One more little survey before you go . . .

Before we get into the Midsummer Night's Dream scene workshops today, please take a few minutes to offer some feedback on the fourth-quarter writing assignments for this class--the Sonnet and Sonnet Explication. As you know, this was a whole new, experimental approach to the poetry explication, and I am very interested in your feedback as both sonneteers and explicators.

I promise this is the last survey I will ask you to fill out this year!

Thank you!

Survey on Ungrading in the English Department

The English Department has been experimenting with various forms of "ungrading" in all of our core English classes for the last two years--we are looking at ways to deemphasize letter grades in favor of a labor-based, qualitative-feedback-driven mode of assessment of your writing and other activities.

Please take a few minutes now to record your impressions and experiences in your subbie and ninth-grade English classes these last two years: https://forms.gle/TaKqBDzaayYHu4Te7.

Thank you!

Notebook Prompt: Midsummer Night's Dreaming

The title of the Shakespeare play we've been enjoying in class identifies itself as a "dream," and indeed, characters throughout this play are repeatedly falling asleep and waking up on stage, and the main action takes place overnight in a magical, pastoral forest setting that is in many ways "dreamlike."

For your final Notebook prompt this year, take 5 minutes now to ponder all of the ways that you can see Shakespeare making use of this trope of dreams, dreamers, and dreaming in this play. How many "dreamers" are there in this play? Is a "dream" generally a good or bad thing in this play? What does dreaming entail, and does it represent an aspect of "reality," an alternate reality, an escape from reality, or some kind of nightmarish distortion of reality? In what ways is the play itself "like a dream"?