Great work today. Follow the two sheets for the anthology project and you should be fine.
The entire project is due Tues. (no extensions) which means you really need to plan your time.
Meet in the computer lab Friday again. Bring your USSR book and then you'll have the rest of the block to work. Enjoy.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
English 9
Welcome to the Second Half of the wonderful English 9 course! I am really excited to work with such a dynamic, enthusiastic group.
Tonight's bonus question: What do you need to do to earn an A for USSR?
Review: What is Ms. Stenson's late policy? Does it seem fair? Why or why not?
What book will you read first in USSR? Why? Time yourself. Aim for one minute per page. Read for enjoyment. The brain likes speed reading so it can stay focused.
Homework: read the story on page 42, "The Father". As you read look for examples which reveal the father's relationship to his son. Post-it note the BEST four passages which you feel reveal the most about their relationship. Look for:
Tonight's bonus question: What do you need to do to earn an A for USSR?
Review: What is Ms. Stenson's late policy? Does it seem fair? Why or why not?
What book will you read first in USSR? Why? Time yourself. Aim for one minute per page. Read for enjoyment. The brain likes speed reading so it can stay focused.
Homework: read the story on page 42, "The Father". As you read look for examples which reveal the father's relationship to his son. Post-it note the BEST four passages which you feel reveal the most about their relationship. Look for:
- the father's thoughts
- his actions
- what other characters say about him
- shifts in tone (in movies shifts in tone are often preceded by changes in music (scary))
- symbols (a dead tree outside the son's window is probably not the best omen)
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
AP LIT
We discussed chapters 2 and 3. If you were absent today, ask me for a copy of the chapter 3 notes and I also handed out a poetry practice test and tips for writing the poetry composition. Ask me for the handouts.
Be sure to get the notes from a classmate as well. We worked in groups. Discussing the events is the ONLY way to make sense of it all.
WED: Poetry test: Part 1, read a poem and write a composition (40 minutes), Part 2, Read a poem, and answer 12 multiple choice.
I expect a TICK chart for both poems so that you feel really clear and confident of your understanding before you start to write or answer questions.
Multiple Choice TIPS: As you practice tonight
mater dolorosa (grieving mother)
parsimonious
metonymy
apostrophe
satire
Be sure to get the notes from a classmate as well. We worked in groups. Discussing the events is the ONLY way to make sense of it all.
WED: Poetry test: Part 1, read a poem and write a composition (40 minutes), Part 2, Read a poem, and answer 12 multiple choice.
I expect a TICK chart for both poems so that you feel really clear and confident of your understanding before you start to write or answer questions.
Multiple Choice TIPS: As you practice tonight
- Cover up the answers. Read the question and know what the answer is, then look at their responses. You will most likely find your answer there. This way you will not be tricked!! They cannot distract a resolute reader. At least two questions often require vocabulary. Reading is the best way to improve your vocabulary. If you are not reading regularly, then pick up a SAT vocab. list or something similar and study words and phrases systematically. You'll pick up at least two questions per section based on elevated vocabulary knowledge.
mater dolorosa (grieving mother)
parsimonious
metonymy
apostrophe
satire
Writing 12
I collected the poems for The Claremont Review and the BCTELA contests. We went on line and sent our poems to Aerie International and to Polyphony. If you were absent, please submit asap. You will need the cover pages.
If you were away, go online, follow the steps exactly (especially for Aerie as they have a long list of guidelines) and submit your work today, please. Show me the email so you can receive your mark.
Thursday: BRING YOUR OPENING FROM THE 3 POINTS OF VIEW. IT WILL BE FUN TO DISCUSS YOUR EXPERIENCES. DON'T WORRY ABOUT STYLE/SYNTAX/IMAGERY AT THIS POINT AS YOU ARE NOT HANDING THEM IN. WE WILL JUST BE READING THEM ALOUD AND DISCUSSING WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE SWITCH VERB TENSE AND/OR POINT OF VIEW.
If you were away, go online, follow the steps exactly (especially for Aerie as they have a long list of guidelines) and submit your work today, please. Show me the email so you can receive your mark.
Thursday: BRING YOUR OPENING FROM THE 3 POINTS OF VIEW. IT WILL BE FUN TO DISCUSS YOUR EXPERIENCES. DON'T WORRY ABOUT STYLE/SYNTAX/IMAGERY AT THIS POINT AS YOU ARE NOT HANDING THEM IN. WE WILL JUST BE READING THEM ALOUD AND DISCUSSING WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE SWITCH VERB TENSE AND/OR POINT OF VIEW.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Lit 12
Excellent work today as always.
If you have any questions about Writing 12, English 12, AP Lit or AP Lang. do let me know or visit the English dept. chair, Ms. McCachen as she has taught all of these courses and she is familiar with SMUS policy.
