AP Language Class Notes
Second period, also a good job today looking over Collins’ propsal to Elizabeth in detail. The more evidence you can find to support your inferences the better you’ll be able to confidently assert your evaluation.
Here’s a dramatic rendering of Mr. Collins’ utterly vile, and completely rhetorically ineffective proposal by actor David Bamber to Jennifer Ehle’s Elizabeth Bennet from the 1995 BBC production of Pride and Prejudice:
Check yesterday’s notes for objectives, and get that homework done for Wednesday. Stop by the site over the weekend for a few posts I have in the queue.
Be safe this holiday weekend.
English 9 Class Notes
Hey fourth period, although you’re proud of yourself for being the class with the most work turned in, don’t be congratulatory. You and your peers in first and third period need to turn the dedication up a notch. Remind them and learn to help each other out. Since you’re all doing the same work, there’s no reason why you all can’t combine your brain power to work through the hard stuff I throw at you.
Check yesterday’s notes for objecives and content, and have a safe weekend.
AP Language Class Notes
Objective(s): APELC students 1) framed the rhetoricity of a literary text, and 2) analyzed rhetorical appeals in a literary text.
Nice work today, fifth period! It was very encouraging to hear you all engaged today in processing the text today. Great questions followed by great analyses which lead to great inferences. I’ll be preparing some handouts this weekend that may help you in nailing down the steps of the process. It’ll become as we continue to practice text after text after text.
Homework details are posted, as are several new critical thinking rubric models I’m considering. I want you and your second period peers to be able to see exactly where you need work, and as an all-around intrument the nine-point rubric won’t fit that bill. I particularly like the PSU rubric and may consider it for later, but for now I’ll be using the NHCC rubric to score all of your short writings. Check the class page to see what I’m talking about.
Have a great weekend.
English 9 Class Notes
Objective(s): English 9 students 1) read independently for a sustained period and journaled critically, 2) created level 2 questions for literary text, and 3) determined and began to write about the protagonist and antagonist of a literary text.
Periods 1 and 3, after independent reading and critical journaling today, we had an earnest discussion about in-class and homework expectations. I’m concerned that many of you aren’t taking seriously my warnings about work being turned in on time and with the appropriate amount of thought, effort, and care. Remember, there are no “Make-up Missing Work” days in my classes. I certainly don’t expect you to get everything correctly the first time, but that’s what school’s about, making mistakes and capitalizing on the experience to improve next time.
We then moved to a discussion of level 1 and level 2 questions and began to apply the concept to “Rules of the Game”, and began to make inferences about character and characterization. You started to craft a paragraph in which you analyzed the protagonist and antagonist of the story. Check the class page for details and have a great weekend.
Loose-Leaf Paper
“Why 8 ½ × 11 inch, college ruled, loose-leaf paper, Mr. Girard? I can’t sleep at night. You’re awful, awful, awful!”
That’s all right. I can take it. I know my dogs and cat and turtle love me. But what about that paper? Well dig this, although 8 ½ × 11 inch paper had a storied history (polyptoton) and place in the West, in 1921 then Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover turned heads by approving 8 × 10 ½ inch paper as the official standard for government letterheads. Now, remember, that it was the villain Hoover, later as President, who led us into the Great Depression; you’ll recall, those of you that were around, the rallying opposition cry against him as the Depression set in: “In Hoover we trusted, now we’re busted.” It all started with the paper.
The dizzying, maddening confusion over paper sizes in America lasted for sixty years until President Reagan heroically set things aright during his administration in the 1980s by declaring 8 ½ × 11 inch paper the true standard of this shining city on the hill.
And so there you have it, the story of 8 ½ × 11 inch paper. My preference and request for it I’ve explained before―spacious and roomy for your writing, practical for my organizing―but now you can also see that 8 × 10 ½ inch paper is simply aberrant.
Read more about paper and other school supplies at the Christian Science Monitor’s piece “Hey kid―what’s in your locker?”.
Score it!
AP Language Class Notes
Period 2, as did your peers yesterday, you made some acute observations about the Hopper text and the two presentations of Henry’s speech to his troops. And again, as I wrote in yesterday’s notes, the analysis process will become easier, automatic, as you practice, and practice, and practice, and practice.
Don’t forget to buckle up!
