Hello, Pilgrims

After starting vocab unit 7 words, we spent the hour with the 30 pilgrims about to embark on their journey to Canterbury. From lascivious friars, devious pardoners, and Hubert, Chaucer's character portraits run the gamut from the malicious and greedy to the helpful and true.

For homework, read "The Wife of Bath's Tale," which includes her own prologue. While reading, you want to find the moral (part of the competition) and how this story intertwines with the Wife of Bath's biography.

In addition, score the rangefinder packet. I have rangefinder copies in my room for any absentees to grab prior to class.

Welcome to Canterbury

We copied down Unit 7 vocabulary, which we will start up tomorrow. Hopefully, you will be able to use these words in our summation of the Canterbury Tale characteristics tomorrow. For homework, you will need to read your assigned character(s) from the prologue and be able to share the following information with the class: character (physical looks, occupation, class, mentality, fun facts), purpose (why going), possible themes (what a character can represent like chivalry, nobility, honor for the Knight). Do not despair fourth hour absentees. You can do this too! Haley B. you have The Summoner, and Haley S. you have The Pardoner. Here is a link to the general prologue: http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/English/CanterburyTalesI.htm. Do note that a character is introduced in ALL CAPS and that is the section you should read and prep.

Prose Prompt Day

The whole hour was dedicated to a prose prompt. If absent, you will need to make this up next week during a study hall or after school on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday.

Make sure you have your big green lit book with you on Monday -- you will need it as we enter the world of Chaucer. I hope you like my Middle English reading of the prologue.

Finding Kafka

After we finished reviewing our 2 multiple choice passages from Tuesday, you shared your found poem and your third allusion posters with the crowd. To end class, you completed another MC pair passage to assess your prose comprehension. Prose prompt will be tomorrow. At least you won't have homework over the weekend.

Our Vacation Destination

The classes have voted and we will be travelling to Hogwarts and Jurassic Park for AP Lit's annual pilgrimages!

A Necklace and Wallpaper

After the return of the free response essays, you completed 2 MC passages in class. The high score from both hours equals 14, so that will be the base score for the gradebook. If absent, you will need to makeup the MC, so plan on a twenty minute block during either a study hall or during class time.

On Thursday, we will finish up the MC explanations, share allusion posters, and show off your Kafka found poems.

At some point this week, you will have a timed prose writing prompt, so you may want to look over your character types and literary terms that may be used in analyzing a passage.

An Elegy to Gregor

As some of us have felt a sense of loneliness or isolation from our contemporary world, it makes perfect sense why many of you have had strong reactions to the loss of Gregor, the sudden hostility of Grete, and the cyclical nature of the next metamorphosis. Listening to "Crash and Burn" this morning - on a loop - seemed apropos for our topic and the general malaise that seems to occur this time of year with less light and more stress.

However, we are not vermin, we are not encased in a dirty room, we do not have apples lodged in our backs! We have an assignment to do: to take 10 quotes from The Metamorphosis and construct Kafka's words in poetic form. This is due Thursday, so make sure to have your work ready for show and tell.

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/lifehouse/crashandburn.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbzKLqRJKZA

Oh, we did have a vocab quiz at the start of the hour. If absent, you will need to make this up by the end of the week.

A Yellow Bug?

As both classes discovered today, Gregor Samsa and our Yellow Wallpaper protagonist seem to have a similar issue: trapped in society's perception of "appropriate" behavior, they are left to a locked room without any stimulation to foster sanity. Should we ship these two stories together? Future random skit idea?

For homework, read the last section, continue your list of significant sentences, and study for your vocab quiz.

Quick Recap

We reviewed vocab (quiz on Monday), we shared allusion posters, and we finished up our dual translations of the opening three Kafka paragraphs.

Homework: prep your assigned page for analysis (absentees, you will find out a page number tomorrow during class so make sure you are up to date with your reading), read section 2 of The Metamorphosis, and start keeping a list of significant sentences and phrases from the text - you will need these for our final activity.

Kafkaesque

1. We finished discussing the rangefinders for the free response prompt. (Your free response prompts will be returned shortly - hopefully by the end of the week and definitely by Monday.)
2. We added in the last three vocabulary words without too many imbroglios.
3. We met Kafka, the alienated, despairing author of The Metamorphosis.
4. We looked at 2 translations of the text, identified the varying words, and discussed the alteration to the text.

For homework, make sure you have your second allusion poster for tomorrow and read the first section of The Metamorphosis.

Allusions Part I

Thanks to my guest teachers, Ms. Gatewood and Mr. Townsend, for taking over vocabulary duties today. From their sub report, it seems some studying is needed on the vocab words for this unit. We will continue vocabulary tomorrow.

The other two items on today's docket were your allusion posters round 1 and the rangefinders, which we will finish analyzing tomorrow.

Free Response Prompt Day

After vocabulary and review of the Macbeth multiple choice passage, the rest of the class was dedicated to your first timed free response prompt. As noted in class, a free response prompt allows you to choose your text for exemplification, so it comes in handy to know details from several novels to prepare for this essay experience. I did not mention this in class, but this prompt will be worth 50 points instead of the standard 100 points.

