Daddy

2: If you need a poem to introduce and reaffirm psychoanalytic concepts, Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" and its "oo" rhyming, childlike conceits bespeaking her regression into the past, and dramatic references to her father's Germanic heritage will definitely do the trick. Our whole hour was dedicated to the over-analysis of this poem and the merging of literary devices with psychoanalysis. With this practice completed, you should be inspired to do the same with King Lear 1.1 - especially (I recognize that this is becoming a favorite adverb and probably need to alter my vocabulary a bit) with the sibling issues prevalent in the text.

6: Hopefully the same as above, but first, we talked anxiety, Freud, Lacan, and dream symbolism to wrap up our overview of psychoanalysis. Even if we don't make it to "Daddy" or don't finish its analysis, you still need to have your King Lear 1.1. ready to go.

P.S. Don't forget about your close reading/poetry prompts on AP classroom!

P.P.S. Happy Thanksgiving to you all! I am quite thankful for how my life has progressed in the past year with Cora joining "The Zoo," or the Gianini-Fortin family. For those of you who have decided to spend another year with me in AP Lit, I appreciate all of your support, interest, and effort - it is noted and it bespeaks of what wonderful people you are. For those of you new to my classroom, the same applies. I could not find two better hours of genuine souls to be part of our book club every day.

Dreams

With psychoanalysis, especially the lens for our reading of King Lear, you have several options to pursue the mentality of the characters: birth order, unconscious desires, past traumas, anxieties, defense mechanisms, symbolism, the Freudian id, ego, superego, the trauma of the real, the objet petit a, and more. 

For tomorrow's class, you need to have close read "Daddy" and attempt to break down the literary elements for psychoanalysis properties as well. I highly recommend taking a look at a Plath's bio - perhaps with the specific look at the men in her life - to help you with the understanding of the poem and its motifs.

As for our Lear, you have the text with you with the instructions to read and note 1.1 for Monday, December 2.

And don't forget your poetry close reading/writing assignment that is due the week after we return from Thanksgiving break!

Transitioning into Lear

While we are not directly in the milieu of King Lear and its characters, we are moving away from poetry (6th hour's poetry prompt today) and into the lens in which we will be analyzing the text, psychoanalysis (2nd hour today).

Our AP Classroom

In both classes today, you completed the district MC assessment. If absent - do not take outside of class - you will need to take this either during a study hall, after school on Friday, or, if it must be so, during class as soon as possible.

You also received your Close Reading Poetry Assignment, a 2 week task combining the close reading of 6 texts and the composition of related thesis statements, introductions, body paragraphs, and essay.

As for next class, second hour has the duty of researching dream symbolism and birth order. Sixth hour, you will save the psychoanalysis prep for Monday as we have a writing prompt to do.

Prompting - In One Way or Another

2: The official poetry prompt was today! Tomorrow is the district MC assessment, so make sure you have your Chrome book completely charged and ready to go. I just took a looksee and it is a hybrid of passages with 30 questions, so it should only take us about 40 minutes, if technology works for us.

6: Today's class was all about the team box prompt, a 35-ish minute exercise in analyzing a poem. If you happened to be absent, you will most likely be completing this assignment on your own and will need to schedule a make-up time.

Getting Serious

After a lot of poetry play through the packet, the gallops, the sonnets, it is time for the assessment portions of our class: a team box prompt (in place of a full essay), a poetry prompt (and one of my favorites, especially with the rangefinder selections), and a MC district assessment (yep, it's happening and it's going to be on AP classroom). All of that work will lead to our psychoanalysis work with King Lear! Woohoo!

And for all of you wanting to prep for psychoanalysis study in advance, you will need to research or dream symbolism and birth order.

2: Team Box Prompt complete. I think all of you were here, so no absentee work needed!

6: MC Passages 3 & 4 complete. Team Box Prompt tomorrow.

Evaluating

You are either evaluating rangefinders or your own MC or some hybrid of the two in class today. Second hour completed the last 2 practice MC passages (yep, last means that the rest in the future will have more significant meaning). Sixth hour completed the rangefinders for "The Landlady" and, hopefully, had the opportunity to take the third practice MC passage.

For Monday's class, close read Sonnet 138, the last sonnet in your Shakespeare packet.

A 6?

So, the new set of rangefinders for poetry seem a little lackluster in voice, upper level poetic terms, and overall "unicorn" originality. A result of rushing out set of rangefinders to humor teachers and students clamoring for some guidance of the new scoring system? A new reality that focuses more on the objective needs of writing than the subjective voice? In any circumstance, you are still expected to construct collegiate-level writing if you want to score in the upper echelons of AP Literature. With that little ramble, albeit a tired one, second hour spent the majority of the time with the rangefinders and filling out their poetry goal sheets after the return of the diagnostic prompt. Sixth hour finished up MC passage 2 and moved onto the rangefinders.

The Questions First

Since I'm still recovering from sixth hour's galloping of Sonnets 116 & 130, this will be a blog of brevity. Before I do recap our lovely agenda today, I want to send kudos to Lia for her Benjamin Banneker Clock, pink and of solid wood, and the only marker of Benjamin Banneker week this year.

In second hour, we worked on MC passage 2, with the strategy of reading the question prior to the close reading. For tonight's reading, you have the rangefinders for "The Landlady" prompt, which you will score for thesis, evidence, and sophistication.

In sixth hour, we finished our sonnet work, or at least our sonnet work for the next couple of days, with gallops of 116 & 130. The remainder of class was working on MC #2, which you will have for class tomorrow. 

