Atmosphere and theme

This time, we had to find a picture and describe/explain its atmosphere and theme.

This is my picture:

The atmosphere in this picture is terror. How can one not fear for one's life when this huge tsunami is coming upon them like some angel of death?

The theme for the picture can be fear as everyone in the picture is frantically running for their lives, desperate. If you look closely, you can even see the fear written all over the faces of some of the people.

Besides the people, the tsunami also conveys the feeling of fear and terror as it looms above fleeing people, making them look small and powerless to the tsunami's wrath. The difference between the sizes of the tsunami and the people also serves to heighten the feeling of terror as the tsunami now seems to be bigger and scarier than ever, and can take away precious lives in the blink of an eye.

MindMap

Today we had to do a mindmap on the background of 'To Kill A Mockingbird'. The research topic I was assigned was 'Civil Rights Movement'. The website we had to use was www.bubbl.us .

This is my mindmap:

Home-learning ACE activity

This is an additional ACE activity for this term that our teacher gave us during an impromptu home-learning because all the Hwa Chong teachers had to go to some meeting at Nanyang Girls'.

We had to create a comic strip to convey a message.

By dragonboy8686 | View this Toon at ToonDoo | Create your own Toon

As you can see, this is 'Scared?', my comic strip. Basically it is about being scared. In the first 2 squares, it is as if the boy is going to fight some ferocious animal. However in the end, it turns out that he is scared of a little chicken. The plot is basically to boy trying to be brave and fails miserably, and then still trying to save face, boasting to his dad that he was just a little scared when he has already wet his pants in fear.

After creating the comic, we had to answer these few questions.

1. Why did you choose the different pictures or background?

2. How do they contribute to the elements (plot, setting, characterization) of your narrative?

3.How did you make use of the different elements to contribute to the theme you have chosen?

These are my answers:

1. I chose my background because it was the most suitable one. It looked more like a place where there were supposed to be chickens, because one cannot expect chickens to appear in the midst of skyscrapers in the city centre. The background looked like a scene out of a farm or part of a forest or hunting ground where there was wild chicken.

2.The background is basically the setting for the narrative, which is where the boy finds the chicken. However, it does not really contribute to the plot, but instead just makes the whole story more realistic, because as I have said earlier, you cannot have this story happening in the city centre.

3.In question 2, I have already explained how the setting contributes to the theme I have chosen. For your information, the theme I have chosen is 'pride comes before a fall', as the boy is boastful and tries to show off by trying to scare off the chicken but ends up being chased by the chicken and wetting himself in the process thus embarrassing himself in front of his father. This is how the plot contributes to the theme too. For characterization, I have chosen a boy to scare off the chicken. Actually, kids are more appropriate, hence I could have chosen a girl, but I have chosen a boy for personal reasons. In the last box, I made the boys eyes wide and his pose as such to make him look as if he was justifying himself to his father. I made the father's eyes half-closed to make him look as if he did not believe what the boy said, because the boy obviously was not just 'a little scared' as he actually wet his pants.

Blog Prompt 20.1.2011

The blog prompt for today was: Is it better to have never known something than to have known something and to ultimately lose it later?

I do not have any personal experiences, but I do think that it is better to have known something and than to ultimately lose it later, such as feeling the pain of losing a pet or the pain of breaking up with a boyfriend or girlfriend.

The reason for my opinion is that no matter how deep wounds are, they will ultimately heal sooner or later. No matter how great the pain in our hearts is, we must still get over the pain. We must put the incident behind us, and get on with our lives.

For example, if you own a pet, and the emotional bond between you and your pet is so strong. Suddenly one day, your pet runs onto the road and gets run over a car. You are shocked. You cry. You wail. You hold it in your arms. You recall all the fond memories you had with the pet. You berate heaven. But in the end you still have to get up, dust yourself down, and just forget it. Even better, you can also advise your friends on having a pet as you personally already know the pain and therefore can tell your friends on your personal experience, so as to prevent your friend from going through the same pain that you did.

Ultimately losing something you have known also acts as a learning experience as you will have known what you have done wrong and what you should have done. If you have done wrong, you can take measures to do right the next time. If there is the pain of losing something, you can then take steps to ensure that there is none, or less pain the next time round.

Therefore I think it is better to know something and to ultimately lose it later.

Blog Prompt 19.1.11

I have been in the company of a group which was against a certain individual. The so-called leaders of the group were my friends and I did not want to disagree with them and end up making enemies. However, though I allowed my friends to be unkind to that individual, I did not join in myself and took great care not to agree with anything they said against that individual. I just stood there and never said anything. I think I was lucky to be treated as a member of the group. This is because my friends would then assume that I would agree with them and therefore would not ask of my opinion which would make me uneasy as I did not want to speak against that individual. However I still felt uneasy when among that group.

Cloony the Clown continued...

Now there were 2 questions for us to answer

1. Explain the irony in the poem
2. Does Shel Silverstein manage to convey some harsh realities in this poem?


Answer to Question 1:

The irony in this poem is that when Cloony the Clown attempts to be funny by performing all sorts of tricks, people think that he is not funny and even at scream at him to go back to bed. However on the other hand, when he tells them of his feelings, why he feels so sad because he is a unfunny clown and clowns are supposed to be funny, people actually think he was trying to be funny and succeeding, and laugh their front teeth off.

