"The Tables Turned" by William Wordsworth

Image taken from www.google.com on 14/07/11

Utilising both "The Critical Reading Process" that we learnt about today in class and SPECS and SLIMS I would like you to read and analyse the following poem by William Wordsworth.

Your analysis should revolve around the poem as you see it and your summary should aim to highlight why this poem is still relevant to readers today.

Rather than simply listing your points in a dot-point manner, try to articulate your findings into coherent sentences and paragraphs.

Your response needs to be posted onto your blog by no later than 8.20am Tuesday Week 2A.

The Tables Turned - A Poem by William Wordsworth

The Tables Turned
(An Evening Scene on the Same Subject)

Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?

The sun, above the mountain's head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it.

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your Teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:
We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.

'My Daddy's a Diver'

Following on from today's lesson, you need to complete the paragraph on 'My Daddy's a Diver' and post your response on your blog. The second part of the homework is to go into at least two other people's blog, read their response and leave them some constructive feedback.

You should also use the weekend to catch up on any incomplete work and to finish, if possible, the novel.

Consequences for incomplete homework

Image taken from Google images on 28/04/11

Over this long weekend, please ensure that everything from this term is up to date and published on your blog.

If you are not up to date by the first lesson back next week you will be spending lunch times in the Library until your work is completed.

If you are having trouble with your Blog account, you may need to consider starting a new one. However, I would advise you to try logging in through iGoogle first and then opening up blogger.com before you decide to scrap your old blog.

Attention to detail

Your homework for the weekend once again focuses on developing your ability to utilise descriptive language that allows you to work on showing rather than telling.

For this writing task, you need to choose a member of your family (this can include a pet if you think it would be easier to write about) and write a piece of prose that invites the audience to develop a clear picture in their mind of the individual. You don't have to mention his/her name but you do need to work on appealing to the senses of the reader. Try to be creative in your description by utilising emotive language, similies, metaphors, personification, etc.

As with the previous writing task, I do not want you to go beyond 1000 words but at the same time, I do not expect you to all reach 1000 words.

Please make sure that you proof-read and edit your response before you post it onto your blog.

Image taken from Facebook on 28/04/11

Journey through memory

In class today, we will look at a recollection called Sky-high. In this piece, the character is reminiscing about her childhood backyard (specifically her affinity with the clothesline).

In order to continue with your creative writing practice, your task is to take your readers on a similar journey into a childhood memory. As with the task regarding travelling to/from school, you should aim to provide examples of showing rather than telling.

Remember, an effective way of engaging your audience is to appeal to their senses. Think about ways that you can get your readers to see, hear, smell, taste and touch what is going on.

This task, along with your school journey, need to be completed and posted on your blogs by no later than the end of the long weekend. Before posting, ensure that you have proof-read and edited your work. If possible, also have someone else proof-read your work.

Image taken from Google images on 20/04/11

Everyone is on a journey

Everyone in the world is on a journey, in fact most of us are in the process of starting and completing multiple journeys at the one time.

As an everyday individual, most of us do not necessarily think that our daily lives are particularly interesting but as writers we can all make our journeys seem interesting and unique to an audience.

The way you utilise and manipulate language can help to paint a picture for your reader so that they step through a journey with you. In today's lesson, I want you to experiment with language choices to create a story that paints the picture of your journey to or from school each day. Rely on showing rather than telling the audience what you see, hear, smell, etc. on your daily journey.

Image taken from: Google images on 19/04/11

Setting the scene through language choices

Unfortunately, the majority of you did not complete your homework from last week (even though you had about five days in which to do so) which means that you are now required to catch up on the missed work and keep up to date with all future work as well.

Tonight's homework is fairly simple, in that it requires you to go back to the Prologue of Alice Pung's Unpolished Gem and write a paragraph that discusses how the author utilises language choices to construct the colourful atmosphere of the market and the interaction between Alice's father, the stall holders and other customers. In your paragraph, you should aim to explore how Pung positions the audience to view the market place and its customers though her use of language.

Your paragraph needs to be proof-read and edited before you place it on your blog and the task must be completed by tomorrow's lesson.

Image of Footscray Markets, taken from Google images on 19/04/11

Blogs in Term 2

Just as a heads up, I want you to be aware that we will be using the Blogs quite extensively this term so you need to ensure that you have set your blog up properly and that you can remember your username and password.

