St. Jerome's Catholic School

New world – big horizon
Open your eyes and see it’s true
New world – across the frightening
Waves of blue – David Wilcox

Write about a song that cheers you up when you are feeling blue.

Include a link to the video and quote a lyric or two and discuss its effect on you.

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Read about the situation below and complete the assignment that follows.

The Situation
Imagine that you are Kim Green, a Grade 9 student, applying for one of the four jobs listed below. Robin Thornton is the person at the Hillcrest Job Centre who processes the applications for these jobs.

Summer Jobs Available
Volunteer Jobs

• Playground Program Assistant – assist with activities for seven-to-ten-year-old children
• Senior Citizen’s assistant – assist with the needs and activities of seniors in a centre or in the community

Paid Jobs

• Fast Food Restaurant Employee – prepare food, serve customers, clear tables
• Landscaping Assistant – plant flowers and shrubs; cut and rake lawns

Assignment
Write a business letter to Robin Thornton in which you apply for the job you have selected. (Select only one from the list above.)

When writing, be sure to

• identify the job for which you are applying
• explain what knowledge, skills, or experience you have that might be relevant to the job
• sign you letter Kin Green – do not sign your own name
• organize your thoughts appropriately in sentences and paragraphs
• use vocabulary that is appropriate and effective
• address the envelope

Note: The information you make up about Kim Green must be realistic for a Grade 9 student. Kim Green lives at 42 Wallaby Way in the city of Springfield, Alberta. Kim Green’s postal code is A3Z 1N9. The Hillcrest Job Centre is also in Springfield: 16961 61st Street, A5T 6P2.

Hint: consider Advice for ELA 9 Provincial Achievement Test

Rubric

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The motif of isolation and “otherness” is a common one in art and literature.

Select a text from your own reading or viewing that focuses on a character who is isolated and longs for another place or connection where he or she can feel a sense of belonging.

Write an essay analyzing this theme and showing how it is developed.

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Select one of the following quotations and write an essay explaining how one of the texts you have studied does or does not support the quote.

“Art is coming face to face with yourself.” – Jackson Pollock

“When I reflect that the task which the artist implicitly sets himself is to overthrow existing values, to make of the chaos about him an order which is his own, to sow strife and ferment so that by the emotional release those who are dead may be restored to life, then it is that I run with joy to the great and imperfect ones, their confusion nourishes me, their stuttering is like divine music to my ears.” – Henry Miller

“The subject matter of art is life, life as it actually is; but the function of art is to make life better.” – George Santayana

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Read Anton Chekhov’s A Marriage Proposal.

Meaning

1. Identify the object of Chekhov’s satire in this play. Support your interpretation with a specific reference to the text.
2. Why do you think Chekhov included the character to Chubukov in the play? What functioin does he serve?

Form and Style

1. The play has a strong emotional tone. Explain how both the structure of the play and the punctuation of the text contribute to the emotional tone. Cite specific examples to support your answer.
2. Melodrama is defined s “a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions.” Comment on how Chekhov uses melodramatic techniques to create humor in this piece.

Exploring Content

1. What information about life in Czarist Russia do we learn from this script? Explain how this information creates the context of the drama in the play.

Creative Extension

1. Choose a segment of the play and rewrite it in a narrative (short story) form. Be prepared to discuss changes you needed to make to transpose one form to another.
2. Prepare a readers’ theatre presentation of a portion of the script. Focus on capturing the emotional tension created through the dialogue. Record your presentation (audio or video) and share it.
3. Read Chekhov’s monologue On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco. Using this monologue as a model, write a script for a monologue given by one of the characters from A Marriage Proposal: Chubukov on the dangers of domestic champagne, Natalya on the dangers faced by women at harvest, or Lomov on the dangers of modern fabrics … and so on and so forth and all that.

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A hunch is a feeling or impression that something is about to happen. Authors sometimes use a character’s hunches to create suspense or to tie together a group of events. For example, in “Stains,” the mother has been afraid for her son “for a long time. She realized that when the doorbell rang at 4 a.m.”

Write a story about a character’s hunches. Try to use this hunch not only to create suspense, but to help explain the action that comes at the end of the story.

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Think of some people you know or have read about who are/where ambitious. Have their ambitions led to a positive or negative result? Are ambitions sometimes destructive? Explain.

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What is your understanding of the philosophy, “the end justifies the means”? Give examples of situations in which you would agree or disagree with this philosophy.

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Would assassination or civil war ever be a justifiable response to rule by tyranny? What would you do if the leader of your country became a vicious tyrant? Respond with a short story or narrative essay.

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Are a citizen’s first responsibilities to family, political leader, or country?

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Describe some examples of what you think is evil behaviour. How should evil behaviour be dealt with?

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If you suspected, but had no evidence, that a friend of yours had committed a crime, what would you do?

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How do you deal with your fears? How might you help others to deal with theirs? What are some of the effects that fear can have on people?

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Describe a time you experienced insomnia (lack of sleep). What did you do about it? What are some of the effects that insomnia can have on people who suffer from it?

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Describe a women who best represents your idea of “womanliness.” Describe a man who best depicts “manliness.” Are there any similarities between the two descriptions? Why or why not?

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Explain what your think an ideal marriage would be.

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Describe a situation in which you or someone you know has been deceived by appearances. How might you advise someone to guard against this trap?

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What do you want most from life? What are you prepared to do to attain it?

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Investigate tropes.  What is a trope?

1. View the film Blast from the Past (1999) and review it with the aim of pointing out several tropes.
   • note the broad categories tropes fall into, identify several examples from at least 3 categories.
   • You may want to consider scanning the script from Blast from the Bast (1999) for your favorite moments/quotes.
2. Write a short story(that one day could be turned into a feature film) based on an idea generated by tvtropes.org Story Idea Generator.
   • Incorporate at least one common trope from the film into your story. There is no need for your story to parallel the film in any other way.
   • Synthesize some element of cold-war paranoia into your story.(view The Atomic Cafe (1982) for some witty inspiration about the comic horrors of the cold-war era.)
   • Focus/comment somewhere in your story on the theme of searching for identity.

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In what ways can a person be considered a poem?

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