Mythology

For the next few weeks, we are going to be studying Mythology. Here is some information that you may find helpful:

The Olympians (These are the gods/goddesses that you need to know for the test. There will be other people on the test, but they will be in the stories we read. For each god/goddess, you must know both his or her Greek and Roman name. The first six on the list are brothers and sisters):

1. Zeus (Jupiter): King of the gods, god the the earth/sky/lightening
2. Hades (Pluto): God of death and of the Underworld
3. Poseidon (Neptune): God of the sea/horses/earthquakes
4. Hera (Juno): Queen of the gods, wife of Zeus, goddess of Marriage
5. Hestia (Vesta): Goddess of the hearth
6. Demeter (Ceres): Goddess of grain and growth
7. Ares (Mars): God of War
8. Athena (Minerva): Goddess of crafts
9. Apollo (Apollo): God of light, music, etc. Twin brother of Artemis
10. Artemis (Diana): Goddess of hunting and of the moon. Twin sister of Apollo.
11. Hermes (Mercury): Messenger of the gods
12. Aphrodite (Venus): Goddess of love and beauty
13. Hephaestus (Vulcan): God of fire and blacksmiths
14. Eros (Cupid): God of love
15. Persephone (Proserpine): Goddess of the spring, Queen of the Underworld
16. Dionysus (Bacchus): God of wine

Here are the two PowerPoints we went over in class:

The Olympians PowerPoint

Mythological Allusions PowerPoint

There is more helpful information to come!

Grammar: Semicolons

We will have a grammar quiz on semicolons on Monday, September 23rd. Here is the handout:

Semicolons

Here is a website that explains how to use semicolons and includes a video and a quiz.

Semicolon Website

Antigone

On Friday, September 6th we will start reading our first play, Antigone. It is an ancient Greek drama about a girl who has some crazy family problems and a run-in with the law. We will read the play together in class (it is in our textbooks) but here is an online version in case you are absent, miss something, or need to look back at a scene when you are doing your homework, etc.

http://thetalon.org/ANTIGONE.pdf

Happy Labor Day!

Because the benchmark is this Wednesday and Thursday (not Tuesday and Wednesday) we cannot have our Week 2 vocal. quiz on Thursday. Instead, we will have the Week 2 vocal. quiz on Monday the 9th (the same day as the part of speech grammar quiz). We will NOT skip week 3, however. The week 3 vocal. quiz will be on Monday the 16th.

Parts of Speech Review/How to Study for a Grammar Quiz

Many of you have asked how to improve your grammar quiz scores because you did not do well on the first one. First of all, the first quiz is over, so let's focus on getting ready for the next quiz. Our next grammar quiz is on Parts of Speech and will be on Monday, September 9th.

How can you do better on this quiz than you did on the last one? Try studying more, or in a different way:

If you didn't study at all, try studying. I suggest reading the handout I gave you and take some practice quizzes, then work on the skills you missed on the practice quizzes. You can try taking Cornell Notes from the handout and/or our class discussion then use those notes to study. You can go online to learn about the parts you don't know from the Cornell Notes.

If you did study last time, did you study every day? Studies show that studying every day for, say, fifteen to thirty minutes a day is better than studying for two hours the night before the test. Try studying a little every day leading up to the quiz. If there is a week before the quiz try this schedule (oe whatever works for you):

Monday night: Review the handout and see if you have any questions you want to ask in class tomorrow (we usually do a DO NOW about the grammar on Tuesday).

Tuesday night: Take Cornell Notes on what we discussed in class and on the handout. Review the DO NOW we did in class.

Wednesday night: Quiz yourself from your Cornell Notes and check off the ones you know. Study the ones you did not know by going online, reviewing your notes, etc.

Thursday night: Quiz yourself on the ones you did not know yesterday from your notes. Did you get some of them right? Now you can cross those off. Study the ones you still do not know.

Friday night: Take an online practice quiz. Study the ones you got wrong.

Saturday night: Quiz yourself on the ones you still do not know from your notes. Take another practice quiz if possible and/or just look up exercises on the ones you got wrong last night.

Sunday night: Review everything, but especially the things you still do not know. MAke sure you REALLY know the ones you say you know.

If you studied every night and still did not do well on the quiz, there are a couple of things that might be up. Did you understand the quiz? Did you follow directions? Did you put your name, date, and period on the quiz? HOW did you study? Did you go online and take practice quizzes? Did you write your own Cornell Notes based on the lesson and the handout? If you had questions or if there was something you still did not understand before the weekend, did you ask the teacher or someone else about it?

Try these tips - basically, do more (or do something better) than you did last time and your score should improve.

The Parts of Speech quiz will not have any writing on it, nor will it have any SAT-style questions (those two things were hard for some of you). It will basically be about twenty sentences. Each sentence will have one word underlined and you will be asked to identify the part of speech of that word. Here are a few sample questions (these will not be on the quiz, but they are very similar to the actual quiz questions). The answers are at the bottom of this post.

Parts of Speeh: Noun, Pronoun, Verb, Adjective, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction, Interjection.

1. Ouch! That snake bit me!

2. The teacher told everyone in the class to bring his or her book to class every day.

3. The parrots flew quickly above the heads of the shoppers at the Farmer's Market.

4. I bought my prom dress at the dress store at the mall.

5. Marianne cried bitterly after finally getting a response to her letters from Willoughby.

How do you think you did? Did you study before you took this quiz? Right before? It's better to study, then wait a day or so and then take a quiz. If you take the quiz right after you study, you might get some answers right even though you don't really KNOW them yet. If you take a quiz before you have studied AT ALL you might not do very well. The answers are at the bottom of this post, so you can go check them now.

Finally, here are a few online practice quizzes. The first one is especially good and VERY similar to the one we are going to do in class. Study a little, take the quizzes, make a note of which ones you got wrong, and then study those again. Good luck!


Review: Parts of Speech

Parts of Speech Quiz

This one is only on noun, verb, adjective, and adverb

Finally, here is a Quizlet on the eight parts of speech with flashcards, a quiz, etc.

Here are the answers to the quiz:

1. This is an interjection. Interjections are usually followed by commas or exclamation marks. Watch a video about interjections here.

2. This is a pronoun. Pronouns like everyone are used instead of listing all of the names of each student in the class. Read more about pronouns here.

3. This is a noun. Heads are things. Watch a video about nouns here.

4. This is an adjective. But wait, isn't a dress a thing? So, it's a noun, right? Right - but in this case it is being used as an adjective; it is telling us what kind of store she went to. Watch a video about adjectives here.

5. This is an adverb. It tells us HOW she cried. Many adverbs end in -ly. Watch a video about adverbs here and read Marianne's story in Jane Austen's novel Sense and Sensibility (there's also a great movie version with Kate Winslet as Marianne).