weekly blog post

Another week gone, another week closer to summer. So this week I focused on preparing for my speaking portion which I completed on thursday during mx block. I read three myths Hercules, Orpheus, and Arachne. I spent my two class block focusing on adjusting my myths so they would fit the time. I also adjusted them to be more family friends which in retrospect was unnecessary. I found the book I read from misled the reader during some of the myths. So I crossed out and added in a few sections that I felt were necessary to better tell the myth. For instance I wanted to focus on Hercules twelve labors not on this rest of his life so I crossed out most of the parts about his fame and glory after his labors but kept in the reasons why he was forced to complete the labors. I spent my time at night practicing and reviewing so I would be ready to preform. I ran into the problem on continuing to be unable to pronounce some of the names an words and everyone I asked for help from gave me a different pronunciation. So I choose the pronunciation that I could best say and that made the best sense. I am not a great public speaker when it comes to talking to big groups but I think that I did a pretty good job and I like all of my work.

Weekly Post

Hi. This week I again focused on reading myths and writing responses. I used the same format as I used last week. I have found having a clear format has helped me to focus in on what I want to write about and kept me on track. Most of the common myths that focus on the major gods and heroes I had already read so I decided I wanted to focus on the less common myths. Also, the major myths have understandable underlying themes while the less common myths tend to be harder to decipher. The less common myths have morals that are not usually discussed in mythology such as boasting or theft.

 I focused on the myths of Helios and Arachne. The myth about Helios focused on his son Phaethon and how he stole Helios' sun chariot and created the desert and ice caps. I chose to focus on the lesson of trust, Helios trusted his son to obey his orders and he did not. I was surprised that both versions of the myth that I read did not so much as mention the fact that Phaethon stole, the focused solely on his bad driving. Of course he is going to be bad at driving the sun, it is the first time he ever drove it he was bound to make a few mistakes, not to mention it is the sun it can not be easy to maneuver. I also read the myth of Arachne which focused on boasting. Arachne boasted her cloth work was better than the gods and Athena took issue with that and turned Arachne into a spider. I focused my response on the moral of how boasting is wrong. I was surprised at the overreaction from Athena and the fact she chose to destroy Arachne's life. Why did Athena have to force Arachne to forever be sewing knowing it would never be good enough, why didn't she just take away Arachne's ability to sew. Overall I liked reading the less common myths mainly because I had not read them yet so they were a change of pace from the crazed lovers I wrote and read about last week. I think I am going to continue to work with my format as it seems to be working well. 

Theseus and Orpheus

This week I wrote two short responses to 'Theseus' and 'Orpheus'. I read both myths out of the books I am reading 'D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths' and 'Mythology by Edith Hamilton'. The Greek Myth book was a easy read, I found myself reading it in class because of how simple the words and examples are. The Mythology book is much harder to read and took a lot longer to get through. The myths themselves are longer and use larger and less common language which means every few minuets I had to look up words which makes it harder to get into the story. The reading was both hard and easy but I have found myself taking many notes which have been helpful in understand the text.

Writing the responses was complex but I found coming up with a solid procedure to follow helped.  I tried to plan out my responses so that they followed a format. The first paragraph was a short explanation of what happened. The second a in-depth look of the major theme or idea. The third my opinion of what was happening or a in depth look a secondary theme. I found this structure worked well and I fell my work is better when I have a clear idea to follow. Theseus was very interesting and easy to read as I know the story well. Writing the response we easier as I felt I had a lot to talk about and reference. Orpheus was a harder read as it was the first time I had read this myth. There was much less to talk about and I found myself changing my outline and rereading at the myth multiple times. Overall I am meeting my deadlines and I think my work is pretty good.