Sunday, January 24, 2010
Hackers have penetrtaed this blog site
It's of no use any longer until I can clean up the site. Please, disregard any message posted at this site for the 2009-2010 year. This site is effectively closed until further notice.
Monday, June 01, 2009
Response Journal Directions:
1. In your reader’s journal, you should record your ideas, questions, comments,
interpretations, predictions, reflections, challenges – response you have to the books you are reading.
2. Keep the reader’s journal with you while you’re reading. Stop as you read and take time to write. Capture your thoughts while they’re fresh in your mind. Date each entry and note the pages read during that reading session. I expect entries every 25 pages or less.
3. This should NOT be a summary of the plot though references to what is occurring in the plot are essential as you respond. What you are noting is your engagement with the reading.
4. Suggested starters:
-As I read the opening chapter, I think…
-I changed my mind about…because…
-So far the most interesting character is…because…
-I am confused by…
-I predict that…
-I like the way the writer…
-Repeated imagery I see includes…
-Repeated figurative language or motifs I see includes…
-This part of the reading reminds me of…
-This part of the reading makes me realize…
-While I was reading today, I pictured…
-I’d like to tell the writer…
-I’d like to ask the writer…
-If I were (name the character), I would (wouldn’t) have…
-What is happening is realistic (unrealistic) because…
-One thing I’ve noticed about the author’s style is…
-I agree with (disagree with) the writer about…
-A good title (or a better title) for this novel would be…because…
-If I could talk to (name the character), I would say…
-I think the main things the writer is trying to say are…
-I think the writer must be…because…
-(Name the character) reminds me of myself because…
-(Name the character) reminds me of…because…
-This book is similar to (different from) other books I’ve read …
-I would change the ending…
-The most important word (sentence, paragraph) in this book is…because…
interpretations, predictions, reflections, challenges – response you have to the books you are reading.
2. Keep the reader’s journal with you while you’re reading. Stop as you read and take time to write. Capture your thoughts while they’re fresh in your mind. Date each entry and note the pages read during that reading session. I expect entries every 25 pages or less.
3. This should NOT be a summary of the plot though references to what is occurring in the plot are essential as you respond. What you are noting is your engagement with the reading.
4. Suggested starters:
-As I read the opening chapter, I think…
-I changed my mind about…because…
-So far the most interesting character is…because…
-I am confused by…
-I predict that…
-I like the way the writer…
-Repeated imagery I see includes…
-Repeated figurative language or motifs I see includes…
-This part of the reading reminds me of…
-This part of the reading makes me realize…
-While I was reading today, I pictured…
-I’d like to tell the writer…
-I’d like to ask the writer…
-If I were (name the character), I would (wouldn’t) have…
-What is happening is realistic (unrealistic) because…
-One thing I’ve noticed about the author’s style is…
-I agree with (disagree with) the writer about…
-A good title (or a better title) for this novel would be…because…
-If I could talk to (name the character), I would say…
-I think the main things the writer is trying to say are…
-I think the writer must be…because…
-(Name the character) reminds me of myself because…
-(Name the character) reminds me of…because…
-This book is similar to (different from) other books I’ve read …
-I would change the ending…
-The most important word (sentence, paragraph) in this book is…because…
Novel Annotation Directions:
1. Circle unfamiliar words and write synonyms in the margin.
2. Highlight or underline descriptions of characters and their relationships, important
quotes, setting information, plot details, and anything related to theme.
Label reason for noting.
3. Put a box around symbols and literary devices (personification, metaphor,
similes, alliteration, hyperbole, irony, allusion, etc.)
4. Record personal connections that you make with the novel in the margins.
5. For each chapter, compose at least two discussion questions that a teacher might ask.
6. At the end of each chapter, write a brief summary.
2. Highlight or underline descriptions of characters and their relationships, important
quotes, setting information, plot details, and anything related to theme.
Label reason for noting.
3. Put a box around symbols and literary devices (personification, metaphor,
similes, alliteration, hyperbole, irony, allusion, etc.)
4. Record personal connections that you make with the novel in the margins.
5. For each chapter, compose at least two discussion questions that a teacher might ask.
6. At the end of each chapter, write a brief summary.
Welcome AP Literature 2009-2010!
I will begin providing you here with some critical thinking resources that will prove invaluable.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Bibliography Cards Cancelled
1. Research Paper Final Draft: 5/29
• Rough Draft 5/22
• MLA format
• 15 pages
• Bibliography cards cancelled (Extra-credit)
2. Cinematography Project: 6/1
• Must demonstrate literary technique
• Master plot development
• Character arc
• Setting, location, and perception manipulation
3. Final Examination
• Period 1: 6/4 & 6/5
• Period 2: 6/8
• Rough Draft 5/22
• MLA format
• 15 pages
• Bibliography cards cancelled (Extra-credit)
2. Cinematography Project: 6/1
• Must demonstrate literary technique
• Master plot development
• Character arc
• Setting, location, and perception manipulation
3. Final Examination
• Period 1: 6/4 & 6/5
• Period 2: 6/8
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Two Essays due this Wednesday!
