Shirts & Shoes

Beyond Wuthering Heights and Prose Prompts, there are two fun items on the docket currently:

1. T-shirt designs will be accepted through Friday. As the majority of our poll respondents wanted one this year, here is your chance to have one! You may submit as many designs as you like in the Shared Drive in the T-shirt folder. Don't worry about colors at this point as I figure we will eventually have 2 options to be determined later. Right now, the image and words are most important. 

2. The shoe vote for AP Lit has begun! The form allows you to vote for 5 pairs a day, and you can submit the form every single day until May 13 to help your favored shoes win. On the Scholar Quiz team? You can submit two forms a day. 

All of this, of course, is optional, but these are traditions of my classes that I hope you will take part in. 

Ergo, design and vote! 

AP Lit Test Poem

I was looking through my old blog posts and found this poem that I wrote the night before the AP Lit test in 2018. Unfortunately, most of this will not be accurate with our testing this year.

Twas the night before the AP Lit test, when all through the 404 fam,

Not a spondee was stirring, not even an iamb

The prompts are awaiting for your eye

Ready to grant you a scintillating five

So my bibliophiles of this year or two,

Prior to our breakfast and, of course, coffee too

Hearken to the novels, the lens, the meter, the feet

Remember the voltas and the characters we did meet

Attack those multiple choice passages even if not so fine

And write about poetry, prose, and free response to score all nines.

Twas Almost Shoe Voting Time

The Shoe Voting Update Folder on the Shared Drive is complete with the past AP shoes delineated and the 88 candidates for this year's shoe vote ready to go. I do have a form created, which I will be sharing with you in the upcoming days.

For those of you new to the shoe voting fun, a colorful display of shoe candidates are displayed to the front board for the weeks leading up to the AP exams, and each day, you vote on which shoes should represent AP Lit. Since we won't be in the physical room 404, you have the digital version of shoes and a form that you can vote for up to 5 shoes a day until May 13.

Something fun to do if you like the break from serious AP test prep and end-of-year class requirements. Participation is not required. If you want to take a look at the candidates, they are available now :)

National Theatre's Frankenstein on Youtube!

I can't express my excitement right now that the National Theatre will be airing the stage version of Frankenstein next week!

Here are the details: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/nt-at-home-frankenstein.

I'm completely biased on which version to watch - Jonny Lee Miller's version of the Creature (on May 1) is the best I have ever seen: he starts off for several minutes just figuring out how to walk on wobbly legs after "his birth," he brings gravitas, loneliness, and heartbreaking agony to the role, and the wedding night scene juxtaposes utter sadness of societal expectations with cruel suffering. I'm going to watch Benedict Cumberbatch's version of the Creature too, but I think he takes Victor's hybrid of curiosity, vanity, and utter discombobulation to the best performance. I guess that means I will see Jonny Lee's version of Victor too then!

Anyway, I highly recommend watching - it's free - and for a limited time!

Winds, Winds, Winds & Wuthering Heights Twister

With the wind today, I feel like I'm about to reenact a scene from Wuthering Heights here!

Speaking of, Mama G, Cora, and I were playing on the Wuthering Heights driveway yesterday, and I somehow (per Mama G's idea) ended up playing Wuthering Heights Character Twister (um, the rules were a little fudged). While it seemed absolutely ridiculous in theory, it actually was a physical manifestation of the characters' classes and resulting relationships. I'm going to make AP Lit do this next year at school!

If you want to look at the previous pictures, here are my directions and my analysis :) This covers the whole book, so if you don't want to know what happens yet, don't read ahead!

 Yes, this is what it would be like to live with me full time.

1. Right foot Hindley, left foot Hareton -Barely a movement as these two center around Wuthering Heights; even though Hareton has lost his inherited social standing, he is technically the name above the door!

2. Right foot Cathy, left foot Linton - once again, these two of the upper upper class and the upper middle class are naturally together; Cathy never really has to go far for anything.

3. Right foot Cathy, Left foot Cathy 2.0, a hand to Linton - since Cathy 2.0 is the best of both her parents, it makes sense that you don't have to stretch too far to unite this family together.

4. Right foot Heathcliff, Left foot Isabella - yes, I did a split here, thank you so much - look at the distance between the social classes and the appropriateness of this marriage plus its uncomfortable relationship.

