Editing Link

https://readable.io/text/

Due to the fact that we exceeded our free usage of the above website, you will need to copy and paste your essay into the website either on your phone or home computer. Make sure to check out your grade level, your passive writing, and your usage of words. There's a lot more stats that are fun to analyze on there.

In class, we started off our Romantic Poets Unit with Wordsworth, looking at his "London, 1802" and "Tintern Abbey." For homework, read the 3 Wordsworth poems ("Expostulation and Reply," "Lucy," and " To a Skylark") and prep for tomorrow's class. We all know the man loves his caesura.

Free Responsing

Since students were cheering after reading the free response prompt, I am assuming these will be strong 9s for me to read this week/weekend.

Thursday is the Mary Essay Due Date, which will need to be turned in via hard copy by 3:00 p.m. As with your previous essays, if you are absent for the entire day, you will need to share/e-mail your essay to show completion and then turn in a hard copy the next class.

 In the beginning of class on Thursday, you will have an opportunity to edit/revise your essay with nifty website that Ms. Langley found to evaluate writing level, diction, and grammar elements. This will only take the first half hour to do, so do not count on having the whole time to write your essay.

Following the above, we will be working with tone for the next week and bringing in the nature-loving Wordsworth, the visionary artist Blake, the playboy Byron, the (fill in blank) Shelley, and the most perfect, most attractive, most sensitive Keatsy!

Second hour, don't forget to bring in you t-shirt money by Friday if you are ordering one.

Fourth hour, you're next on my to-do list. More info coming shortly.

Prosing

Today was the prose prompt for the AP exam. Tomorrow will be the free response prompt. If you have been absent for any cause, you will need to sign up on the board for the date and time of your makeup exam.

Second hour ladies, check your school e-mails for the price of t-shirts this year.

In the Midst

At this point, you have completed the MC portion of the exam and the poetry prompt. Two sections left to go. If you have missed part of this test, you will need to schedule a make-up time - preferably after school - next week.

Gentleman, Ladies, and Wilde Webs

To finish up our look at Oscar Wilde, Victorianism, and The Importance of Being Earnest, we analyzed the definition of a gentleman and how this revealed society's class structure, belief system, and overall behaviors. Then, we looked at the classification of women and how our characters fit into the categorizations of power, victim, desired, ideal, and miscellaneous. Last, we webbed Wilde's ideas about class, marriage, literature, truth, religion, city and country life, and education. Overall, Wilde saw a plethora of flaws surrounding the upper class existence of the British nobility.

Thursday begins the first day of the full test.

Earnestly

Today's class was a chance to share your impressions of Earnest, or Ernest, or whatever the characters are calling themselves today! We talked Wilde, Victorianism, characters, comedy, and those one-liners that attack class, education, gender roles, British behavior, religion, literature, and society as a whole. If absent, you will need to show my your book card to garner participation points for today's discussion.

Meanwhile, if you would like to amp up your Wilde points tomorrow, head over here and read up on the Victorian realm and how it birthed our author and his perspective: http://www.victorianweb.org/.

Effusive Gushing

I'm typing this at 11:41 p.m. so the effusive gushing may not be as laudatory as it was during the grading process! Those Frankenstein Prose Prompts were, as a whole, magnificent.  The average number was a 7.56 and there were five scores of 9 (JL, KB, AB, LS, NC - some of these really should be on a 10 scale). So many of you grasped onto the Bible and Paradise Lost allusions and how this reflected our creature's newly found regret and despair, the narration changes and how Walton's perspective adds another layer to our creature's persona, the rhetorical questions the creature continues to pepper through his speeches to elicit pity, the Romantic verve of nature, the psychological upbringing of an abandoned child, the literary devices conveying the relationship of Victor and his offspring, and the character terms of dynamic, round, antagonist, protagonist, and persona. Some of you wrote your best essays of AP Lit with this one! To see the growth of your analysis and the ease of your compositions in a timed environment should make you very proud of your writing prowess and skills.

As we are moving into our first full AP exam later this week and into next week, I hope you take all of the tricks for prose, poetry, free response, and multiple choice to heart and give your best work again. You are all capable of tearing apart a text for its elements and constructing analysis that conveys the characterization, the structure, the milieu, and the themes of our texts. The 5 is in reach!