English 9 Class Notes
Period 4, good analysis today of Hopper’s Automat. Check yesterday’s notes for periods 1 and 3 for a rundown of the same objectives you completed and important ideas you learned today.
Please be sure to check the class page to clarify your homework for Friday.
AP Language Class Notes
Objective(s): APELC students 1) analyzed the context, speaker, audience, and text (argument, message) of a dramatic speech, and 2) evaluate the rhetorical effectiveness of the same in multiple formats.
Since it was on our still-non-functional SMART Board (tell your parents to make some noise if you want its functionality to change) from first and third periods, we did a quick level-question-analysis of the Automat by Edward Hopper. (See the post immediately preceding this for a look at the text.) Nice quick-and-dirty job on that. And after that opening analysis, I led you quickly over the fundamentals of how to scan a poem with the first four lines of Wordsworth’s autobiographical Prelude and asked you to do the same on a few lines from Henry’s speech. Rhythm, stress, and meter can be used to rhetorical effect, so the ability to scan a poem can prove useful, as it has in our analysis of Henry’s St. Crispin’s Day speech to his men.
Then we picked up from where we left off Monday and oriented ourselves to the speech by reviewing, consolidating, and categorizing observations, questions, answers and ideas and distilling these into the four fundamental parts of the triangle. This left us with a preliminary analysis and evaluation of the text from which we could elaborate through focused questions about rhetorical strategies. (Whew! The words that describe the process are much more cumbersome than the process itself, and it’ll become automatic as you progress over the next few weeks. Howard Hughes’ instructions for opening a can of soup were worse.)
Then we compared two presentations of the same speech from two different Shakespearean actors for differences in context, speaker persona, audience, and text.
Laurence Olivier as Henry (1944)
Kenneth Brannagh as Henry (1989)
I was surprised at how many seemed to prefer the first, although perhaps I was mistaken.
Your homework, “A Vile Proposal”, has been posted. Get to it.
English 9 Class Notes
Objective(s): English 9 students 1) read independently for a sustained period and journaled critically, 2) created level 1 and 2 questions for a visual text, and 3) extended level questions to literary text.
Periods 1 and 3, after SSR today we spent the rest of the period analyzing Automat by Edward Hopper (below). I didn’t expect it to take the period, but the questions you developed were incisive and the discussion they engendered was great.
We reviewed how to generate level 1 and level 2 questions, and defined two words that’ll be terribly important to you as we progress throughout the year: schema and its plural, schemata. Loosely, your schemata are the model or plan of the world that lives in your own head, and we all possess multiple plans that we use to engage the world daily. More specifically, your schemata are your combined (conscious and unconscious) knowledge, ideas, experiences, memories, beliefs, dreams, et cetera, that are specific to you; your schemata are the lenses through which you view the world, the thought-processes through which you encounter the world and according to which you act in the world.
That seems like a lot, and it is. Thankfully we don’t have to think much minute by minute about who we are and what we are and where we are and how we know such things, but we use our schemata all the time, sometimes through our own effort, but more often automatically.
It’ll all become clearer as we progress as long as you have your thinking caps on at all times. (Never expect bottom-shelf from me.)
Remember to check your class page for homework.
Something for the Freshmens
I’ve been posting a lot of stuff for the AP juniors and seniors lately, so I thought I’d try to even things up a bit by posting something that might help the freshmens visualize where we’re at in our current story by Amy Tan, “Rules of the Game”.
So, here’s a slideshow of San Francisco Chinatown’s alley ways, places most probably won’t see on a visit the Bay City, and another slideshow from educational publisher Harcourt that has some internal links in addition to the images in the show itself. If you’ve got the patience to listen and imagination, check out National Public Radio’s 2003 piece on Chinatown’s Funeral Band. And of course, there’s always Wikipedia’s entry on the concept of “Chinatown” in various locations around the globe.
It’s impossible to get a good feel for Chinatown without ever having been there―I’m writing here only about San Francisco’s Chinatown; personally I’ve not been to any other. If, when you are older and have an opportunity to travel to San Franciso, take some time to walk up and down the streets of Chinatown. It’s something your eyes, ears, and nose will never forget.
By the by, I have, remarkably, been the head of a dragon chasing the pearl in a Chinese New Year parade, of sorts. Maybe I’ll post a photo here on the site. Maybe. If everyone brings 8 ½ × 11, college ruled, loose-leaf paper to class. Maybe.
