Wednesday, April 10, 2013

This Seat's Taken: AP Lit, April 10, 2013

Focus: Building your strength and confidence with traditional poetry

1. Announcements!  And snack?

2. Muscle building: Untangling tricky, good old-fashioned syntax! Also, can I get a vocab decipherer?

Hymn: A religious song or poem, typically of praise to God or a god

Adversity: Difficulties, misfortune

3. Applying your newly worked muscles to the ultimate task: Multiple choice questions

HW:
1. Continue working on your culminating essay.  Remember that we will be drafting on Monday, so please bring a laptop if you can.

2. If you are revising your critical review or your poetry essay, please do so by the end of the month so I have time to regrade them.  Remember to highlight your changes and type a brief explanation of what you revised and how it made your essay stronger.

Monday, April 8, 2013

This Seat's Taken: AP Lit, April 8, 2013

Focus: Deconstructing and reconstructing the prose prompt

1. Announcements!  And one big announcement from me... :)

2. Warm-up: Take at look at some prose prompts from recent years

Don't look at the first question!  We'll come back to it in a moment.
What are the essential elements of each question?
What what would focus on if you were posing a questions for Question 1?

3. Forming your own prose questions with your book clubs

HW: 
1. Please finalize your prose prompt; make sure all of your names are at the top and that your passage is included.  SHARE THIS WITH ME TONIGHT (regardless of weather and basketball).

2. By the end of the week, post your big question blog on Slaughterhouse-5 and Portrait of the Artist.

3. Continue working on your culminating question, brainstorming, and essay.  Next Monday will be a day for drafting and editing.

Thursday, April 4, 2013

This Seat's Taken: AP Lit, April 5, 2013

Focus: Discussing the climax and falling action (and possibly resolution) of S-5 and Portrait

1. Announcements!

2. Offering you a list of open questions since the dawn of the A.P. Literature test to help you decipher the open prompt (Question #3) and form your culminating questions

3. Taking ten minutes to wrap up "Dialogue Between Soul and Body" (before you forget it)

4. Book club time!

A few things to consider, perhaps:

a. What was your novel's inciting incident (the incident at the beginning that got everything going)?
b. What do the main characters think they want?
c. What do they really want?
d. How do the characters change (evolve or devolve) throughout the book?  What do the realize, and what helps them come to these realizations?
e. How do the opening pages reveal all of the book's central tensions?
f. How do the final pages "resolve" these tensions?

HW:
1. If you are finishing your book club book for Monday, please keep your syllabus relatively brief (15 minutes) so that you will have plenty of time to form your Tuesday writing question.

2. Please make sure that at least one person in your group has a laptop, but the more, the merrier.

This Seat's Taken: A.P. Lit, April 4, 2013

Focus: Turning yourself into a poetry multiple choice ninja

1. Announcements!

2. Warm-up: Back to that water lily...using the prompt to help you figure out the larger meaning

3. Performing a think-aloud with "A Dialogue Between Soul and Body"; responding to multiple choice questions with some of level of confidence

HW:
1. Assigned book club reading for tomorrow (this will be your last official syllabus).
2. Continue working on your culminating essay; if you conferenced with me before you composed your question and booklist, I will give you written feedback tomorrow.  Feel free to stop back for a second conference if you need one.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

This Seat's Taken: AP Lit, April 3, 2013

Focus: Investigating the rising action and climax of S-5 and Portrait of the Artist...

1. Announcements!

2. Warm-up: A little help for my James Joyce fans: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0j34fmTzbk&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active

3. Book clubs!  Remember that your final meetings are today, Friday, and Monday, but Monday you will be spending most of your time creating your Tuesday writing question.

HW: 
1. Assigned book club reading
2. Continue brainstorming and drafting your culminating essay.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

This Seat's Taken: AP Lit, April 2, 2013

Focus: Breaking out of "one-trick pony" mode with your poetry analysis

1. Announcements! PLEASE LISTEN CAREFULLY (too loud, too loud)

2. Don't be a one-trick pony!  Expanding your poetry analysis horizons with Emily Manning and with "To Paint a Water Lily"

a. One-on-one time with Ted Hughes
b. The exponential thinking circle
c. Reading with your ears: Sound devices
d. Playing around with enjambment, verb tense, punctuation, and syntax
e. Finally, your comfort zone: Imagery and diction


3. The 2006 Form B Prompt:
Read the following poem carefully. Then write an essay discussing how the poet uses
literary techniques to reveal the speaker’s attitudes toward nature and the artist’s task.

Form a thesis and outline in response to the above prompt.  Remember that you should have 2-4 body paragraphs, each with distinct yet related ideas (you're not actually going to write the body paragraphs; you're simply planning them).

HW:
1. Assigned book club reading
2. Continue working on your culminating essay by brainstorming ideas for any texts you might use

Monday, April 1, 2013

This Seat's Taken: AP Lit, April 1, 2013

Focus: Delving into the rising conflicts of Slaughterhouse-Five and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

1. Announcements!  Anybody going to college?

2. A quick overview of this week

3. Sharing two great Vonnegut videos for my S-5 book clubbers (and everybody else, too)\

How To Write a Short Story

War in Reverse: A Tribute to Kurt Vonnegut

4. Book clubs: Day 3!

HW: 
1. Assigned book club reading for Wednesday.
2. Continue working on your culminating question by brainstorming ideas for each work you plan on discussing; start to outline the topics of your body paragraphs (most culminating essays have at least five body paragraphs).
3. Remember your conferences.