Naming Our Baby

What a fun day in class - movies, baby naming, and vocab quizzing on the buzzers. Absentees, you missed a great day in AP Lit. After looking at film clips of Frankenstein and his creature in the 70s, 90s, and 10s, we named the creature. Second hour chose Cassiel Adalson Frankenstein and fourth hour chose Abadoon Than Frankenstein. Cass and Ab! In the last moments, we had our vocab quiz, which absentees will need to complete.

Enjoy your spring break and Oscar Wilde!

To the Sea of Ice

From your prompt yesterday and our discussion today, the characterization of the creature, Adam, the fallen angel, whatever moniker we shall call him after tomorrow's debate, has reached fruition. The child scrambling for human contact, the angst-driven teenager acting out, and the adult regretting his immoral violence have combined to the final plunge into the sea of ice.

And with his supposed end (I mean he could be out there swimming with Edna for all we know), you received your essay assignment for the Mary Compare and Contrast, uniting the two women's writings in an analysis of their ideologies. This is due Thursday, March 30, so you have plenty of time to formulate their common bond and their divergent approaches to the same issues.

As for Spring Break assignment, you are to read The Importance of Being Earnest - either from a textbook, your own copy, or the digital links provided in the previous blog. Complete a book card for the play. It's probably going to be our last book card, so do take some care to make it pretty and engaging and informative.

We will continue to watch movie clips tomorrow and then determine our progeny's true name. There will also be a vocabulary quiz. I'm going to try something different, which I hope you will enjoy at the end of class tomorrow.

Earnest

For those of you choosing to go digital for this reading assignment, here are a couple sites featuring The Importance of Being Earnest: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/844/844-h/844-h.htm or http://www.pcschools535.org/vimages/shared/vnews/stories/4e81dcfbed275/Importance%20of%20Being%20Earnest%20Text.pdf. I like the second one as it is a pdf and a little easier on the eyes to read. The corresponding assignment for this play is to create a book card.

Surprise Prompt Day!

You all knew it was coming: you end of the quarter writing prompt! Tomorrow, we will spend quality time discussing the end of Frankenstein.

Mourning Clerval

With the loss our beloved, nature-loving Clerval, we lost a dear friend, a compassionate caregiver, a poet wanting to travel to faraway lands (kind of like Walton, which shows why Victor would gravitate towards him). Then, in our reading today, more loss: Elizabeth, strangled on her wedding bed during that "dreaded" night and Mr. Frankenstein succumbed to his heartbreak at outliving half of his children.

For homework, read the rest of the book -- chapter 24 will return to Walton, so we can see his reaction to this "mad" tale of a creator and his creation. And, I have a feeling that our creature will make an appearance.

Make sure you are in class tomorrow and that you have thoroughly read Chapter 24.

Little Frankie

1. During next week, we are going to have pick out a name for our creature. While Little Frankie has been cute in fourth hour, we can probably find a more meaningful one with a connotation specific for the monster. Would the creature really want to be called Little Frankie? Would he act out being called something so close to his creator's name?

2. Class today was all about chapters 15-18 with common topics of rejection, revenge, nature, companionship, knowledge, and a little Milton text called Paradise Lost. We will be covering chapters 19-22 on Monday, so it's time to find out if Victor will go through with his side of the bargain.

3. T-shirt designing is under way. In second hour, JL designed the back of our shirt, and I have a new submission for the front for us to discuss on Monday. If any second hour ladies would like to submit a front design, do so this weekend. In fourth hour, we have the design almost finished with CL and NC putting the finishing touches on these versions.

4. Don't forget that March 8 is the deadline for AP test registration and payment. After all the work we have completed -- poetry meter, characterization prompts, text analysis, random difficult tasks that I force you to do -- you are ready to take the test. Remember, any student not taking the exam will have an alternative assessment (this will optional for the remaining students to complete).

I think that's all. Thanks to HB for dropping off pizza for me today!

The Creature's Origin Story

In 6 groups, we analyzed the 6 chapters of reading: Victor's solo melancholic adventure in nature, Victor's gentleman caller, the Creature's learning abilities, and the Creature's bonding with an impoverished, loving family. For tomorrow, we will cover chapters 15 -18, which will finish the tale of the blind man and his family and bring Victor back into the picture. Victor is telling this narrative. Did you think he would be out of the story for very long?

Don't forget the deadline for AP testing registration and payment is Wednesday, March 8!