Question 1 (Suggested time—40 minutes)
Read the following passage carefully. Considering such literary elements as style, tone, and diction, write a well-organized essay that examines the speaker’s view of bad carpentry work.
We recently had a carpenter build a few things in our house in the country. It’s an old house, leaning away from the wind a little; its floors sag gently, like an old mattress. The carpenter turned his back on our tilting walls and took his vertical from a plumb line and his horizontal from a bubble level, and then went to work by the light of these absolutes. Fitting his planks into place took a lot of those long, irregular, oblique cuts with a ripsaw that break an amateur’s heart. The bookcase and kitchen counter and cabinet he left behind stand perfectly up-and-down in a cockeyed house. Their rectitude is chastening. For minutes at a stretch, we study them, wondering if perhaps it isn’t, after all, the wall that is true and the bookcase that leans. Eventually, we suppose, everything will settle into the comfortably crooked, but it will take years, barring earthquakes, and in the meantime we are annoyed at being made to live with impossible standards.
From “Assorted Prose.”
Question 2 (Suggested time—40 minutes)
Read the following passage carefully. Then, write a well-written essay in which you discuss the manner in which the narrator shows the setting of the barn quickly diminishing Rusty’s presence.
A barn, in a day, is a small night. The splinters of light between the dry shingles pierce the high roof like stars, and the rafters and crossbeams and built-in ladders seem, until your eyes adjust, as mysterious as the branches of a haunted forest. David entered silently, the gun in one hand.... The smell of old straw scratched his sinuses.... the mouths of empty bins gaped like caves. Rusty oddments of farming — coils of baling wire, some spare tines for a harrow, a handleless shovel — hung on nails driven here and there in the thick wood. He stood stock-still a minute; it took a while to separate the cooing of the pigeons from the rustling in his ears. When he had focused on the cooing, it flooded the vast interior with its throaty, bubbling outpour: there seemed no other sound. They were up behind the beams. What light there was leaked through the shingles and the dirty glass windows at the far end and the small round holes, about as big as basketballs, high on the opposite stone side walls, under the ridge of the roof.
From the story “Pigeon Feathers.”
Read the following passage carefully. Considering such literary elements as style, tone, and diction, write a well-organized essay that examines the speaker’s view of bad carpentry work.
We recently had a carpenter build a few things in our house in the country. It’s an old house, leaning away from the wind a little; its floors sag gently, like an old mattress. The carpenter turned his back on our tilting walls and took his vertical from a plumb line and his horizontal from a bubble level, and then went to work by the light of these absolutes. Fitting his planks into place took a lot of those long, irregular, oblique cuts with a ripsaw that break an amateur’s heart. The bookcase and kitchen counter and cabinet he left behind stand perfectly up-and-down in a cockeyed house. Their rectitude is chastening. For minutes at a stretch, we study them, wondering if perhaps it isn’t, after all, the wall that is true and the bookcase that leans. Eventually, we suppose, everything will settle into the comfortably crooked, but it will take years, barring earthquakes, and in the meantime we are annoyed at being made to live with impossible standards.
From “Assorted Prose.”
Question 2 (Suggested time—40 minutes)
Read the following passage carefully. Then, write a well-written essay in which you discuss the manner in which the narrator shows the setting of the barn quickly diminishing Rusty’s presence.
A barn, in a day, is a small night. The splinters of light between the dry shingles pierce the high roof like stars, and the rafters and crossbeams and built-in ladders seem, until your eyes adjust, as mysterious as the branches of a haunted forest. David entered silently, the gun in one hand.... The smell of old straw scratched his sinuses.... the mouths of empty bins gaped like caves. Rusty oddments of farming — coils of baling wire, some spare tines for a harrow, a handleless shovel — hung on nails driven here and there in the thick wood. He stood stock-still a minute; it took a while to separate the cooing of the pigeons from the rustling in his ears. When he had focused on the cooing, it flooded the vast interior with its throaty, bubbling outpour: there seemed no other sound. They were up behind the beams. What light there was leaked through the shingles and the dirty glass windows at the far end and the small round holes, about as big as basketballs, high on the opposite stone side walls, under the ridge of the roof.
From the story “Pigeon Feathers.”
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
MLA Bibliography cards
Your MLA bibliography cards are now due 20 May, Wednesday. I am hereby postponing this Friday's deadline, so that you may focus all your studies towards passing every AP Exam that you have challenged!
May the Force Be With Us!
In Peace,
Whyte
May the Force Be With Us!
In Peace,
Whyte
Monday, April 13, 2009
Here's another way to better
understand what Hesse is talking about: check out the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path...
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