Journals for the Week

All sections:

Thursday: Hoave yo9u ever felt jealous? What is it like? What actions did you take because of your jealousy?

Friday: Freewrite!

Saturday: Where do you go when you don't want to go home?

Sunday: Write a poem about a person in your life.

Monday: What amazes you? How does that affect your perspective on your life?

Tuesday: Do yu have goals you think are unreachable? Why do you think you can't achieve them?

Vocabulary Review : Pictionary!

Vocabulary Review : Pictionary!

Directions: Work with a partner on this activity. Make sure both your names are on your sheet, so that both of you can get credit for your work.

Fold a blank sheet of paper into eighths (fold it in half, then again, then one more time). When you open up your sheet, you should have 8 squares.

Use both sides of the paper to play vocabulary Pictionary with your partner. Take turns drawing and guessing. Turn it in at the end of the period.

Your quiz is Wednesday, March 3!

IMK Reading assignment Chapters 26-27 (p. 426-436)

Reading Response & “Say Something”

“Say Something” for pages 429-30 and 434 (2 sets)

Read The Ill-Made Knight, Chapters 26-27 (pages 426-436) and answer the following questions on loose-leaf paper:

1.How does Arthur explain about why Morgause hates him? (427)
2.What does Arthur say is his error about the Round Table? What causes him to realize the problem? (428)
3.How does Arthur explain the problem of Might for Right to Lancelot? What does Arthur say he should have done? (433)
4.Why does Arthur decide to send his knights on a quest for the Holy Grail? (434-435)

IMK Reading assignment Chapters 23-25 (p. 412-425)

Reading Response

Read The Ill-Made Knight, Chapters 23-25 (pages 412-425) and answer the following questions on loose-leaf paper:

1.Who do you think the “silver woman on the sable field” is? (413)
2.How do Ector and Degalis convince Lancelot to return to court? (417)
3.How do the young members of the court perceive Arthur, Lancelot and Guenever? (420-421)
4.Why did the “ambitious knights of Europe” want to join Arthur's court? (425)

Scandal at Camelot!

Scandal at Camelot!

Using your notes and your text, rewrite the story of Elaine's arrival at Camelot, ending with Lancelot's madness, as a Jerry Springer episode. Use chapters 15-18, pages 384-397.

This will count as a classwork grade.

Criteria	Possible Points	Your Points
The student has used the three main characters in the episode (Lancelot, Elaine, and Guenever). The characters remain true to the text. Elaine is an innocent young woman, who tricks Lancelot out of love; Guenever is the jealous lover, who is infuriated by the treachery; and Lancelot is frustrated that he has been tricked again, and that Guenever doesn't believe him	10
The rewrite touches on important plot points, such as Elaine's arrival with the baby, her second treachery, and Lancelot's madness.	10
Total	20

Journal for the Day

All sections:

What makes an action good or bad? Can good people become bad and bad people become good?

Journal for the Day

All sections:

Choose a quote and respond to it in your journal:

1. "Actions in accord with virtue are pleasant by nature"

2. "No good person could ever become miserable since he will never do hateful or base actions"

3. "Virtues of character are acquired through habit"

4. "We must examine the right ways of acting... the actions control the sorts of states we acquire"

5. "First, the person must know that he is doing virtuous actions; second, he must decide on them; and third, he must also do them from an unchanging state"

-- Aristotle

Journal for the Day

All sections:

Freewrite!

Dictionary Vocab. Activity

Using the vocabulary list below, follow the directions to help you understand the challenging vocabulary in our book, The Once and Future King.

1. Look up the word in the dictionary and write it down.
2. Check the text (page numbers are provided). How is the word being used?
3. Write a definition in your own words, considering the way the vocabulary is used in the text. Use context clues!
4. Finally, write a sentence using the word. Make sure you are using it with the same meaning as the text!

