Prep Day 3

The plot for our return to school involves the 5 (or 2 in seventh hour) group rhetorical appeals presentations on our topics of Boko Haram, Autistic Education, Space, Malala & Girls' Education, Disconnection, and Starfish Wasting Disease. From what I have eavesdropped in class, it sounds like we have some engaging and informative skits, a slew of data from your own questions, and a lot of general excitement regarding teaching your classmates (and your professor) your topic! The December 2 schedule, if you haven't heard, is a quirky one, so we will attempt to keep to our planned schedule next week. Happy Thanksgiving, my Langers!

P.S. And don't forget to include Lucy and/or Ann in your Thanksgiving plans!

Prep Day 2

Since there's not much to say about our preparation days, let's make this blog about the Lucy logs and the kudos for those of you who have been over-analyzing the purpose, the characterization, the tone, and the other rhetorical strategies floating within the pages of Autobiography of a Face and Truth & Beauty. These logs are to help review rhetorical analysis and give you a venue to further practice your writing of such a discipline. These logs are to help you have evidence and analysis at your fingertips for our future essay next month. If you are putting in the effort now, you will have great dividends for the essay and the final. Just reading over the logs, most of you already have all the parts for the essay (sorry, not telling you the prompt yet) and will just need to pick and choose from your work. That should be a gratifying feeling and motivation to continue your work for the last half of the assignment. If you have not been fulfilling the assignment in content matters, you still have the last half of the logs to complete, and you still have the gist of purpose, characterization, tone, and strategies, which will help you write the essay as well. Every task is to give you more confidence in analyzing texts and writing rhetorical analysis, so make sure you wrap up our memoirs and logs and have them ready for next week's last deadline.

Prepping Days Begin

Before our first of three days of preparation for our rhetorical appeals presentation, we had the district MC assessment to complete. If you were not present for this brief assessment, you will be making this up during class next week.

Birds, Boxes, and Pathos!

In all classes, we completed the "birds" box prompt for the Shelley and Keats passages, which means any absentees will need to complete this task solo. Ask for the handout to complete a.s.a.p.

Following our completion of our tone work, we jumped into the world of pathos (with a little ethos and logos to help establish such) with your rhetorical appeals group presentation! With your group topic, you will be crafting a survey, researching, making a visual artifact, and creating a performance piece to engage the audience and encourage an emotional reaction from them! Absentees have been "adopted" into groups, so don't worry about being left out of this educational experience.

After our district assessment tomorrow, you will be prepping, plotting, planning, and probably a lot of other alliterative words for this presentation!

The Birds Part II

Light and dark, hopeful happiness or dejected despair, stunted ideas, or inspired imagination, all descriptors of our "Nightingale" and how Keats created a variegated tone and strategies to define his conflicts in a state of perpetual philosophical crux. At this point, you have both the Skylark and Nightingale poems ready for writing, which you will be doing in the form of a group box prompt next time around.

Since time was not conducive today for the box prompt, we fast-forwarded to pathos, noting the emotional reactions of photographs and advertisements. This was not just for fun or to balance the seriousness of Shelley & Keats, it was to put you into the mindset of a presenter and how to create pathos in your audience. I guess that means you will be working on that task very shortly! Looking forward to this year's rhetorical appeals presentations. AP Lang has had some memorable, interactive presentations in the past that I'm sure will be challenged by your creativity!

The Birds Part I

Time for the earnest part of the blog: we are currently at mid-term, the time when tone phases out into pathos, the Lucy Logs enter phase two, the advent of argumentation about to return to your writing assignments. With that in mind, some of you are experience a bit of a regression - not in ability, but in turning in your work and preparing for class. As this is a college class, supported by UMSL, MOBAP, and the College Board, you are expected to complete higher-level work, put effort into your writings and projects, and continue to participate in our activities. If you are one of those who has not put in the effort that you could be at this point, you don't have to fear - we have quite a bit of work on the docket that can balance out any previous faults. That work includes a team box prompt (tomorrow, probably), a group rhetorical appeals presentation, and 2 argumentative essays. While the past is set, the present and future is not, so actively take a role in improving your work and your participation in AP Lang.

Phew - let's return to the fun stuff - wait, did I just set up Shelley as fun? In all hours, we completed our paraphrases, tone identification, and rhetorical strategy  notes on "To a Skylark." During tomorrow's class, you will be doing the exact same with "Ode to a Nightingale." If absent, prep stanza 8 of the text for your participation.

