Winter Quarter Meetings
(click here to return to Past Quarters page)
Missed a Meeting??? Find the date and pics below to see what you missed!
Jan 13:
Welcome back Sigma Members! We started the quarter off with a
celebration: JRR Tolkien's birthday! Dr. Baker presented Tolkien's
poem "Mythopoeia" which was a response to his friend C.S. Lewis's
negative remark about myths ("myths were lies and therefore worthless, even though breathed through silver"). Tolkien
relates words and poems to being toys that we get to play with: an
infinite number of possibilities, options, choices and combinations that
only grow to the eternal once we reach heaven and "shall choose for
ever from the All". To read the peom, go to:
http://home.ccil.org/~cowan/mythopoeia.html. Enjoy!!!
Jan 20: We had guest speaker Dr. Susana Hernandez Araico join us to talk about the Spanish version of Romeo and Juliet entitled Castelvines y Monteses by Lope de Vega. We learned about the structure of Spanish Renaissance plays, the origin and inspiration of the the play itself and a brief description of the plot. If you have a chance to see it - DO! Jan 27: Today we held a book club - everyone present brought in one (or more) of their favorite books and we discussed what, where, why and how they made each out our top 5. To further broaden our libraries we will have another book club later this quarter or the next. See you there! Feb 3: Welcoming in the Chinese New Year with guest speaker Cobie Tran was a blast! Cobie went over the traditional prayers, gods, food, clothing and then her personal family traditions. We watched a clip of a lion dance (which you can view here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teer4fyMIMA). This dance is very aerobatic and can be confused with the dragon dance (which has smoother movements). I want to thank Cobie for joining us and bringing us into the year of the Rabbit! 'Sun lean fie lock' (Happy New Year) everyone!!! Feb 10: We had a fun and relaxing time reading the winner's poems and sharing fun, sad, romantic and satiric stories about Valentine's Day (while eating fantastic frosted cookies!) Congratulations to our winners: 1-Amanda Gauthier, 2-Amanda Mattox, 3-Alli Kirkham. For more on the winners and other writing contests, click here. Feb 17: We hosted Class Promotions once again to promote classes for the Spring Quarter. Our goal in doing this is to not only let English students be aware of what classes are available but also what they require (reading, assignments, etc.) This also helps to ensure that more classes wont be canceled and, therefore, available in the future. In short, we are trying to deceive those evil budget cuts!!! Posted are the flyers for the promoted classes - enjoy! March 3: Today we celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday! Dr. Seuss (aka. Theodor Geisel) got his PhD. from Oxford in literature. From there he went on to advertising drawing insect repellent ads and pro-America propaganda (seen in the slideshow to the right). His first book was "And to Think I saw it on Mulberry Street". After which he wrote "The Cat in the Hat" as the first of that "kind" of series. To write "The Cat in the Hat", since is was a twist on the "Dick and Jane" books, he used a single list of 300 words - words that were one syllable and nothing that started with hard letters for children like "q" and "x". Other books he wrote to promote children to read were "The King's Stilts", "Green Eggs and Ham", and "There's a Wocket in my Pocket". For a fun movie to watch that is Dr. Seuss inspired, go to our library are rent "Green Eggs and Hamlet". Also, visit Antique Ally in downtown Pomona where the live version of "The Cat and the Hat" was filmed for a view of how the sets looked (since most of the street kept the Seussian transformation). We would like to thank Dr. Aaron for joining us and giving us all of this information making us appreciate the renowned children's author so much more. Happy 107th Birthday Dr. Seuss! |
Click the pics below to see the books up close
Click the pics below to see what year you arel
Click the pics below to read the Class Promotion flyers
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