Fetch (372)
Discourteous (374)
Caricature (375)
Constitution (375)
Martyr (375)
Contrive (378)
Habitual (378)
Vital (378)
Pathos (379)
Consolation (380)
Sulk (382)
Remorse (382)
Wicked (383)
Misogynist (384)
Seclusion (386)
Sophistication (386)

Journals for February Break

All sections:

What can you learn about yourself by reflecting on the characters of Lancelot, Arthur and Guenever? (1 journal entry for each)

IMK Reading assignment Chapters 19-22 (p. 397-413)

Read Chapters 19-22 of IMK (pages 397-413)

"Say Something" for pages 407 and 411 (2 sets)

Reading Response Questions:

1. What reason does Sir Bliant give for thinking the "Wild Man" may have been Lancelot? (401)

2. Why does Elaine decide to become a nun? (406)

3. What "humiliating terms" must Elaine accept if she wants Lancelot to live with her? (410)

IMK Reading assignment Chapters 15-18 (p. 384-397)

Read Chapters 15-18 of IMK (pages 384-397)

"Say Something" for pages 387, 388, and 389 (3 sets)

Reading Response Questions:

1. For what reason does Lancelot and Guenever's year of happiness "collapse in ruin"? (384)

2. What has given Guenever and Lancelot's love "its greatest fury"? (386)

3. How does Elaine's arrival at court affect Lancelot, Guenever, and Arthur? (387, 388, and 389)

4. How does Guenever's attitude change after Elaine's arrival? (391)

5. What happens to Lancelot after Elaine tricks him a second time? (396)

Journal for the Day

All sections:

Freewrite!

Journal for the Day

All sections:

Think about a time when you had a dilemma. What was it? What did you choose? Why?

Close Reading - Deciphering the Details

Close Reading

Deciphering the Details

When you do a close reading, you are looking deeply into the meaning of a small section of your text.

Directions: On a loose-leaf sheet of paper, write a comment for each numbered sentence(s).

Part I

1. “It is difficult to explain about Guenever, unless it is possible to love two people at the same time. Probably it is not possible to love two people in the same way, but there are different kinds of love. Women love their children and their husbands at the same time—and men often feel a lusty thought for one woman while they are feeling a love of the heart for another. 2. In some way such as this, Guenever came to love the Frenchman without losing her affection for Arthur. 3. She and Lancelot were hardly more than children when it began, and the King was about eight years their senior. At twenty-two, the age of thirty seems to be the verge of senility. 4. The marriage between her and Arthur had been what they call a “made” marriage. That is to say, it had been fixed by a treaty with King Leodegrance without consulting her. It had been a successful union, as “made” marriages often are, and before Lancelot came on the scene, the young girl had adored her famous husband, even if he was so old. 5. She had felt respect for him, with gratitude, love, and a sense of protection. She had felt more than this, you might say that she felt everything except the passion of romance.” (362-363)

Part II

1. “One reason for [Lancelot's] dilemma [about Guenever] was that he was a Christian. […] His Church in which he had been brought up—and it is difficult to escape from your upbringing—directly forbade him to seduce his best friend's wife. 2. Another stumbling block to doing as he pleased was the very idea of chivalry or of civilization, which Arthur had first invented and then introduced to his own young mind. Perhaps a bad baron who believed in the Strong Arm might have gone off with Guenever even in the face of the Church's councils, because taking your neighbor's wife was really a form of Fort Mayne. It was a matter of the stronger bull winning. 3. But Lancelot had spent his childhood between knightly exercises and thinking out King Arthur's theory for himself. He believed as firmly as Arthur did, as firmly as the benighted Christian, that there was such a thing as Right.” (367)

Part III

1. “Finally, there was the impediment of [Lancelot's] nature. In the secret parts of his peculiar brain, those unhappy and inextricable tangles which he felt at the roots, the boy was disabled by something which we cannot explain. He could not have explained either, and for us it is all too long ago. He loved Arthur, and he loved Guenever, and he hated himself. 2. The best knight of the world: everybody envied the self-esteem which must surely be his. 3. But Lancelot never believed he was good or nice. Under the grotesque shell with a face like Quasimodo's, there was shame and self-loathing which had been planted there when he was tiny , by something which is now too late to trace. It is so fatally easy to make young children believe that they are horrible.” (368)

Part IV

1. The slow discovery of the seventh sense [knowledge of the world], by which both men and women contrive to ride the waves of a world in which there is war, adultery, compromise, fear, stultification, and hypocrisy—this discovery is not a matter for triumph. 2. The baby, perhaps, cries out triumphantly: I have balance! But the seventh sense is recognized without a cry. 3. We only carry on with our famous knowledge of the world, riding the queer waves in a habitual, petrifying way, because we have reached a stage of deadlock in which we can think of nothing else to do.