5. Right foot Heathcliff, Left Food Linton, 2 hands Isabella - I made this sort of a plank - while Linton is between them, he does closer to Isabella, showing his unsuitability with the Heights and Heathcliff. Although, Heathcliff (and his anger issues) does reach out and bite him (get the dog reference there for those of you following along at home?).

Mama G still wants me to do The Scarlet Letter after it rains. She thinks my neighbors won't know what the "A" means. Yeah, I bet they do.

The Hardy Passage (Notes)

Whenever you are given a passage with two characters, you, of course, want an understanding of each's characterization: the shamed, humble, wanting to please, colloquial-sprouting Elizabeth Jane with the agitated, cold, judgmental, trying-to-erase-his-poor-past Henchard. While that is well and good, you also have the secondary component: the complex relationship between them. Many of you adjoined a Marxist lens to this piece with the divide of dialects, the past and present social standings of each person, and the behaviors representative of a mayor and a worker bee. To further justify these findings, and for any prompt like this in the future, keep your eye peeled for dialogue (diction, tone, other verbal devices), body language (placement, movement, comparisons), and juxtaposing behaviors (physical and emotional). Yes, the narrator's point of view will give you plenty of fodder for writing this prompt, but by focusing on the characters and what they are doing - especially in those little details - you will have an even greater sophisticated analysis.

As we work with Wuthering Heights and its juxtaposing characters, settings, and narrators, practice identifying those aforementioned literary elements and how they create the characters and their relationships. I would love to say that we will have the entire novel finished by the end of the quarter, but we probably will not, or at least not have true class analysis. However, we're going to do our best with the first half to continue with what a prose passage will most likely ask you to accomplish.

Back to evaluating. I miss hard copies and having the ability to evaluate 20-28 (my record with free response) essays per hour. Typing out all of these comment boxes first on AP Classroom, then on your Google form, then recording in SIS takes a lot more time! This is just an inconvenience, not a problem, so I will curb my complaint at that. A rabbi on the Today Show a few weeks ago talked about mental outlooks and how to classify what is happening right now as an inconvenience or a problem to better address life's circumstances. For example, an inconvenience would be having your meeting suddenly stop due to wifi not connecting. A problem would be your furnace not working and being unable to heat your home when it is below freezing. Don't know if that helps or not, but when I'm in the middle of a catharsis regarding school and what needs to be done or what is happening in the world, or I just feel overwhelmed with the redundancy of my daily life, I try to recognize that a lot of it is inconvenience in my world. Best to all of you. Even if you have genuine problems in your life, remember that there are people who support and love you and want to be that ear to listen to you and offer aid.

The Bronte Passage (Charlotte) Notes

I just finished the feedback for sixth hour's work with the Bronte passage regarding Caroline Helstone's metamorphosis to adulthood at age 18. This prompt emphasized the 2 phases of her life and brought simultaneous wonder and cynicism to the shift from childlike fantastical hope to mature realistic love, or those personified abstract nouns that affect the second half of the passage. If a prompt centers around 2 of something - I hope you know where I'm going with this - the AP creators have set you up for juxtaposition. Hence (I'm trying to break free of my ergo addiction), juxtaposition was the big ticket item that I was looking to read, whether it be the main device or a secondary one hiding under the umbrella of personification, nature motif (hello, it's a Bronte writing this), or anything else brought to the table for analysis.

I'm off to the Hardy prompt for sixth hour and then go through second hour's submissions. I just wanted to let you know that once I finish with feedback for an hour's assignment, if you turn it in late (which is legal but noted on SIS as such), I will not be giving as much feedback for that particular assignment.

The Chalk Art Version of Wuthering Heights

This all began when Mama G said, "Why don't you make a big scarlet A on your driveway since you can't act it out this year." Now while that would be eye-catching, my neighbors would probably get the wrong idea. Not that they think I'm sane for sitting on the driveway and drawing out Wuthering Heights with Cora's chalk.

Here are all of the pictures of my take on Wuthering Heights. It's my favorite novel of all time, yet I still can mock the characters! Especially Cathy - it's all her fault.

And you can mock me later for spelling Nelly Dean's name as Nellie. I need to stop watching Little House on the Prairie reruns!

And accurate spelling of NELLY -

Yep, I know exactly how you feel when you make that misspelling and there is photographic proof of it ;)

Digital Week 4/14

I really miss typing my blog on a daily basis. Google Classroom doesn't have that panache to me. Anyway, I will continue to post all of your assignments for the week in multiple locations so that all of you have a means of contact and finding the work. This week is all about Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, and Literary Devices!

