It's Oh So Quiet

Sixth hour is in the midst of their final, and it almost feels too quiet in here: no one is bickering, galloping over one another, or dramatically recreating a Lear scene. With a 2 part final of prompt and poetry test, there was a lot to do for the final, and all of it revolved around what our second quarter was regarding: poetry. All of the poetry elements - sound, meter, and so forth - are all in your toolboxes now, so use them as you would on any future poetry assignments or prompts.

For those of you who love poetry, I have some bad news: we will be back to more prose-inspired work third quarter and characterization. For those of you who are ready for a short story, play, or novel, you are in luck with The Cherry Orchard and The Metamorphosis as are opening texts. Before we move onto those, however, you have your King Lear Diary/Journal due when we return. Have fun crafting your characters!

Happy Holidays to you all! Working with you, reading with you, analyzing minutia and creating euphemisms with you, make AP Lit an enjoyable experience. Your presence and ideas are the best gifts I could ever receive every single day. See you in 2020!

Uh, Finals

Well, Mother Nature, as called by our buddies Edmund, Lear, and a few other sighted and sightless characters from our play, has taken power over our ending Lear discussions and final reviews, pushing these quasi-necessary components to the wayside. While this may result in an expletive or two or three or four escaping from your lips, here is the revised plot and plan for the upcoming days and the transfer to second semester. Overall, I think all of you will be just fine, especially after our over-analysis of poetry elements during King Lear.

• If you sent me a proposal in the last couple of days, I will be perusing those tomorrow during our second snow day.
• Whether you sent a proposal or not, be aware that the psychoanalysis essay is still due by 11:30 a.m. on Friday. You are welcome to print out the essay Thursday or Friday after school. You are also welcome to work on your essay on Friday after school by the given deadline.
• The final will remain the same: a writing prompt of 2 poems and the poetry test. It will most likely take the full 90 minutes for the majority of you. 
• Sixth hour will be working on a review prompt and the poetry review on Wednesday. 
• Second hour, since we have lost that Tuesday class, I will be available after school on Wednesday and before school on Thursday (half hour max. on each of these), if you would like to go over the poetry packet answers prior to the exam and chat about the dual poem writing prompt. If you have a study hall, you may also come into sixth hour on Wednesday to be part of their review. 
• Second semester plans with the Lear journal will remain the same. I was planning to give you The Cherry Orchard over break as well, but that will wait until next semester. 
• If anything else comes up, I will update or send a group e-mail directly to you.

Alack, Alack

Overall, we are dreading the idea that snow could curtail our plans for finishing up Lear and reviewing for the final (poetry prompt and poetry test) next week. For now, let's operate on the idea that we will have class and all will be swell. 

Before going into today's agenda and next week's plans, I did note that I would be adding a little more info on the optional proposal on the blog for those of you who regularly check it. Overall, I think proposals, especially one of such specific nature, a great way to basically have your first draft completed. All the ideas are there, all the evidence (or at least the spots for evidence) ready to go, and all the paragraphs aligned for the final "beautifying" of your essay. Beyond just the self-satisfaction of putting effort into this assignment, if you do happen to share your proposal by the assigned date and time, you will receive anywhere from 10-20 points extra credit. Those 20 would be for a thorough proposal; the 10 would be less thorough. Anyway, maybe that will inspire some of you to look out at a snowy scene and decide to open up your computer and start typing away. 

2: We spent the hour on our Act IV analysis and galloping sessions. I am just so proud of how ALL of you participated today, reading the lines, galloping in syncopated rhythm, and working as a team to garner the sound impact of Shakespeare's language. It was impressive to watch and hear! For Monday, the plan is to finish Act V with discussion and go over the Poetry Review for the final. If for some weather-related reason we are not in school, the theory will be cancelling out the Act V discussion in class (I might set up an online thing so that you may share your ideas about the concluding act) and spending the entirety on the Poetry Review and the Poetry Practice Prompt (you have this; only prepare if we don't have class on Monday). 

6: We finished up Act III today, and you have your groups for the Act IV analysis and galloping sessions. No matter what happens, we will be completing Act IV and discussing Act V next class, so make sure that you have your Lear read and your ideas ready!

Alack, Bareheaded

Since Rylee mentioned that her favorite line of Act III was "Alack, Bareheaded," I figured that line would appeal to all of you during this cold weather and eventual prediction of snow in the upcoming week. You wouldn't want to follow William Henry Harrison at this time of the year.

In second hour, we finished our Act III discussion, and you have a passage from Act IV to close read for next class. This is a hard copy close reading, so absentees will be assimilated into a group. Reading-wise, you should be finished through Act IV.

In sixth hour, we finished going over all of the paperwork, including the psychoanalysis essay, the King Lear Diary/Journal (absentees will need to see me directly for the character - as we want a mix of characters in class, you may not have your first choice), the Poetry Test Review (for Tuesday), the MC (for next semester). Meanwhile, in Lear World, we finished Act II and are halfway through Act III. Reading-wise, you need to be through Act IV.

Act II and All the Paperwork

2: We finished up Act II, and you also have the psychoanalysis essay assignment (due next Friday), the Lear journal (due next semester), the poetry review for the final (due Monday), and MC passages (next semester). We will be working primarily with Act 3 tomorrow, so just read 4.1. and 4.2 to keep up-to-date with the text. To be honest, we might still work with the entirety of Act 4 too, but you don't need to read it to gallop it! Yep, gallop it!

6: Much the same as second hour. However, since we are a day behind their pace, we might still have some Act II work to do tomorrow. Read through Act III in additional as we will spend quality time with some of the speeches.

