Long-overdue update!

Hello Year 10,

Just to let you know that I haven't forgotten you - sorry that I've not blogged but I am up to my eyeballs in Year 13 and Year 11 coursework and exam prep - this will be you in twelve short months!

Recently, we've been studying various aspect of Macbeth, with a particular focus on the characterisation of Lady Macbeth. I'd like to make a couple of points about this piece of coursework:

- It's a reading assessment, so builds on the same skills that we developed in the Inspector Calls and Frankenstein work. I'm therefore not going to give you as much guidance on planning and creating the response, but am expecting you to transfer the skills from prior work and redeploy them.

- I am giving you more freedom this time to choose your own title; I can make some suggestions but I want the work in planning and preparing the essay to be independently completed by you lot. This is intended to improve your skills and confidence in making your own decisions about texts and essays, which is vital when it comes to writing about texts in exams. I suppose I'm taking the opportunity to push your thinking skills, which puts a bit more pressure on you to be creative and analytical in your approach.

-Typical titles that have worked well in the past include:

Character based, eg:

"Discuss Shakespeare's presentation of Lady Macbeth"

"Discuss Shakespeare's presentation of the relationship between the Macbeths."

Scene based, eg:

"How does Shakespeare build tension in Act 2 Scene 1 and 2?"

"How does Shakespeare engage the audience through the Banquet Scene?"

Theme based, eg:

"How does Shakespeare develop the theme of betrayal in Macbeth?"

"Discuss Shakespeare's treatment of the theme of Reality vs Appearance in Macbeth?"

- We will assess this piece orally, rather than in essay form. This means that you'll be asked to prepare a 3-5 minute long presentation to me about the title you've chosen.

Homework

Homework is to work on the preparation of your oral response. The responses will be completed in the first week back after Easter, so you need to make sure you are absolutely ready to go by then. In the meantime, I suggest working to the following deadlines:

- By Monday 29th March

Have decided on your title

Have identified the key scenes and moments in the play you'll need to focus on.

Have chosen the quotations that will be most helpful to you in answering the question.

- Over Easter

Have thoroughly prepared your talk, ready for delivery when we get back.

Have written out cue-cards to help you with your delivery.

Have developed your comments about language, social / historical context and dramatic devices that Shakespeare uses

I'll give you some guidance on this in class, but otherwise it is up to you. The good thing is that you can easily find the text online (eg here), and there are also loads of support materials that may help you to develop an interesting presentation. As ever, Bitesize is good here , but you may also want to consider sites like Bookrags : basically there is loads of stuff around if you indulge in a spot of googling. BE CAREFUL THOUGH - you can only use these sites to get ideas and maybe the odd quotation; as soon as you start taking whole paragraphs fully from the web you are plagiarising, which is seen as cheating and can result in you achieving no marks at all!

Right, have fun then, and I'll look forward to seeing what you come up with. Do get in touch if you have any problems - my email is tbo@cheney.oxon.sch.uk.

Mr Boulter