For homework, score the rangefinder packet and come back with your allusion posters -- we will have our show & tell tomorrow.

Goodbye Cherry Orchard

After sharing the diverse adjectives covering all of our Russian cast, we started vocab experts (especially fourth hour since they had just about finished when I returned from selling AP classes to the masses) and completed a multiple choice passage for drama.

If absent, you can stop by tomorrow for the drama multiple choice packet as the Macbeth selection is homework for Thursday.

As mentioned in class, you will have a free response writing prompt on Thursday, so it would behoove you to look over your book cards for authors, titles, protagonists, and setting to have stronger ethos when you write.

The Russian Generations

1. You copied down vocab unit 6, which will commence tomorrow.
2. We discussed The Cherry Orchard's comedy/tragedy genre classification, the symbolism of the actual cherry orchard and how it varies dependent on character, the final speaker, Firs, and the significance of the "old-timer" ending the play, and close read speeches by Ranevskaya, Lopakhin, and Trofimov to reflect the different generations of Russian philosophy.

For homework, you were assigned a character from the play.

In the middle of a piece of construction paper, write the character's name.

Then, around the name, indicate a minimum of 5 adjectives that describe the character. For each adjective, provide a minimum of 2 quotes of support. You may use the back of the construction paper if you run out of room. We will share these in class tomorrow.

Absentee Assignments;

Pam = Anya
Katrina = Varya
Eliane = Trofimov

Potpourri

In both classes, we started the hour by going over your redo multiple choice passages from the final. Hopefully, a more concentrated effort - me included - on close reading for comprehension will prove helpful in our future work.

In second hour, you received your final and Lear essays back at this point. 

Back to common ground, you then received the allusion poster assignment, in which you will complete 4 allusion posters (one a week) to gain more ethos on a plethora of subjects. 

For the finale, you each contributed one point regarding The Cherry Orchard from your fifth book card. If absent, you will need to show me the book card or share it with me for your participation points today.

The Final - Again

Focusing on comprehension close reads, we looked at the first two passages from the final and then attempted to answer any mistakes correctly. For homework, take the last two passages and revise. We will go over the answers tomorrow. Then, we looked at the comparative poetry prompt - Infancy has becomes its nickname - and looked at how the Plath poem, upon further inspection, operates at various levels.

While second hour did not have a chance to receive the Infancy prompt and Lear essay, fourth hour did look at their essays and record their poetry scores on the portfolio chart.

Tomorrow means something new! I am off to read The Cherry Orchard -- something I have not done since 1998 or thereabouts.

Psycho Essay Evaluation

After three hours of intense evaluation, which included a snoring Ingram and a frisky Tango in the background for sound effects, I finished reading your essays on the Lear characters and their psychological proclivities. Overall, the essays featured a plethora of psychoanalytical jargon from trauma of the real, to the id, to anxiety, to birth order issues. 

Scoring-wise, the range for this essay is 4-9 with LS and CL claiming those nine scores. There were a great deal of 7 and 8 essays, which may have not brought in as much characterization and literary terms or multiple examples of evidence from the text in each body paragraph or finished with a completely clean essay. We will go over all of this soon -- too soon if you ask me!

See you on Thursday. Channel 5 said a 20% percent chance of snow, so you know it will be dry, sunny, and near sixty just to be annoying. 

Don't forget to read The Cherry Orchard and complete a book card for Friday's class. 

Comparative Writing Prompt

I just finished evaluating the writing prompt portion of the final. As I still have some make-ups occurring after break, I cannot go into too much detail on this blog.

For an overview -- and this does not give anything away as to the content on the final -- the highest scores understood the complexities of BOTH poems. Looking at the two texts, one poem's meaning is very apparent and all of you jumped right on its feelings and strategies. However, one of the poems had a more layered approach - which we will discuss during class on Thursday - that a close, close, close reading would find.

In addition, as with all poetry prompts, the identification and analysis of poetry devices and structure aids all essays.

Last note, how you present your ideas creates the difference from a 5-6 to a 7, 8, 9. While this may seem minor, active verb choice sets your writing apart from the thesis statement onto the body paragraphs. We will work on this and other presentation elements (Punctuation?) during the next three writing prompts we will be accomplishing in class (yes, I have a plot of the next month already gestating on Post-It notes on my dining room table).

If you did not peruse the last blog, your book card for The Cherry Orchard will be due on Friday instead of the day we return to class. You are more than welcome to have it for Thursday, but we will not have time to start the play's overview and discussion until Friday's class. I just found my copy of The Cherry Orchard from college -- my professor was actually in the drama department so I learned about the performance aspect as well from characterization, themes, and literary devices of plays.

Happy New Year! I hope you will enjoy second semester and all of our texts!

P.S. The final writing prompt resulted in two 9 scores. A pleasure to read the writings of SH (2) and AS (4) today.