Keats & Tone

In the next week or so, I have a feeling that the classes will align, and we will actually have collected agendas. Until then (or whenever that shall occur with our November schedule), we are still in the process of diction ending and tone commencing. And as a broken record, all of the poems that will be part of our tone unit are in previous blogs.

1: After reviewing vocab for our upcoming vocab quiz (yes, it would behoove you to study all of our vocabulary), I modeled for you how to present the diction analysis for the Keats letters, which included identifying diction patterns with adjectives, positing a plethora of evidence from the text, analyzing the pattern, and then ending with the purpose(s) of the individual letter. In partners you analyzed a letter, preparing for your sharing of diction and purpose with the class tomorrow. If absent, you should read over the letter packet; you will either be put with a partnership or be in charge of summing up the diction of all the letters (this will depend on class attendance, which hopefully will find all of you there).

3: We finished up diction with Keats' letters and you now have the prompt to do: Analyze how John Keats' diction reflects his mentality and purpose in his letters to Fanny Brawne. This will be due by 3:15 p.m. on Monday in hard copy form, either typed or handwritten. Make sure to use page numbers for the parenthetical citations. As with any take-home prompt, if you are absent for the entire today, you will need to either share or send a photograph of you work to indicate its completion. To conclude our class, we had the second toolbox quiz, which means absentees will need to make that up in the next few days either before or after school. Tone starts tomorrow!

5: Tone continues with the ever-fun, ever-debatable tone maps! With our first text, "Chicago," the world of the outsider ("they") and the perspective of the insider ("my") clearly conveyed the two-sided argument of the city as dangerous temptress and jingoistic construction ground. Tone maps are a visual means of clarifying the tone shifts throughout a text. First, you must identify all of the tone shifts. Second, you choose a tone word to describe each section. Third, you choose two of the tone words to construct a range. Four, you plot the points and connect the dots. Fifth, you identify patterns and explain these patterns in relation to the author's purpose, structure, and ideas. Our class tone map went very well - with little argument over our tone words. Hence, we moved to the second phrase of tone mapping by reading "The Children's Hour" and identifying the tone for each stanza. If absent, you will need to have tone ideas for each stanza of "The Children's Hour" as groups are moving quickly with this activity.