Friday, April 15, 2016

week 32 - April 25 - 29 2016

Monday April 25
Mrs. Dalloway multiple choice questions
prep for Mrs. Dalloway timed write
Mrs. Dalloway timed write:
Novels and plays often include scenes of weddings, funerals, parties, and other social occasions. Such scenes may reveal the values of the characters and the society in which they live. Mrs. Dalloway builds to such a scene in her party and, in a focused essay, discuss the contribution the scene makes to the meaning of the work as a whole.

HW)  AP multiple choice practice test:  complete in 1 hour

Wednesday April 27
Dalloway assessment
 review AP MC answers
Mrs. O'Connor's guide for AP exam
Learnerator AP
HW) study lit terms from AP quizlet

Friday April 29
create and take quiz on AP lit terms
More AP practice
O'Connor recap assignment with previously read novel
Hw) AP novel review

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

week 31 - April 12-15, 2016

Objectives:
Track the psychological development of characters in literature
Understand narrative development in stream of consciousness
Compare film adaptation to a literary novel

Tuesday 4/12
Character tracking graphic organizer
update knowledge of novel development
View "The Hours"
HW) read "Mrs. Dalloway" pp 81-103
Write 3 AP test multiple choice questions for the reading

Friday 4/15
Character tracking graphic organizer
Update knowledge of novel development
Review key scenes  in "The Hours"
HW) read "Mrs. Dalloway" finish the book over vacation
write 3 AP test multiple choice questions

Monday, April 4, 2016

week 30--April 4- 8, 2016

Objectives:
Modernism
stream of consciousness
Bloomsbury
early 20th century feminism
"A Room of One's Own" “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

Monday
Woolf quote of the day: 
“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”

read aloud "Stanford Admissions Shocker"  and discuss elements of satire and argument
mini-lecture on Virginia Woolf
explore Mrs. Dalloway Mapping Project
read Mrs. Dalloway together
HW)  read Dalloway up to p 41
wander your home, then write a 1-2 page stream of consciousness story

Wednesday
Woolf quote of the day: “Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.”


  • paired work on characters, stream of consciousness triggers, and timelines
  • shared work on student stream of consciousness writing 
  • reader theater tag:  each student reads until a transition in the stream of consciousness
HW)  read Dalloway up to p. 61
wander your neighborhood, then write a 1-2 page stream of consciousness story

Friday

Woolf quote of the day:
 “...who shall measure the heat and violence of a poet's heart when caught and tangled in a woman's body?”

  • paired work on characters, stream of consciousness triggers, and timelines
  • shared work on student stream of consciousness writing 
  • reader theater tag:  each student reads until a transition in the stream of consciousness
HW) read Dalloway up to p. 81
wander  a natural setting near your home such as the beach or Flax Pond or the woods where the turkeys live behind your house, then write a 1-2 page stream of consciousness story

The Shakespeare's Sister manifesto:
“I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her in Sir Sidney Lee’s life of the poet. She died young—alas, she never wrote a word. She lies buried where the omnibuses now stop, opposite the Elephant and Castle. Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the cross–roads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here to–night, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh. This opportunity, as I think, it is now coming within your power to give her. For my belief is that if we live another century or so—I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals—and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the common sitting–room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky. too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves; if we look past Milton’s bogey, for no human being should shut out the view; if we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women, then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare’s sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down. Drawing her life from the lives of the unknown who were her forerunners, as her brother did before her, she will be born. As for her coming without that preparation, without that effort on our part, without that determination that when she is born again she shall find it possible to live and write her poetry, that we cannot expect, for that would he impossible. But I maintain that she would come if we worked for her, and that so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worth while.” 

Monday, March 28, 2016

week 29 - March 29 and 31

Objectives:
Master tone
Understand and use complex sentence structure
Identify and analyze advanced diction

Tuesday March 29
Diction exercise with par on 154-155  "However . . .crystal"
    select 8 challenging words, (4 verbs, 4 modifiers)  write down definition, etymology and synonyms
Discuss how selected words contribute to what Achebe claims as Conrad's practice of  "inducing hypnotic stupor in his readers through a bombardment of emotive words and other forms of trickery" ("Image of Africa")

Finale for Kurtz and misrepresentations of Marlow evaluated through student DIDLS tone work

Collective examination of prompt:
In both Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and in Conrad's The Heart of Darkness, the authors center their novels around a megalomaniac. According to wikipedia,  "Megalomania is a psychopathological condition characterized by fantasies of power, relevance, omnipotence, and by inflated self-esteem."

Contrast Gatsby with Kurtz in a well-developed essay, focusing on the layers of story-telling, the varieties of myth, the capacity for self-delusion, their place in history and the similar fates of these two larger-than-life men.


Discussion, quote selection and planning for timed write.

Thursday 3/31
Thesis comparison
Evidence evaluation

Writing time for Heart of Darkness prompt.

