The Life of William Shakespeare

Shakespeare meme...?

We were asked to make three main points from the four subjects we researched in a slideshow.

The Life and Times of William Shakespeare

1. Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564, in Stratford Upon Avon. He died on his birthday in 1616.
2. Shakespeare had six siblings, three brothers and three siblings.
3. He had three children, two daughters and a son that died at age eleven.

Elizabethan England

1. Buildings in England were made of timber and thatch, and people threw their waste in muckheaps away from the town. 
2. Market Days were on Thursdays, and there were shops such as blacksmiths, shoemakers, and bakers.
3. Most poor folk only had bread for breakfast, but others had wheat porridge or boiled oatmeal.

Elizabethan Theatre

1. The Globe Theatre held 2500 people, the cheapest seats going to the standing ones on the ground. People who sat here were titled 'groundlings'. If someone important, such as the Queen, were to watch a play, they would watch in the gentleman's rooms, a place in the galleries.
2. Shakespeare's theatre group was originally called The Lord Chamberlain's Men. King James I sponsored the company, and it became The King's Men.
3. Many different things were made for effects, for example, when a person got stabbed, the bleeding was a bladder of pig's blood, or the sound of thunder was made by rolling a cannonball across the ground.

Shakespeare's Works

1. Shakespeare wrote 37 plays and 154 sonnets (long poems). His longest play was Hamlet and his shortest was The Comedy of Errors.
2. His works have been translated into over 80 languages.
3. One of his most famous monologues is from As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII. The speech has been titled "All the World's a Stage."

What am I learning?

I'm learning about the works of William Shakespeare.

Why am I learning this?

His works are still relevant today, and he's had a massive influence on the English language as we know it.

What am I wondering?

Nothing, really.

African-American Slavery

Today, we're learning about the slavery of African-Americans.

We listened to two slave songs- "I Be So Glad When The Sun Goes Down" and "Song from a Cotton Field". We were asked to answer questions.

Explain the feeling you get when you listen to these songs.
It depicts the pain that the slaves are in. It makes me feel kind of sick, knowing that people used to imprison people of colour and some people still don't respect them after what their race has gone through.

What kind of information about slavery did you learn from these songs?
From the first song, it can be depicted that the slaves worked dusk til dawn and were tired all day due to the heat. They just wanted to lie down. The second song depicts that the woman singing must keep working until her children are grown and she's too old to work.

Do you feel songs today are similar, where they have hidden meanings or messages in their lyrics? If so, what examples can you think of?
I do strongly think that some modern songs have hidden meanings to their lyrics. One example I can think of is Shelter by Porter Robinson and Madeon. The lyrics depict someone who has set out on an adventure and left behind someone important, knowing that others will carry on what they and the other person started. However, if you watch the music video for Shelter, then the true plot becomes clear- the person singing the song is actually a girl who lives in a simulation pod in space, and the other person is her dad who died after a comet hit and destroyed Earth.

Spirituals

The River Jordan/Roll Jordan Roll

This song is about slaves who wished they could cross the River Jordan, or more accurately, the Ohio River or Mississipi, or really any body of water that could lead them to freedom.

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

This song was either yelled in the middle of the day or sung softly at night to signal that the coast was clear and it was safe to try and escape.

My Culture

Cultural experiences you have been apart of/like	How is this celebrated?	Who is it celebrated with?	Why is this important to celebrate?
Mother's Day	We give gifts to our mother.	We celebrate it with our family.	It is important to make our mothers feel loved.
Christmas	We give gifts to each other, and we have a feast.	We celebrate it with our family, and sometimes family friends.	It is important to spend time with our family and to have a chance to show our love.

Critical Literacy

In English, we are learning about Critical Literacy and what it can be used for.

Critical Literacy is looking at the unseen side of texts and videos and determining what is real and what is false. There can be many pointers about what this can be used for, from simple wording in texts to deciphering what an advert is implying with a single object.

What am I learning?
I am learning about Critical Literacy.

How does this work show my learning?
I am explaining what Critical Literacy does and what it can be used for.

Wellbeing

In this Health unit, we are learning about the stages of Hauora, or wellbeing, specifically our spiritual wellbeing.

Spiritual wellbeing focuses on our identities and what we believe, not just religion-wise, but moral-wise too.

I did a Personal Values Assessment and I was asked to answer these questions:
From the values you chose, write about the two that are most important to you.
For me, creativity and humour/fun are the most important. As a natural artist and performer, I love making people smile with my work, which is where both of them come into play.

Why is this value most important to you?
My creativity has allowed me to accomplish many things, such as create alternate universes of many of my interests and create my own characters, and my humour, as well as creativity, helps me to bring life to those characters, and as long as I can keep those characteristics of myself, I'll be able to achieve my goals.

Recall a moment in your life when you really 'lived' this value.
The best one would probably when I started designing my current alternate universe project. I created characters with individual personalities, and my friends and I joked around while they helped me design certain aspects of the story.

If this value is not being respected by others, how might you feel or react?
I'd actually be quite offended. There are many things that people love, such as books and music, that require both humour and creativity. If people disrespected these values, that would be the same as saying that they didn't enjoy music, books, or art, and in some cases even common internet humour.

This is a series of sticky notes with five aspects of myself I think are important for people to know about me.

Extracting Kiwifruit DNA

Today in Science, we studied how to extract DNA from a living cell.

We crushed a section of kiwifruit in a mortar and pestle, before adding salt and water. We mixed it in a plastic bag, before filtering it through a cloth and adding dishwashing liquid and putting the mixture in a test tube. We warmed some water in a large beaker before warming the mixture in the water bath. Once it was warm, we added cold ethanol. Our mixture didn't quite work, we suspect it was because we didn't add enough salt.

Heating the mixure

The final product (Not ours!)

Child Slavery

This is a presentation I made regarding child slavery in places like India and Pakistan.

Human Rights

A real picture of Iqbal Masih.

1. What are we learning so far?
   We are learning about human rights and how they are breached in different ways around the world.
2. What is the most interesting thing you have learned?
   I didn't know until this unit that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was formed after the massacre of WWII. I also learned more about child debt slavery.
3. Explain what your work is and how it links to the topic.
   We are reading the book about Iqbal, a child debt slave that escaped his master and changed thousands of lives. Child debt slaves work without human rights; they do not have rights to freedom, and they are often underfed and overtired. They work in terrible conditions, and are only allowed one break a day other than sleep.

Introducing Me (Yr 10)

This is a Piktochart I made to introduce myself. It's similar to one I made last year. Fun fact: that photo was taken by Raevynstorm Media at Armageddon Expo last year!