Answer to Question 2:

Yes. Through the poem, Shel Silverstein has managed to convey the harsh reality that sometimes, we don't understand others and therefore sometimes offend others unknowingly. Shel Silverstein also conveys the fact that when you laugh, the world laughs with you and when you cry, you cry alone.

Cloony the Clown

Ms Soh gave us a poem a few days ago. It was called Cloony the Clown by Shel Silverstein.

It goes like this:

I'll tell you the story of Cloony the Clown
Who worked in a circus that came through town.
His shoes were too big and his hat was too small,
But he wasn't, just wasn't funny at all.
He had a trombone to play loud silly tunes,
He had a green dog and a thousand balloons.
He was floppy and sloppy and skinny and tall,
But he was'nt, just wasn't funny at all.
And every time he did a trick,
Everyone felt a little sick.
And every time he told a joke,
Folks sighed as if their hearts were broke.
And everytime he lost a shoe,
Everyone looked awfully blue.
And everytime he stood on his head,
Everyone screamed "Go back to bed!"
And everytime he made a leap,
Everybody fell asleep.
And everytime he ate his tie,
Everyone began to cry.
And Cloony could not make any money,
Simply because he wasn't funny.
One day he said "I'll tell this town
How it feels to be an unfunny clown."
And he told them all why he looked so sad,
And he told them all why he felt so bad.
He told of Pain and Rain and Cold,
He told of Darkness in his soul,
And after he finished his tale of woe,
Did everyone cry? Oh no no no,
They laughed until they shook the trees
With "Hah-Hah-Hahs" and "Hee-Hee-Hees."
They laughed with howls and yowls and shrieks,
They laughed all day, they laughed all week,
They laughed until they had a fit,
They laughed until their jackets split.
The laughter spread for miles around
To every city, every town.
Over mountains, 'cross the sea,
From Saint Tropez to Mun San Nee.
And soon the whole world rang with laughter.
Lasting till forever after,
While Cloony stood in the circus tent,
With his head drooped low and his shoulders bent.
And he said," THAT IS NOT WHAT I HAD MEANT-
I'M FUNNY JUST BY ACCIDENT."
And while the world laughed outside.
Cloony the Clown sat downand cried.

Prejudice

Today we were discussing a very BIG word: Prejudice We were asked to list down as many acts of prejudice which we knew.


Here's what I know.


1. In World War 2, Adolf Hitler was prejudiced against Jews and wanted to wipe them out all the Jews in Germany


2. In early Singapore, the people in power were British, and they were prejudiced against Chinese. A very small amount of the school budget was given to Chinese. The remaining budget was then given to English or Malay schools.


3. The Bari, a Native American living on the border between Venezuela and Colombia were being prejudiced in the second half of the sixties and therefore suffered an ethnocide.


4. In some countries, Asians are barred from European bars


5. Smaller children are bullied in school



There are also quite a lot of words which we use interchangeably with prejudice. These words are stereo type, biased and discrimination. Also these words do not have the same meaning, they are all involved in a process.


First, people become a stereotype or stereotype a certain group of people. A stereotype is a commonly held popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. This can either be postive stereotyping or negative stereotyping.

Then, they become biased. Bias is an inclination to present or hold a partial perspective at the expense of other possibly equally valid alternatives. After they hold the belief about a certain group of people, they then incline either towards them or away from them. For example, a lot of whites are biased towards coloured folk, meaning that they will prefer whites over coloured folk no matter what the situation is.

After that comes prejudice. Prejudice means an unfavourable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought or reason. After people have had a certain inclination toward a certain group of people, they will then have an unfavourable opinion towards everybody of that group. An example is a white person seeing a group of negroes behave badly, and then having a bad impression of all negroes regardless of who they really are. Important to note, prejudice is ALWAYS negative.

Lastly is discrimination. After people are prejudiced against a certain group of people, they may or may not act against them. If they do, then they are discriminating that certain group of people. For example, if a white man is prejudiced against negroes, he is not discriminating them if he stays away from them. However, he is discriminating negroes, if he spits in their faces whenever he sees them.



This process is a vicious cycle, and we must take caution to take absoulutely no part in it!!!

Targets for LA 2011

Hi. I'm Benjamin, and this is going to be my blog for LA 2011.

For starters, LA means language arts.

Today, my teacher, Ms Susan Soh, asked us these questions which were supposed to determine our targets for LA 2011.

1. What went well last year?

As far as I can remember, nothing much went well last year and therefore I am looking for a change for the better in Secondary 2.

2. What went wrong?

For LA, loads of things went wrong. Mdm Sng, our first LA teacher, went suddenly on medical leave for 8 WEEKS and her replacement was Dr Carey, from Virginia. She did not know ANYTHING about what we were used to with Mdm Sng and threw us into such confusion. We also did not know ANYTHING about her, and were oblivious about what she was used to. Therefore, we angered her by constantly asking her whether we could go to the loo. For some reason, this angered her greatly, but she did not tell us anything about the problem (If she did not tell us the problem, how were supposed to even know the problem and eventually change?) and instead went and lodged a complaint against us to our then form teacher, Mr Lim Seow Yi and got us all into trouble.

3. What is my target MSG for 2011

2.25 and below

4. How do I intend to achieve this?

By aiming to be exempted. To do this, I have to pay attention and be hardworking every term to get good grades every term in order to get exempted.