4. At this stage we begin to forget that there ever was a time when we lacked the seventh sense. We begin to forget as we go stolidly balancing along, that there could have been a time when we were young bodies flaming with the impetus of life. 5. It is hardly consoling to remember such a feeling, and so it deadens in our minds.” (378)

Journal for the Day

All sections:

In what significant way do you think you have changed in the last 5 years? Was this change for the better? Why or why not?

Journal for the Day

All sections:

Describe a clear memory from your childhood. What can you learn about yourself based on this memory? (How do you think this event shaped you?)

Dictionary Vocab. Activity

Using the vocabulary list below, follow the directions to help you understand the challenging vocabulary in our book, The Once and Future King.

1. Look up the word in the dictionary and write it down.
2. Check the text (page numbers are provided). How is the word being used?
3. Write a definition in your own words, considering the way the vocabulary is used in the text. Use context clues!
4. Finally, write a sentence using the word. Make sure you are using it with the same meaning as the text!

Pavilion (347)
Sumptuous (347)
Damsel (349)
Vanquish (351)
Peculiar (352)
Faltered (352)
Wretched (352)
Maimed (353)
Choleric (355)
Degenerate (355)
Atrocity (355)
Unscrupulous (355)
Ideologies (355)
Mercy (360)
Invincible (363)
Impose (364)
Civilization (364)
Scheme (366)
Dilemma (367)
Prosperous (369)
Prophesy (372)

IMK Reading assignment Chapters 11-14 (p. 368-383)

Read Chapters 11-14 of IMK, pages 368-383

"Say Something" for pages 377, 378, and 379-380 (3 sets)

Reading Response Questions:

1. What reason does Lancelot give for fighting his desire for Guenever? (368)

2. What miracle does Lancelot perform at Corbin? (370-371)

3. What treachery does Elaine do against Lancelot? Why does she do it? (375-376)

4. In your own words, what is "knowledge of the world"? (377)

5. What does Lancelot have to give up in order to be with Guenever? (382-383)

Weekend Journals

All sections:

Saturday: What is Mercy? Do you usually show mercy when someone has hurt you? Why or why not?

Sunday: Freewrite!

Journal for the Day

All sections:

Freewrite!

Journal for the day

All sections:

What are your worst sins? Why?

- Lust
- Gluttony (eating just to eat)
- Greed
- Vanity (conceit, pride, cocky)
- Envy (jealousy)
- Wrath (anger)
- Sloth (laziness)

Journal for the Day

All sections:

Is it always worth fighting for what you believe? When is it not?

Notes on Might vs. Right

Answer the questions below using your notes on Might vs. Right:

1. Why does Arthur believe in Right over Might?
2. How does Lancelot uphold Arthur's ideal?
3. What problems is Arthur facing in trying to implement his plan for Right?


- Might: using your power to do anything you want
- Right: doing good actions because they are right to do
     "I don't think things ought to be done because you are able to do them. I think they should be done because you ought to do them." (246)
     "Might is only to be used for Right," Arthur decides (248)
- Arthur wants to create an order of knights who use Might for Right--this is the Round Table

- the Orkney faction (Gawaine and his brothers) "don't get hold of the idea as [Arthur] wanted them to do" (332)
     - they are not convinced of Arthur's ideal
     - Arthur blames Morgause, their mother
- Lancelot wants to fight for this ideal (316) and uphold the rules of chivalry
     - fights Sir Carados to save Gawaine
     - always tries for a fair fight and always grants mercy when asked, even when he thinks they don't deserve it (361)
- The "choleric barons" represent the old order of Might
     - thought Arthur's  new idea was absurd and his followers "degenerate"
     - they hated Lancelot because they thought he was a threat to their "ancient powers"
     - "they fought him with as much unscrupulousness and hatred as if he had been an antichrist, and they truly believed themselves to be defending the right." (355)

- The problem of using Might for Right:
     - "people ought not to take advantage of weakness (...) but these knights are turning it into a competitive thing" (365)
     - Arthur's dilemma: "in the effort to impose a world of peace, he found himself up to his elbows in blood." (364)

Journal for the Day

Sections 10-3 and 10-4:

What are your responsibilities? How good are you at fulfilling them?