Collect Heart of Darkness
Issue Mrs. Dalloway

HW)  Read Mrs. Dalloway 1-28  make character book mark 

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

week 28 - March 22-4

Objectives:
Improve close reading skills
Grapple with tough, universal messages
Evaluate scholarly criticism of literature

Tuesday 3/22
Finish class read around of Chinua Achebel's Heart of Darkness analysis:  "An Image of Africa"
Practice close reading using DIDLS on recent passage of HoD pp116-117


DIDLS: The Key to TONE

DICTION:
  • Laugh: guffaw, chuckle, titter, giggle, cackle, snicker, roar, chortle, guffaw, yuk
  • Self-confident: proud, conceited, egotistical, stuck-up, haughty, smug, condescending
  • House: home, hut, shack, mansion, cabin, home, residence, dwelling, crib, domicile
  • Old: mature, experienced, antique, relic, senior, ancient, elderly, senescent, venerable
  • Fat: obese, plump, corpulent, portly, porky, burly, husky, full-figured, chubby, zaftig

IMAGES: The use of vivid descriptions or figures of speech that appeal to sensory experiences helps to create the author’s tone.
  • My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun. (restrained)
  • An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king. (somber, candid)
  • He clasps the crag with crooked hands. (dramatic)
  • Love sets you going like a fat gold watch. (fanciful)
  • Smiling, the boy fell dead. (shocking)

DETAILS:  Details are most commonly the facts given by the author or speaker as support for the attitude or tone. The speaker’s perspective shapes what details are given and which are not.

LANGUAGE: Like word choice, the language of a passage has control over tone. Consider language to be the entire body of words used in a text, not simply isolated bits of diction. For example, an invitation to a wedding might use formal language, while a biology text would use scientific and clinical language.
  • When I told Dad that I had goofed the exam, he blew his top. (slang)
  • I had him on the ropes in the fourth and if one of my short rights had connected, he’d have gone down for the count. (jargon)
  • A close examination and correlation of the most reliable current economic indexes justifies the conclusion that the next year will witness a continuation of the present, upward market trend. (turgid, pedantic)

SENTENCE STRUCTURE: How a sentence is constructed affects what the audience understands. Sentence structure affects tone.
  • Parallel syntax (similarly styled phrases and sentences) creates interconnected emotions, feelings and ideas.
  • Short sentences are punchy and intense. Long sentences are distancing, reflective and more abstract.
  • Loose sentences point at the end. Periodic sentences point at the beginning, followed by modifiers and phrases.
  • The inverted order of an interrogative sentence cues the reader to a question and creates tension between speaker and listener.
  • Short sentences are often emphatic, passionate or flippant, whereas longer sentences suggest greater thought.

SHIFT IN TONE: Good authors are rarely monotone. A speaker’s attitude can shift on a topic, or an author might have one attitude toward the audience and another toward the subject. The following are some clues to watch for shifts in tone:
  • key words (but, yet, nevertheless, however, although)
  • punctuation (dashes, periods, colons)
  • paragraph divisions
  • changes in sentence length
  • sharp contrasts in diction
  •  
  • SOURCE  mseffie.com


HW)  read 119-140 and write a one page DIDLS of the passage in a complete paragraph, not an atomized account

Thursday, March 24
share DIDLS of Heart of Darkness
reader theater
clips from arrive at Kurtz's camp of  "Apocalypse Now" 
HW)   read 141-end, write a one page DIDLS 

Monday, March 14, 2016

week 27 - March 14-18

Objectives:
reinforce reading skills associated with AP multiple choice questions
evaluate professional critical analysis of literature

Monday
  • read aloud together connection of Morrison to Faulkner
  • AP test packet:  "Aeolian Harp" 34-36
  • issue "Heart of Darkness"
  • background and challenges:  Joyce Carol Oates' essay pp 8- 14
HW) read 65-84 of Heart of Darkness, write a one page SOAPSTone

Wednesday
  • share SOAPSTones from 1st readings of Heart of Darkness
  • evaluate narrative framework
  • reader theater  
HW) read 85-106 write a one page SOAPSTone

Friday

  • Read Aloud and Evaluate Chinua Achebe's "Image of Africa" 
  • Reconcile Achebe's Africa with Conrad's
  • reader theater

HW) read 107-118 write a one page SOAPSTone

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

week 26 - March 9 and 10

Tuesday
Discuss Beloved 
Decode the Middle Passage narration
Character study of Stamp Paid and Paul D
HW) complete reading Beloved

Wednesday
  • preview timed write
  • share and compare notes and outlines
  • timed write

2011, Form B. In The Writing of Fiction (1925), novelist Edith Wharton states the following:
At every stage in the progress of his tale the novelist must rely on what may be called the illuminating incident to reveal and emphasize the inner meaning of each situation. Illuminating incidents are the magic casements of fiction, its vistas on infinity.
Use Beloved to write a well-organized essay in which you describe an “illuminating” episode or moment and explain how it functions as a “casement,” a window that opens onto the meaning of the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.

HW) rewrite a term 3 timed write and resubmit it by Monday, March 14