Happy Birthday, Keatsy!

1 & 3: After vocab work, we headed into poetry to read a few selections by Thomas Gray, Percy Shelley, and my beloved John Keats (by the way, links to these poems can be found under fourth hour's agenda from yesterday). In all cases, we worked with describing diction, identifying the overall purpose, and creating thesis statements. And since you are in the mood for all things Keats (or at least you are forced to be), our next class will be all about him! Biography, photos of his home, and his letters to Fanny!

Autumn & The Poets

4: We spent the hour with diction and thesis statements: the autumn diction quotes, Thomas Gray's "Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat", Percy Shelley's "Ozymandias", and that start of my beloved Keatsy's "Ode on a Grecian Urn"(the first two stanzas). We will resume our Keatsian love affair, oh, wait, that's my love affair, on Friday with the completion of the "Urn" and its thesis statement, a bio of my darling, vacation photos, and the letters that best represent the love and melancholic end of Keats as he suffered to his premature death.

P.S. I would share your amazing thesis statement from today, but I don't want to give ideas to the other classes :)

Your Weekly Lucy Logs Reminder

Don't forget that the first checkpoint (4 sections of your chosen memoir) of the Lucy Logs is next Wednesday, November 6. While this is the initial due date, you still have a deadline window of November 6-8, which will include all students with extensions, additional time concerns, or procrastination issues, for full points on the assignment. If you haven't started your reading and logs yet, that would put you at approximately 2 days per section at this point in time.

Family Bonding Diction

After vocab experts, we spent our time with diction! On the floor! Bonding like a family to create the perfect thesis statements with the perfect adjectives and the perfect verbs! Total redundancy, yes, but it does keep us focusing on how important words are to creating a sophisticated voice!

Here are the quotes from today & a bit from yesterday too:

"Being a sex symbol is a heavy load to carry, especially when one is tired, hurt and bewildered." - Marilyn Monroe

"I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing." - Agatha Christie

"To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. Money is the gravy." - Bette Davis

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." - Thomas Jefferson

Here are some thesis highlights: 

MM expresses cumbersome, relatable diction to portray what it's like to be a paradigm of the female gender. 
MM dramatizes exploited, defeated diction to magnify the struggles concerning her public image. 
MM expresses burdensome, oppressive diction to expose the realistic nature of fame. 
MM reveals damaged, resigned diction to expose the hardships of being a sex symbol. 

AC employs passionate yet conflicting diction to illuminate life's pendulum of emotions.
AC stresses appreciative, troubled diction to juxtapose the prosperity and adversity of life. 
AC expresses distraught, replenishing diction to juxtapose the conflicting perceptions pertaining to life. 
AC demonstrates solemn, empirical diction to reflect her appreciate on life through strife. 

BD exemplifies driven, motivational diction to inspire a true passion for a craft. 
BD manifests metaphoric, insightful diction to inspire life's true aspirations.

Tommy J illustrates forthright, revolutionary diction to aggrandize the sacrificial costs of liberty.
Tommy J encourages patriotic, brutally honest diction to foment feelings of nationalism. 
Tommy J foments nationalistic, liberating diction to propagate the fighting for liberty. 

All the above samples recognize the necessity of mature, specific, engaging, and clever word choice in your thesis and throughout your writing! We are starting to gravitate towards different active verbs, purposes, and diction adjectives, which can only benefit your own writing and analysis on forthcoming assignments. 

7: Since we were so successful with our thesis statements from yesterday, we jumped right into our group diction quotes, analyzing the words and purpose to create the perfect thesis statements. If absent, you have a quote under the other hours to prepare with close reading and thesis. Meanwhile, we, in theory, in hope, in projected planning, started with more poems to analyze for diction, such as Thomas Gray's "Cat" poem, which can be found here: "Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat".

