The Hour of "Poses"

1: After copying down our next unit of vocab, we worked on reading works for diction, picking up patterns of diction, noting shifts of diction, and describing diction with mature, collegiate, variegated adjectives. This was quite an adventure through "A Birthday" and celebrity quotes as your class clearly likes words ending with "pose" such as expose, juxtapose, compose, and I'm sure there will be more in the future! We will continue forward with all of this "posing" next time, so be ready to further show off your own diction!

3: After our vocab work today, we settled right back into the world of diction by practicing our thesis statements in full class and in groups. If absent, you are to take this following quote by Ray Bradbury and do the close read and thesis statement: "He had never liked October. Ever since he had first lay in the autumn leaves before his grandmother's house many years ago and heard the wind and saw the empty trees. It had made him cry, without a reason. And a little of that sadness returned each year to him. It always went away with spring. But, it was a little different tonight. There was a feeling of autumn coming to last a million years. There would be no spring." Either print out the quote for your close reading, or write it out on notebook paper to complete the close reading. At the end of class, we read the ever-fascinating Thomas Gray's Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat for its diction, and we will return to this work next time around. As a preview, we will also be looking at Percy Shelley's Ozymandias and my beloved John Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn. I highly suggest that all of you read these poems and know what all the words and allusions mean for a stronger interpretation during class. 

5: After our vocab work, we spent the hour with the best man in the world, my Keats, my poor, beloved Keats and his work "Ode on a Grecian Urn," which is linked above. After creating a strong thesis statement (I think you are getting the drift regarding the expectations), we moved onto the background of my Keats in order for you to have context of his letters, which will be the main focus of our diction analysis. During class, you had time to close read the first letter for next time around. If absent, I highly recommend picking up a packet on Wednesday so that you do not fall behind with the readings.