Whatever you choose, I know you will love the course(s) because you are natural writers, incredible readers, and fabulous orators. I'm extremely lucky to get to work with you this year. Enjoy your weekend. Hope you get some time to curl up with a great book to discover more about the world, and most importantly, the human heart.
If you have any questions about Writing 12, English 12, AP Lit or AP Lang. do let me know or visit the English dept. chair, Ms. McCachen as she has taught all of these courses and she is familiar with SMUS policy.
Whatever you choose, I know you will love the course(s) because you are natural writers, incredible readers, and fabulous orators. I'm extremely lucky to get to work with you this year. Enjoy your weekend. Hope you get some time to curl up with a great book to discover more about the world, and most importantly, the human heart.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Writing 12
Reminder: Have your poetry manuscript accessible electronically in the lab on Tues. We will be entering contests. Grade 12s you will need your home addresses and postal codes and phone numbers and home emails as many of these contests will contact you in the summer.
We had THE most wonderful writing class but we missed all of our musicians. If you were away today, stop by and pick up a novel that you now own. They are in a box on the floor beside my desk. The novel is called Mean Boy and it's been charged to your account. Please bring it to all classes except on day 9s when we are in the lab.
Homework:
You will write one scene three times. Bring all three versions to class next Thursday, Feb. 9. These are not to be handed in but will be read aloud and shared so we can have a discussion on the role of point of view and verb tense in our stories. It will be interesting to see which point of view and verb tense you start with and which one you prefer.
Make the scene a possible opening to a short story. Use some dialogue but not too much.
The point of today's class was to distinguish the difference between truth and fiction. Similar to poetry, you will be showing and not telling. You won't say, Susie was a loser or Susie was isolated. You will describe Susie doing things and saying things and feeling things and we'll figure out--ohhhh Susie is really isolated. She's such a loser.
The other KEY difference is the old adage that TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION.
It is because in fiction the actions, speech, etc. must BE plausible....the character must be motivated, i.e. you've developed your character enough so that we believe it's TRUTH. I know, it's strange, but fiction is much harder to write than non-fiction. You still apply all you learned in poetry--the exact image, surprise, hyperbole, rhythm, repetition, sound devices, etc BUT you are now working with the sentence rather than a line.
The descriptions of the bedrooms this morning were wonderful and memorable.
Here is the trick to writing a great story--if you can read it 6 to 10 times without getting bored, than it is a strong story. It works. It works because we remember the details, empathize with the character, are moved by his / her dilemma, and we can relate to (even if we don't like) the ending. Most modern short stories open up at the end rather than shut down. So . . . we'll learn to do that too.
Things I remember from today's oral stories:
My father paid me 10 bucks for every book I read.
I liked to re-arrange my furniture and my mother would put it all back.
My laundry shoot is a basketball hoop.
I have 7 pillows on my bed and I use all 7.
My room has 13 walls. I painted all my furniture black.
A snake named Flix. A cat named Snitch.
A trundle bed, a collection of yogourt containers organized by flavour
A guy gets paid to paint murals on bedroom walls
A house in Prince Rupert where I grew up. We still own it so I can go back there and sleep in my childhood room.
A room with all the months of the year on the walls.
A girl who has nightmares about an erg machine.
My parents store boxes in my room. It's a trick just to make my way in. I look out my window at the bonfires of university students.
A pink chair that has been passed down via grandmothers for four generations.
An 8 year old bringing an enormous chair home from India.
A room decorated with fairies.
Bedsheets with LA Lakers on them.
Cutouts of favourite outfits taped on top of fairy drawings and pictures of friends partying.
Giant locks on bedroom doors
dogs and cats that steal things
These details are all unique, accurate, surprising, wonderful. Listen to each other's stories. Start asking perfect strangers to describe their bedrooms. Everything you need for a story is there.
Think about all the stories you could write based on these stories. Wow.
We had THE most wonderful writing class but we missed all of our musicians. If you were away today, stop by and pick up a novel that you now own. They are in a box on the floor beside my desk. The novel is called Mean Boy and it's been charged to your account. Please bring it to all classes except on day 9s when we are in the lab.
Homework:
You will write one scene three times. Bring all three versions to class next Thursday, Feb. 9. These are not to be handed in but will be read aloud and shared so we can have a discussion on the role of point of view and verb tense in our stories. It will be interesting to see which point of view and verb tense you start with and which one you prefer.
Make the scene a possible opening to a short story. Use some dialogue but not too much.
- 1st version: 3rd person past tense-- He/She went to the store. She bought a coke.
- 2nd version: 1st person present tense-- I am going to the store. I go to the store. I buy a coke.
- 3rd version: 2nd person future tense -- You will go to the store. You will buy a coke.
The point of today's class was to distinguish the difference between truth and fiction. Similar to poetry, you will be showing and not telling. You won't say, Susie was a loser or Susie was isolated. You will describe Susie doing things and saying things and feeling things and we'll figure out--ohhhh Susie is really isolated. She's such a loser.