1,3,4: At the end of class, you had your group diction quote to read, paraphrase, circle key words, and formulate a thesis statement. You will be teaching the class about your quote and all of the above next time. If absent, never fear, you will have something to contribute. Here is your quote to prepare: 

“That country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain.”  -  Ray Bradbury

Diction and Perfecting the Thesis Statement

Now that syntax is in the rearview mirror, diction takes center stage in AP Lang for the next week or so. For all of you wondering exactly how we will expand our diction analysis, it begins with finding patterns of diction (words of similar ilk, pattern, or repetition) and shifts of diction (notable or subtle), it follows with identifying types of diction with specific, expressive language (not positive, negative, happy, sad), and then you construct stunning, astounding thesis statements expressing those magnificent active verbs and mature purposes.

Something, perhaps, akin to CR embeds fruitful, celebratory diction to elucidate her maternal joy (thank you, first hour).

Diction, as a topic, for the majority of you, is classified in the easy category of rhetorical analysis. However, your presentation of diction and the aforementioned needs of a strong thesis statement can make diction an upper-level strategy calling for that sophistication point!

As for the agenda today, we started off with vocab experts, had the second toolbox quiz (1,3,4), and looked at "A Birthday" by Christina Rossetti to establish diction patterns, diction adjectives, and purposes.

Seventh hour had the pleasure of starting our diction quotes work, which will continue tomorrow.

The Alcott Share

Today's class centered on sharing the introductions and body paragraphs resulting from the Alcott prompt. As this writing composed the entirety of the hour, we will be starting our diction work on Monday.

And since you have your Lucy text and log assignment, you do have something to work on for AP Lang too.

P.S. Seventh hour also took a second toolbox quiz, so any absentees will need to schedule a time for making up this assessment.

Grealy & Alcott

After vocab experts, I had the opportunity to finish the official assignment of the Lucy Grealy memoirs and assigned log, which you will be working on until December 5 (or earlier, if you happen to not procrastinate this assignment). At this point, you have your first memoir and can start the process of reading and analyzing. While the first deadline window is not until November, that is still only 2 weeks away, so stick with it!

Our main course today was our first team close read, featuring the Alcott package and its perspective of nursing and patient in the Civil War. From your classmates detailed close reading skills, you have a plethora of rhetorical strategies to help explicate the purpose of the passage. With your close reading team, you have a team thesis and rhetorical strategy paragraphs to write for the start of next class. If absent, you will have this passage next time and will be completing the assignment solo.

All in the Same Place

Someway and somehow, all the AP Lang classes are on the same agenda! First up was our syntax quest, the last assessment of our syntax unit. Second up was a look at your Orenstein prompts. Third up was vocab (for some of the hours). Fourth up was the Grealy assignment. We didn't have a chance to go over this completely in class; however, you should take a preview read so you have the background regarding its content.

Twas the Night Before the Last Day of Syntax

O.k., technically, syntax will never go away. You have all of those options in your future prompts, our next team close read (coming up quite soon, actually), and your life of writing sentences. However, our emphasis, our daily clause-laden agenda, will now transfer to diction then tone then pathos then fallacies and then argument - or at least that is the plan. Before all of that goes down, you have your syntax quest tomorrow.

1,4,7: Completed and shared the Welty prompt thesis statements and boxes reviewed for the syntax quest, and copied down unit 15 vocab.

4: Same as first and third hour. However, you also received your Orenstein prompts back.

The Group Syntax Prompt

1,4,7: The hour was dedicated to the Welty prompt via summation of the text experience, the identification of story shifts, the recognition of syntactical strategies, and the unification of such to note the patterns of syntax reflecting her storyline. At this point, your groups have a team thesis and a box chart containing 2-3 syntax types, a specific purpose for each, and the evidence for that syntax. Any absentees will need to complete the previous sentence's assignment for Monday.

3: After finishing the fourth hour syntax handout (controversies!), we began the Welty prompt by summing up the text, identifying story shifts, recognizing syntax, and composing a team thesis statement. If you were absent you should close read the text for syntax and compose a thesis statement prior to our conclusion of the assignment during Monday's class.

When Polysyndeton and Syntax Collide

1, 4, 7: We read the passage from The Reader, which offered us a great deal of syntactical markers - simple, telegraphic, cumulative, polysyndeton, anaphora - plus some considerable analysis on pronoun shifts that were quite telling in the purposeful motion between objective and subjective voice. (Kudos to Caylee for bringing up that a would-be compound sentence was in 2 parts, adding to the devolving of the author's syntax with the advent of Hanna's verdict - and how that lead to our discussion of ending in fragments!). After such a reminder that you should know your syntax and be able to identify it, we looked over the fourth hour syntax handout - and its more controversial syntactical examples! Tomorrow will involve our last syntax prompt practice and then that will lead to our syntax review and syntax quest. Phew!

