 

 

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Week 5, Archetypes!

This week we learned about archetypes. 

I introduced the concept with a definition and a few pictures.

This first one is a Hero Journey archetype illustration:


I threw this in in for good measure.  ;)



 I passed out a paper with a list of archetypes, and we talked about some of the most popular ones.  Some of these papers became paper airplanes that I threw away at the end of class.  Sigh...  

We then had an activity where I had pictures of characters from The Lion King, The Wizard of Oz, Star Wars, Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings.  The students placed the pictures in their archetype categories. 

We assigned archetypes to the characters in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. 

Lastly, I introduced the theory of Planet Narnia, or the Narnia Code that Michael Ward discovered.  Briefly, it is believed that Lewis used his poem of The Plants as the unifying theme of his Narnia series.  Pretty fascinating stuff.  
Simple text version here and this one includes the actual poem. 

Or you can watch this long YouTube. 


Next week we watch some weapons history and then have a Narnian battle with foam sword boffer weapons! 

Have Prince Caspian ready in two weeks! 

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Themes, Motifs and Symbols

Week 4!

For this class, I introduced themes, motifs and symbols.

I gave examples of common themes, like good vs evil, coming of age, family, loyalty, survival, courage, etc...   and gave examples in other books they have read.  We then talked about themes in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

I introduced motifs and gave examples of the theme of light and darkness in Tangled and the motif of the sun.  I talked about the theme of what is beauty in Beauty and the Beast and the motif of windows used throughout the movie.  The eyes are the window to the soul.  I briefly mentioned how doors are a motif in Frozen, how they were all closed in the beginning and then opened.  We talked about the motif of seasons, stone/ice and fire/life in the The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Lastly we talked about common symbols like birds/freedom, ice/death, fire/life, snakes/evil, trees/streadfast and the symbols in Narnia.








Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Literary Devices




Literary Devices are tools that authors use to create their stories. 

We talked about literary elements like the plot and setting.

We talked about some of the most common literary techniques like hyperbole, alliteration, allusion, foreshadowing, simile, metaphor, personification, and onomatopoeia.  We watched some videos that helped to illustrate these techniques.  ( think there could have been a few better examples than the ones used in the video, but I think they got the point.


 And this one: 


Teacher Carrie started them on making a decorative box for their Turkish Delight.  While she was doing that, we applied what we learned to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and mapped out the plot, talked about a couple literary techniques.  I talked a little more about idioms, different words that the English and the Americans have for the same things and ended with a video on  British accents. 




And I started this one as class ended, because it's a class about British accents: