Learning Log 7

In the preparing of the Romeo and Juliet performance, my members showed teamwork. In the beginning, many of us did not really cared a lot about the performance. Some of us did not even turn up when told to do so. But nevertheless, the rest of the teammates that turned up did not lose the spirit to do well in the preparing the performamce. We planned the staging together in the library and at our teammates house. After that, many of our teammates volunteered to help to purchase the props. We did some reseaching on the places where we could buy our props at a lower prices. Some of us even took the innative to find ways to get hold of some of the ''free'' props, such as asking our parents or their friends, asking our relatives and our friends if we could borrow the necessary props and costumes. Eventually, we succeeded in getting the free props and costumes. When we settled the props and costumes, we decided to start practicing our lines. For some of the members which did not turned up, we told them to practice their lines at home, we did not blame them as some fo them have their own private tution or swimming lessons and even CCAs. But, as the memorizing of the lines were more challenging, we decided to memorize a little day by day. Meanwhile, we used the free time to do other preparation such as finding the correct music, practicing the dance and more. Although the weightage of the performance is high as it is counted in the final year examination, our team leaders like Jie Ling and Wei Kian were kind enough to give us breaks to allow us to relax.


Soon, the school reopened. Then, more members started to turn up for the practice as we used our free time to practice our lines. We then started to synchornanise the dance, lines and the timing for the actor and actress to enter.

Soon, it is the day of the performance. Indeed, the performance we did was not fanstatic, we made quite a number of errors, even I myself too, made mistakes. But again, we showed teammate and the strong bonding we had, because none of us blamed each other because we all knew that we did our best. We gave in effort. I have to admit, during the practicing of the performance, we were rather playful, we even played more than we practice in a few practices we had. But as time passes, it is obvious that we started getting serious and were focused on the every practice we had. Although I know it is not the best performance, but I believe it will be a memorable incident to the all of us. If I have a chance to redo everything, I will ask my group members to focus more, be more serious and try to be more creative in our performance. Also, the members can come more often. I will make all of my members to feel more interested in engaging themselves in the preparation and the practice. I highly recommend this to our juniors next year as I believe still will not only be a memorable incident to them, but also, it will train their leadership and strengthen the bonds between the classmates and display teamwork. Also, I believe this will be a ''special'' exams to them as they most probably have not try it out before.

Learning Log 6

After learning about the literary devices, I find it very hard and challenging to master it, because I have learnt many different kinds of devices, and yet, I have to memorize them all. There are also some devices that I do not really understand or to use them in the correct way. Some of the literary devices includes Auditory, Simile, Olfactory and more. Even though I find it hard to master them, but they are very interesting to me as most of them are very new to me. Among most of the devices, I find the advanced literary devices hardest to master as I do not understand most of the devices and it is hard to identify the devices at times. I am also taught how to identify literary devices in prose or poetry, but frankly speaking, I do not really know how to identify them as there are so many literary devices in a single poetry or prose, and even if I could identify them, without the help of the teacher, I could not answer the questions asked about the devices as I am still new to it and do not have much practice on how to deal with the questions asked. But overall, even though it is challenging, I find it a fun and enjoyable process as I get to learn lots of new things that I have never learnt before and I like it when the poetry or prose are rather in depth as they puts me into thinking.

            

Learning Log 5

William Shakespeare

I have learnt that an unseen poem or prose is one text that we might have not seen or read before. After reading the whole piece of paper, I realised that answering the questions about the unseen poem or prose is very challenging because, my standard of English is not very good, hence, I find answering the questions tough for me as I have to do lots of elaboration. At first, I thought that unseen poem or prose poses no challenge to me at all as I have done unseen poetry when I was in Secondary 1. But when I read the paper, I realised that there are many importants things and factors to look out for, for example, you have to master how to organise your points well, look out for words that are challanging or draws one's attention, ensuring that you phrase the correct quotes, a very insightful reponse, to read the text deeply, look beyond the text, and many more. But overall, I find the contents of the paper mostly difficult to understand, perhaps because I have not tired to do an unseen poem before. Moreover, I do not understand how to use the techniques mentioned in the paper, as I have not learnt some of those. I really hope that Mrs Woo could teach and elaborate more on the contents of the paper, best if we could apply what we will be learning onto the unseen poem worksheet, soon.

                  

Learning Log 4

 During the whole process, I learnt that time management is the most important thing you need to have. During the preparation, we had to do everything in two days as some of our members had SYF competition, so, it was hard to arrange a time for all of us to do the project, some had to go for family outings and some had tution and much more, hence, the time for us to do the props was not much. Secondly, teamwork is also as important too. Acting is not about how well you can perform as one, it is about how well you can perform as a group, no matter how well one can perform, it will never be a great performance if the others did not perform up to standard. Lastly, understanding is also important. It is not just about the understanding of the script, it is also about how well you understand your group members and how you can be understanding towards your group members. This was also one of the difficulties my group had faced. During the face day of the preparation, our group could not agree upon some of the things that I mentioned, which was the make up on the paint, for I said that I wanted to paint our face, but another group member of mine said that it is disgusting, the three of us had an arguement about this matter, and we ended it off by saying that we will discuss it the next time round we see each other. The next time round, when I meet up with them again, we decided to just do a quick briefing on what to do on the actual day as we had already prepared the props. Again we argue over this matter, in the end, we end off by saying that we do not apply any make up on our faces, and we all agreed it unwillingly. I had to admit that we did not really understand each other that well and none of us tried to understand each other hence leading to the result whereby we do not put any makeup on our faces. During the performance on the actual day, I was rather disapointed with what I saw, because most of the groups did not had much props or costumes and some even did not even care about it, they simply just went up to the stage to deliver their speech, which was shocking as I was thinking, that is going to be graded, are they going to simply just do their presentation like that? But of course, by saying that, I am not saying that my group done that well, I have to admit that my delivering of the speech was horrible as I kept rubbing my nose as I spoke, which is not very good, among all of the groups in the morning, I am most impressed with Mieko's group as her group really put in lots of effort into it, they did their props nicely and there is even a background which was nicely done. As for the afternoon performance, I did not get a chance to see it as I was away for SYF, but I believe they did a better job as I saw their props which was nicely done.


                                                                        

                                                                                               

                                                                  

Learning Log 3

When Mrs Woo told the class that we are going to do a worksheet on something related to prediction, the first thing that comes to my head is, ''Why are we doing things that are not related to Macbeth at all, it is such a waste of our time!'' But I do not have a choice, because only the teacher have the say, hence, we form into our groups and discuss about what should we write on the worksheet. The fact is, actually, I have seen the fortune teller for a quite number of times. During Chinese New Year every year, a fortune teller will come to my grandmother house and he will talk to everyone in the family about us, for example, this year, he said that nothing bad or good will happen to me, just that I am bad tempered and sort of rebellious, which I can't help but to agree. He also said that my studies are average, which sort of disappoint me. Okay, so now, back to the main topic. As my other group members, Daniel, Chor Mui and Elisa, claimed to say that they have not been brought to a fortune teller before, hence, we can only make up some stories about them getting predicted on their future. But, if you were to ask me if I believe in such things, my answer would be a yes, because I the fortune teller that comes to my grandmother house every year, predicted that things will happen on me or some other things, and usually, it is true, hence, causing me to believe in such things. During the sharing of on the topic, prediction, I found it interesting because most of them were able to say some interesting stuffs, maybe because not much of them have seen a fortune teller or not much people predicted their future before, hence, they are able to put in much creativity into it. In the end of the entire lesson, only then, I am able to understand why Mrs Woo asked us to do the worksheet, it is because in Macbeth, there are three witches that predicted that Macbeth will become the Thane of Cawdor, then the king, then soon, the first prediction of the witches came true for the king promoted Macbeth to be the Thane of Cawdor, and so on. In total, I find the whole lesson interesting and I hope that there will be more of such lessons.                                                                             

      

Learning Log 2

Learning Log 2            
During the presentation of the superstitions topic, I realized that most of the students are talking about the superstition that are believed by the Chinese, especially during Chinese New Year, hence it is unavoidable that most of them will write about the same thing, hence making the whole presentation boring. I recommend that in the future, the teacher can ask the students to research about superstitions of different country and making it compulsory, so that there can be a wide variety of different superstitions. Regarding the class presentation on Macbeth, Act 1 Scene 1, because I was involved in it, I was rather shy because I had to speak in a tone of a witch, and I had never done that kind of presentation before, hence I did not manage to do a great job compared to the rest. I recommend that we can be divided into groups, then practice it among ourselves using the voice of a witch, partly because to build up our confidence, so that we need not be afraid that the students in the class would laugh at us.    

                            
                                

Learning Log 1

I learnt that that a Cinquain is a 5-liner poem. The first line is form by one word, second line by two words, third line by three word, fourth line by four words and the last line by one word. During the group work in the class, I also learnt that teamwork is very important. We have to ensure that everyone agrees on the topic of the Cinquain we have to do, which is, music. It is important that everyone have to give some ideas on how to write the Cinquain. Even  During to presentation of the Cinquain, I also learnt that it is important to have confidence in ourselves. We have to speak out loud and clear so that everyone can hear us, this can also show that we are confident of our own work. During the lessons, it can be rather boring at times, because there are not much fun activities. I recommend that there can be more group activities, so that there can be more interaction between the classmates, making the students more interested in literature. I also know that we will be playing acts like, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet, hence I also hope that we can play some acts in the class. By doing this, the students might have more interest in literature.