The other KEY difference is the old adage that TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION.
It is because in fiction the actions, speech, etc. must BE plausible....the character must be motivated, i.e. you've developed your character enough so that we believe it's TRUTH. I know, it's strange, but fiction is much harder to write than non-fiction. You still apply all you learned in poetry--the exact image, surprise, hyperbole, rhythm, repetition, sound devices, etc BUT you are now working with the sentence rather than a line.
The descriptions of the bedrooms this morning were wonderful and memorable.
Here is the trick to writing a great story--if you can read it 6 to 10 times without getting bored, than it is a strong story. It works. It works because we remember the details, empathize with the character, are moved by his / her dilemma, and we can relate to (even if we don't like) the ending. Most modern short stories open up at the end rather than shut down. So . . . we'll learn to do that too.
Things I remember from today's oral stories:
My father paid me 10 bucks for every book I read.
I liked to re-arrange my furniture and my mother would put it all back.
My laundry shoot is a basketball hoop.
I have 7 pillows on my bed and I use all 7.
My room has 13 walls. I painted all my furniture black.
A snake named Flix. A cat named Snitch.
A trundle bed, a collection of yogourt containers organized by flavour
A guy gets paid to paint murals on bedroom walls
A house in Prince Rupert where I grew up. We still own it so I can go back there and sleep in my childhood room.
A room with all the months of the year on the walls.
A girl who has nightmares about an erg machine.
My parents store boxes in my room. It's a trick just to make my way in. I look out my window at the bonfires of university students.
A pink chair that has been passed down via grandmothers for four generations.
An 8 year old bringing an enormous chair home from India.
A room decorated with fairies.
Bedsheets with LA Lakers on them.
Cutouts of favourite outfits taped on top of fairy drawings and pictures of friends partying.
Giant locks on bedroom doors
dogs and cats that steal things
These details are all unique, accurate, surprising, wonderful. Listen to each other's stories. Start asking perfect strangers to describe their bedrooms. Everything you need for a story is there.
Think about all the stories you could write based on these stories. Wow.
AP Lit
Poetry test is rescheduled to Wednesday. It will be a poem that we haven't studied. Read it, create a tick chart and answer the question in a literary composition. The second section will be a poem a a set of multiple choice questions.
Annotate chapter 3 for Tuesday. Prepare chapter 4 for Friday and Chapter 5 for Monday Feb. 13 (arg, it's first period)
See encouraging notes below: (LOL)
The hard part of teaching a novel is getting students to read it. You need a good hour to annotate each chapter. And then you need another 20 minutes to go back and think about the chapter with our two guiding questions: What is revealed about the artist (ie what is Stephen learning, experiencing and how will that shape him as an artist?) and what is revealed about the role of art? What attitudes toward art are depicted. We spoke about the Romantic attitude, in particular Shelley's, in chapter 1, and today, Byron (Aprostrophe to the Ocean) and the Bryronic heor and Wordsworth (The Prelude) initially called The Growth of a Poet's Mind (Wordsworth never felt it was complete. published after his death, and his sister gave it the title).
The reason we are treating the novel in such detail is to prepare you for the final essay on the AP exam. Whatever book or play you choose, you need to be able to recall key events and characters and ideally quotations in order to support your opinions and prove the thesis. A shallow, vague discussion will not work. To prepare for the exam, I suggest that you
Your poetry essays were eloquent, provocative, engaging. Well done.
Annotate chapter 3 for Tuesday. Prepare chapter 4 for Friday and Chapter 5 for Monday Feb. 13 (arg, it's first period)
See encouraging notes below: (LOL)
The hard part of teaching a novel is getting students to read it. You need a good hour to annotate each chapter. And then you need another 20 minutes to go back and think about the chapter with our two guiding questions: What is revealed about the artist (ie what is Stephen learning, experiencing and how will that shape him as an artist?) and what is revealed about the role of art? What attitudes toward art are depicted. We spoke about the Romantic attitude, in particular Shelley's, in chapter 1, and today, Byron (Aprostrophe to the Ocean) and the Bryronic heor and Wordsworth (The Prelude) initially called The Growth of a Poet's Mind (Wordsworth never felt it was complete. published after his death, and his sister gave it the title).
The reason we are treating the novel in such detail is to prepare you for the final essay on the AP exam. Whatever book or play you choose, you need to be able to recall key events and characters and ideally quotations in order to support your opinions and prove the thesis. A shallow, vague discussion will not work. To prepare for the exam, I suggest that you
- Read with a pen in your hand.
- Annotate.
- Pick a key event from each chapter to represent it.
- Name the chapters.
- Pick a key quotation from each chapter.
- Memorize it.
- Create note cards for studying purposes.
- You won't be able to re-read all the works we've done but you can re-read your notes and create study cards.
Your poetry essays were eloquent, provocative, engaging. Well done.
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