AP Language Class Notes
Objective(s): APELC students 1) asked and answered analytical questions of a dramatic speech, 2) analyzed context, speaker, audience, and text of the same, and 3) evaluate the text’s rhetoricity.
APELC, you began by clarifying the text of the speech with your partner. Many of you were able to identify the text without investigating, while others of you took time to go a bit deeper and contextualize the piece by finding out more details.
We then began to look at the text as it might be distilled into the four parts of the rhetorical triangle from your notes, ideas, questions, and answers. (That’s right, four parts to the triangle). These latter few inform your broader description of the four parts of the triangle as they relate to a specific piece of text. Always begin your rhetorical analysis first with critical reading using the basic questions as a guide observing, analyzing, inferring, synthesizing, and evaluating as you go, and follow-up by consolidating and categorizing your ideas. Then begin to funnel them into the four parts of the triangle.
You all did well today, except during the incident in second period when, as I recommended you look for patterns in the text, many of you panicked at the mention of iambic pentameter. (The horror!) We’ll pick it next class, but here’s a neat ThinkQuest site that was put together by some fifth graders that may help you brush up your poetry terms.
Until next class…
English 9 Class Notes
Objective(s): English 9 students 1) defined and created level one questions, and 2) applied level one questioning to visual and literary text.
It’s unfortunate that many students did not read the assigned pages in the big literature text because you were quizzed today over the material. Ooh, snap!
Things got better after the quiz though when we began to review the answers and determine what type of questions I asked you. Recall that these were simple questions with simple answers; that is, the answers to the questions didn’t require much thought as any careful reader could point to the answers in the text. These, remember boys and girls, are level 1 questions, the answers to which are “Right there!”, so to speak, or, as Misha put it simply, they’re “In the text”.
You may not necessarily always be able to point to an exact answer to a level 1 question―you may need to pull few pieces together from different parts of the text, or apply a label of your own that isn’t in the text to answer a question, as you did when you tried to find adjectives to describe our protagonist’s Mom. This is still a level 1 question, but its answer is realized easily from simple evidence in the text.
Well done today, except that many of you still need to acquire the proper paper for class. Get it and bring it.
Peace out!
Schools’ Roles, Education’s Goals
Here’s an interesting piece of rhetoric from a self-acknowledged liberally-slanted blog: “Got a problem? Ask the public schools to solve it!” The post is a summary of and commentary on a Harper’s piece “Schoolhouse crock: Fifty years of blaming America’s educational system for our stupidity” (which unfortunately requires a subscription to access; may be I’ll find it at Bookman’s next month). Anyway, “Morbo’s” summary seems thorough enough in its brevity, but it’s always important, if possible, to find the original source.
If you’re interested in commenting, since it deals directly with the establishment and environment you find yourselves in nearly 190 days of the year (seems like more), you might begin by taking your questions for rhetorical analysis to the text and see where it leads you. Then distill your answers into the tight points of the rhetorical triangle and decide on the effectiveness of the text itself.
Anyone care to try?
Paleo- v. Neo-
The other day, I recall, a second or fifth period student asked the difference between paleo- and neoconservatism. The latter term has been bandied around a lot in media in recent years and it’s worth knowing term and its traditional brother. Try neoconservatism and paleoconservatism at Wikipedia. (Yes, yes, Wikipedia, which is a fine resource for quick information, much more information than I can offer. Of course, you can always follow up at Encyclopaedia Britannica to which we have access through CDO, and you may prefer for its reliability.) And in the interest of balance, check out neoliberalism and paeloliberalism. These last two entries are not as thorough as the former two, but they’re worth a look.
The Creative Best?
The American Society of Magazine Editors has released its list of the forty greatest magazine covers from the past forty years, and Smashing Magazine, which promises to “smash you with the information that will make your life easier offers creativty sparks from masters of graphic design.
The covers serve a different purpose than the images, but they’re all visual text and speak to particular audiences. They all argue something, too; that is, their creators all intended some message to come across to their audiences. Some of the messages are obvious, others aren’t.
Care to comment on specific covers or images? The covers offer some valuable cultural insight (context). Perhaps you’d like to offer some quick observations on their rhetoricity? Maybe even analyze and evaluate the editors’ choices? Click the link above to let us know your thoughts.