When British Men Read Sonnets

In both classes today, we listened to the sonnets as they would meant to be heard: Tom Hiddleston's Sonnet 18 reading, Patrick Stewart's Sonnet 116 reading, and the late Alan Rickman's Sonnet 130 reading. Their verbal readings provided a better chance to hear the sound effects, the meter, and the forced rhyme (looove instead of love). At this point, second hour has finished the sonnets - and their related galloping - and sixth hour has finished the analysis of 116 and will gallop another day!

Processing MC

2: We primarily spent the hour close reading a MC passage (with an understanding that structure and lit elements are of necessary notice; however, there is also the  necessity of understanding the meaning, content, and symbolic interpretation too), previewing questions and categorizing them as factual, technical, analytical, or inferential, utilizing process of elimination to guarantee a better result, and finally voting on the best answer. Your class finished 9/10, making an error on the style of poem. To end class, you were divided into teams for Sonnets 116 &130 and started the process of analyzing the poem for its theme, literary devices, and meter. You will be back in those groups on Monday to finish up your analysis and prepare for presentation and galloping of each sonnet. If you were absent, you can have your choice between the 2 sonnets for preparatory purposes.

6: Since we notated the meter yesterday on Sonnet 18, there was only one thing left for us to do: gallop! With 420 steps through the multiple readings of the 14 lines, you have the rhythmic feel for iambic pentameter. Following our gallop, we moved into the world of MC, looking at common stems, strategies, types, and a passage. Dependent on our class time, we may have moved into sonnets 116 & 130, but we shall see when we get there.

To Gallop or Not to Gallop

Thanks to the Royal Shakespeare Company, we have this excellent teaching tool to help us understand iambic pentameter, broken iambs, and trochees: Teaching Shakespeare.

With that information, we centered our class on Sonnet 18, its rhyme scheme, its general idea, its iambic pentameter, and its galloping potential!

MC starts tomorrow!

The Bard

2: We started our Shakespeare work with easing into his inverted syntax, verb alterations, insulting compounding of words, common contracted phrasing, and a rude gesture all mixed in. At this point, we have made it through the word portion of the show. Next time will be the meter of Shakespeare, the ever-present iambic pentameter.

6: We finished out poetry term competition followed by our immersion into Shakespeare as listed above.

It's Benjamin Banneker Week!

In exciting news, it is Benjamin Banneker week, which celebrates the revered writer, scientist, and all-around savant. I must say that one of the highlights of teaching AP Lang for all of these years is my introduction to Banneker, his historical significance, his brilliance as a savant, and his letter-writing abilities to our old buddy Tommy J.

 Here is a little more information from a fun website of daily, weekly, and monthly celebrations: https://www.daysoftheyear.com/days/benjamin-banneker-week/. 

And, to make this a little more relevant and applicable, you will notice that there are 2 activities for celebrating Banneker's role in our lives. 

The first is to make a clock face (non-working) using mathematics to represent the numbers 1-12 (so don't literally write 1, 2, and so forth but construct formulas or mathematical expressions to represent each number). Here is a picture I found online (which may be blocked since it originally came from facebook) of such a clock, which looks to be made out of cardboard: https://www.facebook.com/events/1601106116857922. 

The second is to compose a poem that actually features mathematical puzzles for the reader to solve. Here are some examples: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/resources/mathematical-puzzles-benjamin-banneker. As you can see the word problems are divided up into verse form, which means you can play with rhyme and diction and poetic elements to express math. 

So to make this interesting and decorate my room, you have the challenge of constructing a 3 dimensional clock (so not on typing paper but with a more solid material - creative materials add to the presentation) and/or a mathematical poem on decorated construction paper/cardboard/posterboard for extra credit. The poem can have combined mathematical puzzles to boost the level of difficulty and content. All the math must be accurate - and, yes, I am a polymath (at least that is what Joe Cassidy calls me) and have right and left brain talents. The clock will be worth a maximum of 35 points, and the mathematical poem will be worth a maximum of 20 points. Points will be awarded for originality, mathematical connection, presentation, and effort, which means those utilizing the most clever materials, math, and presentation will amass the most points. 

You can do one of each by the way. The due date for this extra credit, which must be in person, is Monday, November 11, so you have one week on this extra credit opportunity. This must be turned in via hard copy (obviously) by 2:40 p.m. on that day. If you have any questions, e-mail me for clarifications. Otherwise, I am looking forward to the final products! Especially since I had about 8 clocks two years ago and two clocks last year and no poems! Photo below - you can tell which had a little more effort than others. *FYI if you did do a clock last year, you cannot do another one.

Sonnets, Villanelles, Reviewing Poetry Terms and Malapropisms

2: We have finished the poetry packet! That means you have all those terms, techniques, and structural concerns to foster in your upcoming analyses! The majority of the hour was a review of all the terms - in team and solo fashion - with a malapropistic (a word? maybe?) edge of villanelli, cesarean section, and Caesar salad. Our Top 5 in poetic term ethos would be Anna M., Elijah, Tommy, Megan P., and Mack! If your name was not on that list (or on it for that matter), you should consider working on memorizing your poetic terms as these will not be going away!

6: Same as above - but we are still in the midst of our poetry term competition. Who will have the most ethos on poetry terms? For those of you with the inspiration, you have a couple of days to prepare for it!

Elegies & High Drama

In both hours, we worked with elegies (Adonais & O Captain, My Captain) and dramatic monologues (poor Porphyria). Second hour has advanced through all 3 sonnet types, and sixth hour will meet up with those gentlemen and their poetic structure on Monday.

Lastly, a round of applause to our Browning speakers, Elijah & Rylee, and our Porphyrias, Tommy & Amber. I think you made the poem more memorable and unforgettable!