If you need to create a new blog, please make sure you e-mail the link to me so that I can update the information that is currently on Blackboard.

A quick reminder that everything you publish should be of the highest possible quality so please ensure you utilize the spell check function on Blogger and that you proof-read your work carefully.

Lastly, please feel free to personalize your workspace girls. If you want to add pictures, sound, etc I have no issue with it so long as you also put the same effort into your analysis. For some of you, the ability to add a visual or aural element to your responses may allow you to feel a greater sense of engagement with the work.

Image taken from Google images on 14/04/11

Homework Task: Journeys in Poetry

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening – Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village, though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sounds the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

Complete the following questions and post your responses on your English Blog. This homework task is due by next lesson.

1. List all the things that Frost sees. Rank them in the order that you would find them attractive.

2. What are the images and ideas that Frost reflects upon when he has stopped?

3. Imagine that you are Frost. Write what you would say to your wife when you returned home from your journey.

4. Is there a deeper meaning to the poem? What do you think it is?

5. Comment on the use of three poetic devices in the poem. (Especially the use of rhyming and repetition in the last line).

6. The poem draws attention to two conflicting desires: the desire to be alone and to explore mysterious, challenging or even dangerous places, thoughts or objects, and the desire to a sociable person who responds to the company of others. Trace these ideas through the poem.

7. What aspects of the journey are being emphasised?

8. Explain why this poem does or does not appeal to you. Justify your answer with quotes from the poem.

Exploring Gaps and Silences

You will use the following questions to explore the gaps and silences that are found in three traditional Australian poems: "Waltzing Matilda", "Moreton Bay" and "All for me grog". All three of these poems can be found in the Semester One, Term One folder of Units of Work on Blackboard. They are in the subfolder called "National Identity is Represented in Texts" under a file named "Australian Poems".

Do the first poem in a small group, the second in pairs and the third by yourself.

Key Questions:

1)    Which qualities and groups are marginalised?

2)     Who is left out?

3)    Which qualities are privileged?

      4) How does the language of the text construct a sense of community with the reader?   

         Or, how would the texts have constructed a sense of community with original audiences?

     5) What aren't you supposed to think while reading these poems?

     6) Overall, summarise the qualities that are encoded in and privileged by these texts.

Overview of Unit Direction

We're all on a journey

The integrative device for the unit is the idea that all texts are selective.

In australian texts there is an idea of what it means to be Australian. This/these representations can be explicit or implicit. There is a traditional, dominant view encoded in texts like bush ballads and the words of writers like A.B Patterson. These views/representations romanticize "the bush" setting up a binary opposition between it and the town.

This is a view/representation that also privileges certain masculine qualities  and marginalises/ silences other groups/ways of viewing issues.

However, there is an increasing number of contending voices which offer alternative views of what it means to be 'An Australian'.

Contending Ideologies: "Something of Value"

Something of Value

Eric Bogle

I can see the Southern Cross tonight,

While here below, wrapped in its light

The Dreamtime land, safe snug and tight, is sleeping.

Wrapped in complacency and contentedness,

No discordant dreams disturb our rest

While the gentle souls we dispossessed are weeping.

We took it all by the gun and the sword,

By the right of our race and in the name of our God

Though as exiles ourselves, transported, condemned

None knew better than we the injustice of men.

We took it all in our hunger and greed

Condemned by our past and consumed by our greed

And we left them to beg for the scraps at our door

Calling them drunkards and wastrels and whores.

We've been drowning,

Drowning in their tears,

For the past two hundred years.

From England's new Jerusalem, to the Dreamtime land, the tall ships came

With human cattle with convict chains to bind them

In the grim fight just to stay alive, dreams must struggle to survive

And few could see the glittering prize before them.

We had it all in the palm of our hands,

A new dream, a new life, a new hope a new land.

One last chance to break with the chains of the past,

To build something of value, something to last.

This ancient land was a vast empty page

Waiting for the providers of a brand new age

The future was ours to protect or profane,

Here was paradise lost, or paradise gained

And tell me, is paradise here,

After two hundred years?

So now beneath the southern cross,

It's time to tally up the cost

Of what we've gained and what we’ve lost forever.

Though much has gone we can't replace,

Those of us who love this place

Together now must turn and face the future.

