AP Lit

Finish reading and making notes on Act 1. Be prepared to present your response to the question you chose for Friday's class.
If you have not yet written the section D prov. exam composition, you must submit by 3:20 today. 

Hint: never just read for AP Lit. Always read with a pen. It's not enough to simply write down quotes. Make connections. Know what you are looking for. Make inferences. Notice patterns, motifs, changes in diction.  You become better readers in this manner, of course, and it ends up taking less time. You don't have to keep re-reading and dozing off. It's called active reading. If you need help to be a better reader, let me know. I have tips.

English 10A

Today, we re-wrote the paragraphs from last week's story, "Saturday Climbing". We focused on ensuring that we are learning literary paragraph structure. As you re-write each sentence, make sure you know why you are doing so. What does it mean to prove the thesis? How will you refer to climbing examples and explain how they represent the changes in the relationship? Why is it effective for an author to do so?

Hand in the worksheet next class.

Next, you had twenty minutes to get a good start on the paragraph. The question is listed on last day's blog as well. Make sure you follow the same steps. Describe what she learns and explain what each lesson could be foreshadowing.

You will need a strong thesis to start that includes all the lessons. For example,

In "Part One" of the novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, Scout learns several key lessons which foreshadow that in a prejudiced town such as Maycomb, to combat prejudice, ignorance and injustice, one must be willing to step away from the crowd and question society.

First opinion: The first lesson Scout learns occurs in her kitchen when Calprnia scolds the young, hotheaded girl for mistreating their guest, Walter Cunningham. Scout believes that Walter should not be considered a guest in their home because he is a Cunningham; however, she must learn that all people are equal despite race or social status. this lesson foreshadows that Scout will begin to question society because many of the town's beliefs do not match her family's beliefs. Since Atticus is an educated lawyer, he teaches his daughter respect so the second lesson Scout encounters revolves around her father's choice to defend Tom Robinson. Scout is teased because her father is a "nigger-lover" (25) and consequently, because she loves her father, she responds to the taunts with her fists.

(Notice the diction, sentence variety, and transitions here). Since this question is fairly simple, it is a good opportunity for you to focus on your written expression.

Good luck. Hand in the paragraph on Thursday.

Lit 12

Today, I handed out the outline for the Xmas exam.
Part 1: 30 multiple choice (sometimes more) Focus on title, author, themes, characters, conflicts, recognition of lines, tone, diction, literary terms.
Part 2: Sight poem: It will be medieval or Renaissance so study the forms: epic, elegy, lyric, sonnet, ballad, frame tale, metaphysical, cavalier. By knowing the form, you will have an immediate advantage as you can add in pertienent details. Also, knowing the era will help you explain the themes, and structures. You will write a paragraph on the poem and answer 7 multiple choice questions.
Part 3: Discuss a passage from The Canterbury Tales in a literary paragraph. Look for its satirical elements and explain how the passage fits into the story as a whole.
Part 4: Literary Essay: As you study, organize the poems into themes. What do the poems say about death? Heroism? Loyalty? Love? Time? etc. Make sure to memorize quotes and use quotes from the multiple choices sections in your essay. You'll need to know the authors and the titles, which must be cited properly.

Tonight: Read John Milton's  Paradise Lost, an excerpt from this epic poem. Arrive to class being able to explain what is happening. With that knowledge, we can then understand the themes, the images, the use of terms and their effects, etc. There will be a number of vocabulary words that we'll need to learn as well. I'll give you the list in class. Post-it note the words you would like to learn.

Writing 12

I introduced the glosa form today. If you were away, pick up the handouts from me so that you can get your poem written. It's 40 lines long and really fun.

Next Tuesday, Carla Funk will be reading to the class during period 5. You will all need to write a response to her reading. Remember that if you miss one of our classroom readings, you must make it up outside of class.

Tonight, Gabe and Karen are heading downtown to see the fiction writer, Chuck Palahniuk. Great job.
Grade 11s rock! Grade 12s were once grade 11s.

AP Lit

We started reading Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. It's found in your textbook, page 1236. We discussed the changes in theatre and changes in the definition of the tragic hero. Read the notes pages 1232-1236.

We read and made notes on pages 1236-1243.

Lit 12

We re-wrote the paragraph from the test sonnet or if we did well on that sonnet, we read sonnet 73 and wrote a paragraph on that. Next class, we'll go over the multiple choice so that you can feel more confident preparing for this type of question.

We'll finish John Donne's poem next class.

Re-writes for the paragraph need to be completed by Wed.
I can be here Tues. at lunch for a mass re-write. How does that sound?

For those wishing to re-write the multiple choice, I'll need to make a new exam so probably Wed. would at lunch for that one.

Keep studying terms, lines, themes, and authors to prepare for the December exam.

English 10 A

I'll return your tests and your short stories and your term marks on Tuesday.

Make sure that you have read and thoroughly understood Part 1 (to page112) of To Kill a Mockingbird and that you have sufficient post-it notes to respond to the question below in a paragraph on Tuesday.

You'll be able to use this paragraph in your essay about the novel later in the month.
Please keep reading your USSR books as you lost today's 15 minutes due to the test.

In a literary paragraph of approximately 300 words, explain three lessons that Scout has learned and include in your discussion what the author might be foreshadowing. You may use your novels to answer the question but having thought about this question before hand and choosing your favourite three events will be ideal.

Also, list your top ten events from the novel so far. If you have a busy week next week, plan to get the novel finished. We'll be finished it by early December and then we'll create quote logs which allow you to do a close analysis of the text and turn it into a formal, literary essay of 1200 to 1500 words.

Have a good weekend.