Toning Up

Today was the look-see at our last tone maps for Richard Cory and Miniver Cheevy, in which you had the opportunity to share your work with a classmate and discuss the overlapping features of two poems with two different speakers, two different characters, and a plethora of tone shifts. Afterwards, we started our work with " To a Skylark," looking at its meaning, its tones, and its rhetorical strategies. While students in class had specific stanzas to analyze for the aforementioned components, any students not physically in the class will be responsible for the overall summation of tones and rhetorical strategies.

On a side note, those of you are continuing to prepare for class, come in ready to share and analyze, pre-read selections and have knowledge about allusions and vocabulary, are truly embracing this college-level course and its expectations, and I send kudos to your regarding your effort and motivation. For the select few who are not keeping up with their preparations, you definitely want to take a step up in your efforts so that you are better ready for the AP exam day.

EAR

1,3,4,7: After the completion of the team tone maps for "The Children's Hour," we read "Richard Cory" and "Miniver Cheevy" by Edwin Arlington Robinson, or EAR as I like to reference him (please don't write EAR as the author's name in your analysis:) ). Both of these poems are widely available online, so never fear that you need a hard copy to be caught up in class. For tomorrow, you have one of these poems assigned to your for an individual tone map, you will be noting shifts by lines (such as we did with the "Chicago" sample in class), and finalizing the map and analytical paragraph for class. Ben, you have "Miniver Cheevy,"  and John, since we have an odd number in your class, you can chose either of the poems to do.

P.S. Don't forget to read "To a Skylark" and "Ode to a Nightingale" so that you understand the ideas of the text, know any vocabulary not in your ethos-level, and can recognize the allusions present in the texts. And, as with all of our "Nest Loved Poems," you can find all of these pinnacles of literary merit online, so need to wait for any readings.

Tone Map #2

To be forthright, we complete only 3 tone maps for our tone unit, which means that we are 2/3 through our work with the visualization of tone shifts throughout a text. You are always welcome to continue with tone maps to help you with your understanding of a passage or develop analysis for class in the future.

1 & 3: You completed "The Children's Hour" tone maps, and we read through all of your analyses to hear a variety of ways that tone can be identified and interpreted in the grand scheme of Longfellow's purpose. Tomorrow will be two new poems and then Friday will be the Skylark & Nightingale, Shelley and Keats, respectively, which you should pre-read and prepare with any notes regarding allusions, symbols, or anything else you might not know now but would want to know for class.

4: We are almost finished with "The Children's Hour" tone maps as we read through the samples that you created of tone analysis. Once that is complete, we will move to the individual tone map portion with 2 new poems tomorrow.

7: Hopefully, you are in the same place as fourth hour :)

The Children's Hour

We continue forward with our tone mapping, an exercise to help visualize the tone shifts, large or small, with "The Children's Hour" by Longfellow, which you can find online.

In first and third hour, you are in process of the last part of the tone map, the analytical paragraph focused on one pattern in the map and how this connects to the overall text. If you were absent, you should create a tone map for "The Children's Hour," which  may be completed on notebook paper and compose the analytical paragraph for next class.

In fourth hour, you are also in the process of the tone map and the transition into the analysis of it in a paragraph form. If absent, you should complete the tone map portion for "The Children's Hour."

In seventh hour, we read "The Children's Hour" to have a sense of the poem. Due to the assembly and the loss of some students, we will probably be in the process of identifying each stanza's tone. So, if absent, you should prep those tone words for each stanza.

Mapping

Normally, I take pictures of my current classes' tone maps, but my phone is full of an 8-month-old cherub that I selfishly have decided not to delete and replace with tone mappage (not a word, but I want it to be one). Ergo, you have an above example (fifth hour of last year) of what a tone map should be and how it can be utilized for analysis.

A tone map starts with the text, the identification of tone shifts throughout the text, the selection of a tone adjective to describe the tone of each section, the the determination of a range, or two words that encompass all of the tones, the plotting of tones in relation to the range tone words, the connecting of dots, and, finally, the delineation of the patterns inherent in the tone map. As always, jingoism is a popular one for "Chicago," the poem that we completed together as a class.

In first and third hour, we also started our next round of tone mapping by reading "The Children's Hour" by Longfellow and breaking up into partners to identify each stanza's tone. If absent, you should prepare the same tone adjectives for each stanza so that you  may join a group next class.

In four hour, we finished our class tone map and will await our next passage on Monday.

In seventh hour, we looked at our "big kid" tone list, highlighting some of our favorite words for future tone needs. We then moved onto the "Chicago" class tone map.