3: Same as first and fourth hour regarding the reading passage. However, in the syntax packets, we finished the 1/7 hour version, and you have fourth hour's for homework this evening.

Promotional Ad

As you may know, I am the coach of the Scholar Quiz team, our competitive trivia team that travels to schools across St. Charles County. We have been fortunate to win the Holt Invitational twice, GAC's, Orchard Farm Invitational, Districts three times, Sectionals, and finish 4th place at State (also included would be Caleb Fick finishing first overall as an individual at State). Since the Scholar Quiz team is an extracurricular, I do not want to hijack the class or try to “sell” it to any of you or make it seem that being part of the team will influence your AP class standing whatsoever. However, some of you may not know about our team and would like a little background information.

So, if you are looking to add something to your college resume, improve your knowledge for a multitude of AP classes (my former SQ and Lang/Lit students have mentioned how much SQ knowledge has helped them with argumentative essays, literary knowledge, and retaining information), work with a supportive team, compete with other schools, meet many other students from our area, and earn a letter, stick around for a bit more details regarding the team.

On the other hand, if you have a packed schedule and do not have interest in joining our extracurricular, thank you for taking the time to read the introductory paragraphs and considering any involvement.

The Scholar Quiz team is currently looking for team members to join Varsity, JV, and Novice levels. Those who join the team can have strengths in academia (literature, science, math, history), current events, pop culture, sports, or fun facts. Even if you are not an “expert,” you can become one by working with the Scholar Quiz team. 

The time commitment is quite manageable for whatever your commitment would be to the team. So if you want to be a full time member or part time member, there are opportunities to be part of our competitive team. During a regular week, we have Trivia Lunches on B (1/2 hour) and practice on Fridays (approx. 1 hour). We also have additional chances to prep and practice for competition in what I call “Random Acts of Trivia” that occur after school in ½ hour increments from time to time. For those thoroughly committed to the team, we do have bonus practices prior to big competitions.

Competitions run from late November until April. There are 5 competitions on Tuesdays (approx. 2 hours for 2-3 matches for players of all ability) and a minimum of 5 Saturday matches (full day and for the strongest players). If you sign up, you will communicate with the team your full availability – as in all – or if you will have a partial schedule.

If you are interested, stop by any of our trivia lunches or practices to check out the Scholar Quiz team. And if you would like to be an official teammate, pick up an availability sheet (it is a grandiose RSVP form) to clarify your availability for our upcoming competitions.

If you have any questions, please do ask me, our Captain Mathew Bessette, our Captain of Representative Leadership Elsa Linson, or any team members. And, thank you for reading about our Scholar Quiz team. This is my eleventh year coaching, and it has been the most rewarding experience for me to be part of such a close team (we still have our alumni showing up during the year) and to learn so much random facts like the Defenestration of Prague, the Great Emu War, or the Great Molasses Flood - yep, all real historical events. 

Ditto

Due to PSAT testing, our classes today were either card game review (1,3,4) or syntax handout from fourth hour (7). We will resume our syndetons and syntax next class, so be prepared with all of your handouts and readings!

The Syndetons & the Syntax

1 & 4: After our vocab quiz for unit 14, we checked the remainder of the first/seventh hour syntax practice, looked at polysyndeton and asyndeton, and passed out several handouts for the next couple of days. The fourth hour syntax handout will need to be completed for Thursday, and you will need to read (not close read) the syntax prompt for Thursday too.

7: Same content during the hour. However, the homework is a little different for you - complete the first 2 pages of the fourth hour syntax for Wednesday, the third page for Thursday, and the syntax prompt reading for Thursday.

3: After finishing up vocab experts, we checked page two of the syntax handout, looked at polysyndeton and asyndeton, and passed out a couple handouts for our upcoming classes. On Thursday, you will have your vocab quiz, go over the last two pages of first/seventh hour syntax handout, and have read (not close read) the syntax prompt.

