Catherine Called Birdy

Catherine Called Birdy

April 14th 2010

The historical fiction book, 'Catherine Called Birdy' by Karen Cushma is a journey of a noble's teenage daughter's hard life in middle age. Three of the main themes in the book are gender equality, medicine and family freedom. In page 141 and 142, Catherine says that there are many male saints who are bishops, popes, missonaries and other jobs while female saints are mostly just someone's mom or someone who's refusting to marry some powerfull pagan. This proves that gender equality is the theme of the book, because it tells that men could do whatever they wanted and most women couldn't even choose a job they wished to be. In page 155, Catherine's mom is sick for over 3 days while pregnant, she already lost her 5 babies which shows clearly that they didn't have proper medicines in Middle ages. In page 137, Catherine's father tells her that she will be quite,agreedable,and obedient and marry the pig. This proves the lack of family freedom where she gets force to marry. Catherine didn't have any freedom or opportunity to choose the person to marry. To sum up, the life in middle age was extremly frustrating especially for being a noble girl.



Link: http://www.frontiernet.net/~mblow/images/Birdy%20images/birdy%20book%20cover.jpg

Mystery Bag Reflection

Mystery Bags Reflection
Report on the possible Owner

The owner of this bag is most likely a female because there are perfume, lip gloss and the mirror inside the bag. She could be from a country where pounds are used, because one of her book has a tag with $ sign. She might be a tourist in Hong Kong because she had a Hong Kong map and tooth paste and brush for travelers in her bag. Maybe she has kid or kids to give Chinese animal books or she is someone who is learning Chinese. There is a photo of heart with number 10 on it, which is made of flowers. Photo seems like it’s for anniversary picture, so maybe this person has 10 years of marriage. By looking at lip gloss, mirror and earrings, this person likes to look good. Anti-inflammatory tells that this person has a throat problem. This person might be a person who really cares about if they smell good because there is perfume and peppermint gum in the bag. Fendi card tells me that this person might be a rich person because Fendi is very expensive. Pink Highlighter tells me that this person likes to be organized. Button tells me that she’s very extra-cautious.

Does the boy in the striped pyjamas deal with the sensitive subject of the Holocaust in an appropriate way?

Se Jin Lee March 5th
Green class

Does the boy in the striped pyjamas deal with the sensitive subject of the Holocaust in an appropriate way?

No, I think the book, 'The Boy In the Striped Pyjamas' doesn't deal with the Holocaust, because John Boyne used a Nazi's point of view. Even though it was a good choice because it didn't make the whole book complicated with fears and horror, I thought Bruno wasn't that serious about what was happening in Germany. Everything that happened was translated to more like 9 years old boy's eyes. Surely, the Holocaust was more serious that when Bruno felt after moving to Outwith. In the real history, people didn't really suffer because of loneliness(well some people did but..) It was all about surviving! food and death. Maybe it would have deal with the subject more in an appropriate way if the author wrote the book in Shumel's point of view. For example, in the first chapter everything was basically about having to move into a new house, it would have been more interesting if John Boyne wrote about Shumel getting into the concentration camp. To add up, I didn't like the face he wrote the book as a Nazi's son's point of view, a Jew's point of view would have really deal it with the reality, showing more fears and horrors.

Shumel's Point of View.

Web Quest

March 3rd Se Jin Lee Partner: Imaran

1) How did Hitler gain power and convince other nations to help him?
- He gave many German people a job, pride. Basically, he brainwashed them.

2)What does the holocaust mean?
- The holocaust means to burn, representing the horrible event that happened during the World War 2 in German, where they killed Jews and people they didn’t want and burnt them.

3)When was the first concentration camp built and used?
- January, 1993

4) What did the meaning Ghetto meant back then?
- A place or area where Nazis sent Jews until they were ready to sent to extermination camps.

5) What kind of people were Hitler targeting?
- People who he believe to have dirty blood in German, who disturbed them to make German a country with pure blood people.

6) Name 3 killing centers?
- Chelmno, Aushwiz-Birkenau and Lublin/ Majdanek.