So here's to us all, frail human kind

Who wander through life, mostly helpless and blind;

To our humour and calmness our anger and pain

Our hundred steps forward, ninety-nine back again.

Here's to us all, the wise and the fools,

The indifferent the caring, the kind and the cruel

As we march to the beat of an uncertain drum

Stumbling towards what we may yet become.

Towards, the brave new frontier

Of the next two hundred years.

Bogle’s poem explores a different ideology/representation to that of Advance Australia Fair. Use the following questions to determine this ideology/representation.

1. What criticism does Bogle make of white Australia in the first 5 lines?

2. In what manner was Australia ‘taken’ according to the poet?

3. How did the British justify their taking of Australia?

4. Why should those who came and took Australia have known better?

5. What words were used by the white invaders to describe the aboriginal inhabitants?

6. According to Bogle, what opportunities did the whites have?

7. What is implied by the poet in the rhetorical question at the end of the second verse?

8. In the last verse what does the poet urge Australians to do now and in the future? List words and phrases which deliberately position the reader in promoting Bogle’s ideology about the future.

Extension Task:

How do the texts,  "Advance Australia Fair" and "Something of Value", position the reader to accept their invited reading? In your opinion, which of the texts is the most successful? 

Image taken from Google images on 28/01/11

Comparing Representations of Australia

Advance Australia Fair

Australia's sons let us rejoice

For we are young and free.

We've golden soil and wealth for toil

Our home is girt by sea

Our land abounds in nature’s gifts

Of beauty rich and rare;

In history's page, let every stage,

Advance Australia fair.

In joyful strains then let us sing

"Advance Australia Fair"

When gallant Cook from Albion sailed

To trade wide oceans o'er,

True British courage bore him on

Till he landed on our shore

Then here he raised Old England's flag,

The standard of the brave

With all her faults we love her still

Britannia rules the waves.

In joyful strains then let us sing

"Advance Australia Fair"

Beneath our radiant Southern Cross

We'll toil with hearts and hands

To make our youthful commonwealth

Renowned of all the lands

For loyal sons beyond the seas

We've boundless plains to share

With courage let us all combine

To Advance Australia fair.

In joyful strains then let us sing

"Advance Australia Fair"

This original version of Advance Australia Fair was written by P D  McCormick in 1878.

Use evidence from the texts to answer these questions in detail.

1)    Compare this poem with the version we sing today. Identify the changes.

2)    Which group is specifically addressed by this text?

3)    Who is excluded from this text?

4)    What is seen as important to “Australia’s sons” in this text?

5)    How does the writer “position” the reader of the text to accept the invited reading?

6)    What do the changes you identify in question one suggest about shifts in social values?

Image taken from Google images on 28/01/11

Welcome

Hi girls,

Welcome to our class English blog. We will be using the site a lot over the next two years so you need to start familiarising yourselves with Blogger as quickly as possible.

By the beginning of next week (Monday Jan 31st) you will all need to have created your own blog and we will have everyone's link posted on our folder in Blackboard.

You will use your blogs for class tasks and for the majority of homework tasks. With this in mind, there are some guidelines to keep in mind:

1. Blogs are public - this means that whatever you publish should be of the highest possible standard.

2. It is a school blog - this means that when you are writing on the blog the content should be appropriate for school and meet with the school's policies.

3. It is an academic blog - this means that you need to write in an academic style (unless otherwise instructed) using correct spelling, grammar, sentence structure, capital letters, etc. Abbreviations and acronyms that you would use quite normally on Facebook, Twitter, etc are not appropriate for these blogs.

4. As they are being used for homework, staff (mainly me) will be looking at your posts and making comments. Ensure that you take heed of the feedback that is being provided.

5. Quite often, you will be asked to utilise the blog as a method of sharing ideas and perspectives. When commenting on one another's work you need to ensure that your comments are constructive and appropriate. If anyone does not adhere to this, there will be consequences.

Ultimately, the blogs should be a space where you can not only do work, but be able to look back throughout the year and reflect on how you are progressing.

You are free to personalise your blogs as you see fit (with various templates, pictures, clips, soundtracks, etc) so long as it is suitable material for school.

If you ever have any questions regarding your blog you can see me but also take the time to share tips, ideas with one another.

Image taken from Google images on 27/01/11