Surprise! Well, Not Really

As you may have inferred from my implications yesterday, today's class was all about the prompt for Cindy Syntax. As I watch first hour jump right into the writing process, it looks like my hints were read quite well.

Don't forget on Tuesday you have a vocab quiz and the rest of the syntax packet (1,4,7) or vocab experts and page 2 of the syntax packet (3). We will be working with the syndetons, more syntax practices courtesy of fourth hour, a team syntax prompt, and, eventually, a syntax quiz courtesy of third hour's creative writing.

Cindy & Her Syntax

4: After going over the second page of the syntax handout (yes, compound sentences can have - shockingly - three independent clauses), the majority of class focused on the excerpt from Cinderella Ate My Daughter, including sharing of purposes for the reading from last evening, identifying all the sentence types in the text, and concluding the overall purpose and syntactical patterns in the passage. If absent, you are expected to have completed the aforementioned purposes and syntax identification on your own for next class as you will need your passage, with any notes that you have, for our Friday work. For Tuesday's class, we will have the vocab quiz for unit 4 and check your answers for the last 2 pages of the syntax handout - highlighting optional at this point, though highly recommended if you are struggling with syntax of find a difficult selection.

1: Same as fourth hour.

3: After going over the first page of the syntax handout (with reminders to note an independent-dependent clause combo as complex and not as a simple sentence), we spent the rest of class on Cinderella Ate My Daughter, including the purposes from the remainder of the reading sections, identifying all of the sentence types in the text, and concluding with overall purpose and syntactical patterns in the passage. If absent, as note in first hour, you are expected to have completed the aforementioned purposes and syntax identification on your own for next class. You will need this passage and all of your notes for Friday's work. For Tuesday's class, you will highlight the second page of the syntax handout and identify the types of syntax and resume with vocab experts.

7: Same as fourth and first hour.

Cindy & Her Purpose

While Cinderella is part of the princess culture and part of Orenstein's title regarding her deep dive into gender roles and their impact of young girls (and boys by connection), the actual character of Cinderella does not play much of a part in our look at the purpose, the why Orenstein writes her first chapter in "chunks" of ethos, exemplification, juxtaposition, and other methodology to convey the confusing realm of parenthood and its myriad of decisions that impact a child forever. Wow - that was a long sentence! In all classes, we started the process of identifying the purposes of the text, and each individual class has their assignment of the remaining text for purpose work. Make sure you have those purposes identified and ready to share. And if you were absent today, you should pick up a copy of the text a.s.a.p. to catch up on those purposes before your next class period.

1 & 4: We finished up vocab, which means review is next. Since the quarter is ending, we may just have the quiz after the review, but that will all depend on finishing up the second page of the syntax handout (with highlighting and identifying the types) and Cinderella Ate My Daughter, both of which are for homework. Can we top "to aggrandize" as a purpose infinitive?

3: We added to our vocab and practiced highlighting the various clauses and identifying the syntax types before our foray into Cinderella Ate My Daughter, which is reading for this evening along with the first page of the syntax handout.

7: We reviewed vocab, which means the quiz will be in the near future. After checking out how you did with identifying clauses and syntax on the second page of the handout, we commenced our look at Cinderella Ate My Daughter. Make sure to finish up identifying the purposes of our Cindy excerpt and complete the third page of the syntax handout.

Yep, Still Syntaxing (That's Probably Not a Verb)

1 & 4: After vocab experts, we reviewed our syntax types and our 11 modes of discourse to prepare for our look at cumulative and periodic sentences and their clauses' purposes and to resume the identification of clauses via highlighting/underlining to ascertain what type of sentence we have on the projector or the page. Finish up page 1 of your 1st & 7th hour syntax - we will go over those tomorrow and then move into a reading selection that will ultimately crescendo into a syntactical analysis.

3: After vocab experts, you now have all 6 types of syntax, and your mission is to compose 2 sentences for each type  - hopefully sentences with a little panache and memorability. In addition, make sure you know the 11 modes of discourse.