7) What do you see in this picture? Go to this link and look at the first picture: Killing Centers
- I see many hairbrushes, which is very sad because they belong to Jews in
Poland who were probably killed.

8) How did other countries such as France, England, America etc. response to this murders/execution?

- First they didn’t do anything because they were scared of German and felt tired after having too much suffer after World War 1. But, when they realized that it will really make a problem if Hitler gets Russia, they all fought against Nazis.

9) What does the word "Aryanization" mean?
- Aryanization is the process that Nazis did in order to reduced the number of Jewish-owned businesses during April 1933 to April 1938 in Germany by about two-thirds.

10) Why did Hitler decide to kill Jews and everyone who was not "perfect"?
- because Hitler wanted German to be a perfect country, with people with pure blood.

Holocaust 10 questions

You can find all the answers from this site.
http://www.ushmm.org/

10 questions

1) What does antisemitism means?


2) What is Holocaust and when did it happen?


3) What were the purposes for Holocaust?


4) How was Jews' life before the Holocaust?



5) Which countries in Europe had the most Jews in the world? and what does that tell you?



6) Was Hitler a good speaker? What did he promised to get selected as German's leader?


7) What is the "Night of Broken Glass"?


8) What did the Nazi do at the end of the war to kill the prisoners?


from this link,
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005175
answer these questions.

9) Describe how you will feel if you were not a Jew and you see this picture.



10) List 3 reasons why this picture is very racist

1.
2.
3.

Assignment band blog posting VOID

Part1.

ISKL's mission statement:
"The International School of Kuala Lumpur provides an exceptional education that (silence) challenges each student to develop the attitudes, skills, knowledge and understanding to become a highly successful, spirited, socially responsible global citizen."


I think adding a silence after the word, 'that' creates the best tension. When you add a void after the word, 'that' audience will get curious and question about what's going to be said. Because when you only say that and doesn't really say what 'that' is, it really makes people want to know what that actually is. Also, audience will wait for the speaker to complete the sentence which will also create interesting feelings.


Part 2

Composers can create tension by suddenly changing the mood of music, using different instruments for melody and using minor scales. Composers can release by going back to the same mood,instruments before he created the tension.

Part 3

Answers of the Story

1) I would call this story 'The Black Box', because the black box is very important in this story. And I'm not sure why but i feel that the black box is making a void, making me wonder who's going to get the lottery.

2) I thought lottery was always good thing. I thought they would have a really big celebration for the person who won the lottery. but i was wrong, the lottery wasn't a good thing at all. They stoned Tessie(who won the lottery) It was really surprising.

3) I really wanted to open it, I was curious about the ending of the story. Then I started to wonder why teachers are doing this to us. This whole thing was about the void. Not letting us open this paper until 5 pm didn't made any changes, nothing would have gone wrong if somebody opened it earlier, but I knew that teachers wanted to make us question and wonder. I think this part was another void in this assignment.

4) I felt really nervous, and wanted to get a paper with a black dot, because way back then, I thought a paper with a black dot was a good thing. Unfortunately I got a paper without a dot. To be honest, I opened it on bus, since nobody was looking.(sorry) because I was full of curiosity and couldn't handle it anymore.

5) It was interesting, how the author keep saying black, black and black. Cause usually black represents bad things. I think they're voids, really make me curious. like for black paper, I get curious who's going to get it.

6) The end of story was really shocking, gave me all the answers. I was really confused why Mrs.Hutchinson keep saying 'this isn't fair'. but then I realized why.

7) No, my prediction wasn't correct at all. But I think the author wants my prediction to be wrong, because that's how he created this so interesting, by building all the elements and then at the end he had changed it upside down.

8) If there were titles, and less of void it would have been easy for me to predict the ending. but if it was easy to predict the ending, I wouldn't have died to read the story.

9) Because voids always make people question. If people start to question they will think more deeply, maybe the story might get popular then.

10) a) No titles makes me wonder what this story is basically about.

b) No ending makes me wonder what the ending is, even make me guess the ending.

c) I don't get this one.

d)Mystery paper makes me wonder what is the lottery, who's going to get it

They all made me question and wonder.