AP Language Class Notes
Period 2, great discussion today over the US Army text, and good use of the questions for rhetorical analysis. As I’ve told all AP students, this means of entering language and text will become clearer as the weeks and months progress and I suspect you’ll become quite adept at reading below the surface of the rhetoric you encounter. Check yesterday’s notes for a rundown of the day’s objectives and events.
Here’re a couple of links to items we spoke about specifically in second period but that would benefit all AP Language students to take time look over and ask some questions of. First, here’s the page where I found the Marlboro Marine, as he’s come to be known: “Already Our Hero, Local Boy now Famous Warrior!” Recall that I asked if this image could be used by both sides in the war debate? Have a read of the text. Can you detect ”Mario’s” message? (Notice that the speaker uses only his first name, if that is his real first name. Curious?) CBS News also followed-up on the Marine, real name Blake Miller, in a manner a little different than Mario: “‘Marlboro Marine’: Home Front Woes”.
Also, the American Social History project, a joint endeavor of CUNY and GMU, has created History Matters, and deep in the pages lies a contextualization and analysis of the Johnson campaign’s infamous “Daisy” ad. Scroll to the question-heading “What do you need to know to understand an infamous political ad?” on this page, “What else you need to know to analyze an ad?”, for the video and commentary.
Perhaps take your questions for rhetorical analysis to these texts? Not a bad idea to get some practice in even though both periods do have a specific assignment for Monday, so don’t forget to check the class page for details.
English 9 Class Notes
It was great to see that most of you brought your second paragraph template to class today as you were instructed, period 4. Check the objectives and notes from yesterday period 4, and pay particular attention to what I wrote about paper sizes at the end of the post.
Also remember that it’s not my job to catch you up on what you might’ve missed if you’re absent for any reason for all or part of the period. I’ve created this site as a convenient service to you so you can keep track of your own learning.
Guerilla Gardening
Just time for a sentence and a link on altering urban landscapes in a creative, rather than a destructive way: “Urban Ecological Subversion: The Art of Guerilla Gardening in Public Spaces”.
Let us know what you think by clicking the comment link above.
AP Language Class Notes
Objective(s): APELC students 1) identified and explained parts of the rhetorical triangle, and 2) analyzed the rhetoric of an editorial using the rhetorical triangle.
Period 5, you began by reviewing the basic questions for rhetorical analysis and then, as a class, we began to funnel them into the four parts of the rhetorical triangle (that’s right, four parts of the triangle). We analyzed a piece of visual text using the questions as they informed the parts of the triangle, after which you wrote a brief rhetorical analysis.
Many of you are still confused about rhetoric, rhetorical analysis, and rhetorical strategies. Remember that this isn’t like other English classes you’ve been in before. We’re looking for different types of things in different types of text with approaches you’re not used to. Bear with me and we can get through it, but I need you to concentrate along with me.
I’d ask that when you’re in class your focus be on class discussion. There’s far too much noise and distraction by certain elements for many to concentrate and for us to make satisfactory progress. I’ll begin to ask the worst perpetrators of the noise and distraction to consider another English class.
English 9 Class Notes
Objective(s): English 9 students 1) read independently for a sustained period and wrote critically about their reading, 2) drew inferences from evidence to craft an analytical paragraph about the archaeological dig map.
Periods 1 and 3, you began with SSR and critical journaling, and followed that with analytical writing. On the second paragraph template that you brought to class you answered two of four questions that were still left unanswered about the map, answering one question in each of the two chunks of the paragraph. After you completed the template (including topic and concluding sentences), you transferred your work to standard size loose-leaf paper.
I’m concerned that many students are not aware of the sizes and measurements of the paper that I’ve requested you use for this class. This is a controversy that has swirled for two weeks. Many students claim that they can’t find 8 ½ × 11, college ruled, loose-leaf paper and that people are running hither an yon under the shadow of the mountain unable to find the paper. I know that the paper’s readily available at most stores like Target or Walgreen’s, or particularly, of course, office supply stores like Office Max and Office Depot.
I’m also very tired of addressing the issue of why I’ve requested this size paper. I’ve gone over it several times, and I simply won’t again. All who signed the affirmation in the course outline—students and parents—have acknowledged and agreed to the materials request. And as I’ve stated before, you probably won’t need more than two or three of these sheets a week. Please have 8 ½ × 11, college ruled, loose leaf paper with you for next class.