Learing & The Rest of Semester

Since we spent so much time on 1.1 and over-analyzing all those speeches, you have the expectations on how to analyze the remaining character development and poetic techniques. Hence, second hour is in the final stages of doing such with Act II (if absent today, you have the enviable job of over-analyzing 2.3 for the class), and fourth hour is moments away from the completion of Act I.

Here is the plot for AP Lit in the near future (sixth hour is a day-ish behind, so keep that in consideration):

Tuesday = Assign Psychoanalytic Essay & Pass out a Plethora of Paperwork, Act III
Wednesday = Act IV, including galloping and a Goneril vs. Regan battle
Friday  = Act V
December 16 = Poetry Test Review, Card Games
December 17 = Poetry Prompt Review
December 18 or 20 = Final of Poetry Test and Poetry Prompt

January 7= Review final
January 8 = King Lear Journal Class Evaluation DAy
January 9 & 10 = MC Team Practices
January 13 = Full MC Test
January 14 = Cherry Orchard

Could That Blind Man's Mark Metaphor Connect to Lear?

Even though "Thou Blind Man's Mark" poem is not the literal adventures of a blind man, the metaphor of how desire can blind one to the moral rectitude that one should possess comes through, which in my suddenly coffee-addled state has made the jump to our play, King Lear, and the ever-so-present reminders of sight, seeing, glasses, and other pertinent word forms dealing with the metaphorical idea of blindness and sight. I love when our texts work out that way!

Don't forget to turn in your hard copy of the close reads for the AP classroom assignment! I know there have been some quirky technical issues on the website, but that should not impede your from finalizing your writings.

At this point in the grand scheme of the world, or at least the AP Lit world, second hour has almost completed the first act in its full analysis (if absent today, be prepared to chat regarding pages 67 & 69), portfolioed (yep, made a verb up) "Thou Blind Man's Mark," and is prepping Act II for Monday's class. Once you have everything over-analyzing in that first scene, the rest of the play and its characters fall into place.

Sixth hour has completed the Edmund "B" speech in its entirety, the rangefinders for "Thou Blind Man's Mark," and put a dent into the remaining portions of Act I. If absent, prepare to cover the analysis of pages 55 & 57. Act II will be starting up on Monday.

For the Love of Poetic Devices

I noted today that one of my students was "Miss Enjambment," another "Mr. Caesura," another "Miss Repetition," and another "Miss Alliteration." Now, hopefully, none of you are offended by reference to a literary device, for the intention was to clarify that as each of you grasps onto poetry more and more, there are certain literary devices that will become your go-to ones, whether this be structural, syntactical, sound, figurative language, or any other literary element populating a poem (especially if there is a shift, shifts, or any fluctuation to attract those AP readers). Beyond parenthetical mention, second hour spent some time with "Thou Blind Man's Mark" and noted a pattern of shifts overlapping in its tone, alliteration, and rhyme scheme. How about that - multi-layered shifts! And speaking of more poetry analysis, you still have that AP classroom assignment due this week. I heard there were some oddities with the form to write your work, so just make sure you have the response in one of those boxes for submitting.

2: We finished 1.1 and have spent a lot of time over-analyzing the relationships, character psychoanalysis, and poetic elements that further reveal each character. And there are three of those characters that rhyme! Afterwards, as mentioned in the overall stream of consciousness above (is it weird that my stream of consciousness is more organized like dear Kent and not as wild and wacky as Lear?), an epiphany of shifts occurred in "Thou Blind Man's Mark" review close read. Of course, there was the apostrophe and paradox anchoring its entirety. To further the understanding of our new 1-6 scoring system, we are taking the old 1-9 rangefinders and breaking them down for the thesis, evidence, and sophistication. For homework, you are to take the 5, 6, and 7 (the first one in the packet) essays and rescore for 1-6. Tricky work, especially as you see that the brandishing of evidence can boost your score but may take away from some of the sophisticated value. We'll finish up those rangefinders tomorrow, spend some quality time with Edmund's favorite speech, and see what else we can do on a D day with limited time.

6: We might not have moved around much today, but we spent our entire hour over-analyzing the majority of 1.1, starting with why Kent, Gloucester, and Edmund are the starting three when none of them happen to be the title role and moving into Lear, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia's portrayal through their diction, poetic structure, enjambment/caesura or lack thereof, faltering iambic pentameter, pronoun usage, and their psychoanalytic sibling role. And we haven't even had any rhyming? Suspicious for a Shakespeare play? Oh, yeah. There must be (cough, cough) some reason that the Lear milieu does not encourage the rhyme. Although, alliteration seems to be the case for creating sound elements. Tomorrow, we will be working the rest of this scene. Reading-wise, make sure to spend some bonding time with Edmund (he needs it, you know, just don't call him by his dad's epithets for him), and his opening speech in 2.1. Off to bed - at least for a some short increments.

Poetry & Character & Psychoanalysis

2: We started off with an intensive look at the opening of King Lear and its characters' mental states, behaviors, societal beliefs, conflicts, usage of caesura and enjambment or lack thereof, forced rhyme if they rhymed at all, alliteration, finishing another character's iambic pentameter, and more. All of those poetic techniques build the characterization and the eventual understanding of the play. We will finish 1.1 tomorrow and then go into 1.2 - with the famous "b" speech from our knave Edmund.

7: We spent our truncated class on "Daddy" and the poetic techniques that help inform the psychoanalysis interpretation and help inspire us to break down the characters in King Lear, which we will begin tomorrow.