Team Tones

1,3,4: We continued our tone work with the umbrella tone list and groups crafting conversations in which your classmates had to identify the shifts in positive, negative, humor, sorrow, and neutral language. To wrap up class, we looked at the "big kid" tone list and some of the more fascinating adjectives to describe tone like my personal favorite, jingoistic. 

7: We started our tone work with identifying various tones shifts and then moved into the same content as the previous hours. 

Toning Up

Our diction work - in class - is over, which means it's time for your assessment prompt: Analyze how John Keats' diction reflects his mentality and purpose in his letters to Fanny Brawne. Handwritten or typed, with page numbers for citations, this is due by 3 p.m. on Monday (remember if absent all day, you will need to share or photo and send to me by the given time as evidence of your completion of the assignment).

To wrap up class, we began our look at tone by breaking down major shifts of bilious, scintillating, surprised, apathetic, and lachrymose.

It's Benjamin Banneker Week!

In exciting news, it is Benjamin Banneker week, which celebrates the revered writer, scientist, and all-around savant. I must say that one of the highlights of teaching AP Lang for all of these years is my introduction to Banneker, his historical significance, his brilliance as a savant, and his letter-writing abilities to our old buddy Tommy J.

 Here is a little more information from a fun website of daily, weekly, and monthly celebrations: https://www.daysoftheyear.com/days/benjamin-banneker-week/. 

And, to make this a little more relevant and applicable, you will notice that there are 2 activities for celebrating Banneker's role in our lives. 

The first is to make a clock face (non-working) using mathematics to represent the numbers 1-12 (so don't literally write 1, 2, and so forth but construct formulas or mathematical expressions to represent each number). Here is a picture I found online (which may be blocked since it originally came from facebook) of such a clock, which looks to be made out of cardboard: https://www.facebook.com/events/1601106116857922. 

The second is to compose a poem that actually features mathematical puzzles for the reader to solve. Here are some examples: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/resources/mathematical-puzzles-benjamin-banneker. As you can see the word problems are divided up into verse form, which means you can play with rhyme and diction and poetic elements to express math. 

So to make this interesting and decorate my room, you have the challenge of constructing a 3 dimensional clock (so not on typing paper but with a more solid material - creative materials add to the presentation) and/or a mathematical poem on decorated construction paper/cardboard/posterboard for extra credit. The poem can have combined mathematical puzzles to boost the level of difficulty and content. All the math must be accurate - and, yes, I am a polymath (at least that is what Joe Cassidy calls me) and have right and left brain talents. The clock will be worth a maximum of 35 points, and the mathematical poem will be worth a maximum of 20 points. Points will be awarded for originality, mathematical connection, presentation, and effort, which means those utilizing the most clever materials, math, and presentation will amass the most points. 

You can do one of each by the way. The due date for this extra credit, which must be in person, is Monday, November 11 so you have one week on this extra credit opportunity. This must be turned in via hard copy (obviously) by 2:40 p.m. on that day. If you have any questions, e-mail me for clarifications. Otherwise, I am looking forward to the final products! Especially since I had about 8 clocks two years ago and two clocks last year and no poems! Photo below - you can tell which had a little more effort than others. 

Keats Letters - In Diction Depth

After all the background of Keats last week, in poetry and in biography, you now have the opportunity to analyze his diction and purposes as his letters progress from the beginning of his romance to the separation from Fanny to his eventual last words to her. In all classes, you have a group and a letter to break down into the many types of diction and purposes.

And, because it is part of a teacher's life to repeat everything a plethora of times, November 6 is the due date for the first round of the Lucy logs, with the deadline window for full credit between November 6-8, depending on the needs of extended time, extensions, and, hopefully not but probably the case for some, procrastination issues.

1: We have 3 letters presented and will finish the remainder of next class.

3: We started off with the vocab quiz and then worked with the letters. If absent, prep notes for letter 24, and you will be joining that group next class. We have presented three letters thus far.

4: We have 4 letters presented and will finish next time around. Purplue! If absent, prep notes for letter 24.

7: We are in preparation mode with the letters of Keats, dividing our class into two and each group having two of the letters to analyze for diction and purpose. Will, you are in the group with letters 4 & 37, so prep those and be ready for Wednesday.

A Keats Day

Every hour was Keats-related today, so I was in my happy place, sharing all the details of his juxtaposed life of happiness, nature, and love with tragedy, illness, and suffering. Hence, his poetry is a mixture of the aforementioned themes, motifs, and purposes. At this point, all classes have read through "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and its call to understand balance, heard a basic biography of his life, and received a copy of the letters that we will be analyzing on Monday - with the assignment to close read the first one in preparation.