Seek out the lesson plans for phase 5 (we skipped phase 4 - maybe) and you shall see that you have a presentation on Miss Bronte and her real and imaginary worlds (definitely go through the links to other articles and charts - it's really cool, at least for a Bronte lover like me), a sign up sheet for our meeting this week that will feature analysis of 10 of her poems (might as well start recognizing patterns in her writing now), a completion/absentee form for verbal participation (like last week but with a little twist to make it unique for you and me), a close read prompt and mini writing assignment on the opening of WH (ah, Heathcliff), and a little fun with making up your own examples for common literary devices (AP Lang had a fairly entertaining time with a similar activity last week).

Hope all of you are doing well as we make our march to the AP test in May. Our "serious" work will involve only 2 essays. For those of you doing the math at home, we were supposed to have 7 essays this quarter (including 2 full practice tests - jeez I'm loving the parentheses today), but we only have 3 total (Frankenstein and 2 AP Classroom full essay prompts). Instead of overwhelming you with essay after essay, we'll stick with writing thesis statements and paragraphs here and there (such as this week a paragraph for the meeting and one for the WH prompt) to keep you in the mood of literary analysis.

I'm still extremely proud with everything you are doing online and in our meetings. The majority of you are putting in the effort and truly showing off all that you have learned in your educational career.

And if I ever catch up on checking digital portfolios and work for Lit and Lang, I'll finalize my shoe voting selections and make a voting form for all of you!

Digital Week Starting 4/7

It's kind of weird not typing a daily reminder of the antics from AP Lit in blog form every day. As noted on AP classroom and via e-mail, here is all the info regarding our week with a font change since I'm being a bit lazy and copying and pasting :)

Even though our week does not officially begin until Tuesday, April 7, I’m going for consistency and sending your weekly assignments on a Sunday, with the expectation that you will complete these by next Sunday.

As noted by the district, your third quarter grade is currently a place marker for what your semester grade MAY be. The “may” is an important caveat as students are expected to maintain their level of effort and participation to have the same grade at the end of this quarter. I will be noting the completion of your activities and giving feedback with AP scores (1-6) on essays and specific writing assignments to make sure you are improving with your essays. Do your job, you will keep your grade. Don’t do your job, your grade is subject to drop.

I have also been told that students who show the effort and participation beyond what they did third quarter can have their grade bumped up.

*By the way, and this is for a small number of you, if you have extenuating circumstances that preclude you from technological completion, result from health or familial reasons, or other issues that may occur, communicate with me! There are always ways to maintain your involvement J

A little adjustment to my work hours: regular office hours will be 1-3; dedicated work hours will remain the same beyond that: TWR 10-4; M,F,Sun sporadic.

Also, the district has requested we use WEBEX instead of Zoom for meetings, so you will receive new invitations to join those meetings. Check the sign-up sheet for more info and times. Sign-up as soon as would like.

And one more area – it does not matter if you are taking this course for the AP Lit test, college credit courses, high school credit, or a hybrid of the aforementioned reasons. All of those curriculums involve prose passages, novels, written analysis, and participation. Ergo, I might be turning into Abby W. with that transition, and all of these assignments are for all of you and not just those taking the AP exam J

Weekly Assignments:

·        Phase 3, The Importance of Being Earnest, Zoom Meeting 3, The World of Oscar Wilde, AP classroom timed close readings

·        https://drive.google.com/open?id=1OwSDC9g2T6XnV5EBvQshzUgfA9mU12qp8UCS3JrNU9s

·        You might want to review all of your lit terms

Suggested Daily Assignments:

Tuesday/Wednesday:

·       Sign up for meeting (if not already done so)

·        Prepare topic, evidence, lit element for meeting

·        Fill out completion/absentee form on Google Classroom

·        Add to The World of Oscar Wilde

Thursday/Friday:

·        Complete AP Classroom close reading prompts

·        Fill out Bronte/Hardy form on Google Classroom

·        Look over those lit terms

And, of course, before I forget: a link to the AP test info. Scroll down with the specific information regarding AP Lit. https://apcoronavirusupdates.collegeboard.org/educators/taking-the-exams/ap-exam-schedule#courseSpecific