7: After vocab work, we looked at the breakdown of cumulative and periodic sentences, and then worked with highlighting clauses on the 1st and 7th hour syntax handout. An educated guesstimate (oxymoron?) would be that we will finish page 1 in class, and you will have page 2 for homework.

The Sentences of the AP Exam

In all classes, we are in the midst of vocab, syntactical work, and motivational speeches regarding why it would behoove you to take the AP Lang exam. I may have given you a couple corny analogies, but the last one, the idea of learning to crawl and then moving forward into walking and running should be the one that sticks with you on your journey through a class and life, for that matter.

1: We finished the presentation regarding the AP exam and will resume syntax on Monday. Make sure you know the 11 modes of discourse.

3: We continued forward with syntax and punctuation, completing a practice handout.

4: We finished our 6 types of syntax and you have some sentence writing to do: compose 2 original sentences for each of the types of syntax (simple, compound, complex, c/c, cumulative, periodic) - be creative!

7: We reviewed vocab, syntax, and modes of discourse.

Syntax City

We're all at different stages of syntax and vocabulary! You can find the agenda and specifics of our block day below:

1: After vocab experts, we resumed our syntactical work with compound sentence punctuation, semicolons, colons, and transitional punctuation, complex sentence examples and rules, a punctuation practice handout to ascertain that we all are on the right track with our mechanical understanding of writing, compound-complex sentences, cumulative sentences, and periodic sentences. For homework, you are to write 2 original examples for each of the 6 types of syntax: simple, compound, complex, c/c, cumulative, and periodic. To end the hour, we looked at the 3 prompt styles for the AP exam, and that is where we will resume.

3: After our completion of the Capote prompts and feedback, you copied down vocab unit 14 with the intention of starting class, and then delved into the world of syntax: the differentiation of independent and dependent clauses, subordinating conjunctions, simple sentences, coordinating conjunctions, compound sentences and its punctuation rules, semicolons, colons, transitional punctuation rules, and complex sentences. A lot more to come tomorrow.

4: After vocab experts, we did a lot of syntactical review - and typing this is starting to feel a bit redundant - the differentiation of independent and dependent clauses, subordinating conjunctions, simple sentences, coordinating conjunctions, compound sentences and its punctuation rules, semicolons, colons, transitional punctuation rules, and complex sentences and its punctuation rules, and a practice handout to check our comprehension of punctuation. We will resume tomorrow with the remaining syntactical types.

7: After vocab, we checked your punctuation review handout, introduced the last 3 syntax types of compound-complex, cumulative, and periodic, presented the reasons why it would behoove you to take the AP exam, took breaks with a dancing llama, returned to syntax to identify clauses and sentence types, and took a specific look at modes of discourse - i.e. the 11 you should know for tomorrow. For homework, you are to write 2 original examples for each of the 6 types of syntax: simple, compound, complex, c/c, cumulative, and periodic.

The Scintillating Side of Syntax

O.k. I admit the blog title is a little saucy and probably not completely accurate regarding the analysis of sentence structure, but it does offer alliteration and what (maybe?) syntax analysis could become if handled with maturity and originality. Our syntax work covers clauses (i.e. the determinants of syntax), punctuation (or how you should be writing your own sentences), and, most importantly, the sentence types for rhetorical analysis (or the big 6 that fit the majority of structures).

1: We finished our evaluations of the Capote prompt, a favorable exercise in writing and reviewing with the 1-6 system. Then, we copied down unit 14 vocab, which will commence during the block day. Last, we started our syntax unit with the types of clauses, subordinating and coordinating conjunctions, and simple and compound sentences. We will review all of that and return to more syntax.

3: After regrouping with your Capote prompt partners, we began the reading and evaluation portion of the assignment. That will continue on the block day.

4: We copied down unit 14 vocab and then completed our evaluations of the Capote prompt. Syntax will start tomorrow - so be ready for almost 90 minutes of sentences.

7: We started vocab experts for unit 14, reviewed all of the syntax, punctuation, and clauses from last class, and then continued forward with syntax. At this point, you have knowledge of what not to do (comma splices) and what to do with complex sentences, colons, and transitions. At the end of class, you started work on a punctuation practice that we will finish up next time around.