Holcomb

With the exception of first hour (PSAT business), you are immersed in the world of Holcomb, Kansas, conveyed by the ever-scintillating Truman Capote. No matter where you are in the process of this class close read and eventual individual writing assignment, the vocab quiz for unit 13 will occur during the block day, so make sure you have sufficiently reviewed for this event. Following this class close read, we will commence our syntax week (o.k. it's more like 2 weeks, but that's not showing a lot of brevity), which I have condensed into a review of clauses, punctuation, and syntax types.

3: For tomorrow, write the most amazing introduction possible for the Holcomb prompt. I heard a few analogies today in fifth hour, and it definitely helps make an essay stand out to the graders. We will be working with that intro and other components of rhetorical analysis after the vocab quiz.

5: For tomorrow, you will be turning in 3 paragraphs to me for the Capote prompt: an intro, a body, and a conclusion. Feel free to revise from your first go-around before I have a look-see. 

Meetings & Class Close Reads

All classes are at the mercy of Banneker prompt meetings, which will determine the commencement of the class close read.

1: We finished off our meetings today, which should help you make improvements on the next close read, writing activity, and eventual prompts. Afterwards, we reviewed for vocab, which means your quiz will be Tuesday. After the quiz, we will working on a class close read, so ready your pens and pencils!

3: We finished our vocab words, which means review day will be on Monday, and we finished our Banneker prompt meetings, which means we will be starting a new class close read on Monday. Since we had a little extra time today, you were given all the rhetorical strategy and mode of discourse cards to organize, and you did so in an impressive 10 minutes for the first go-around.

5: After finishing our vocab words, we close read a passage by Capote, noting the characterization of Holcomb, Kansas, and how the author presented the community to us via a few rhetorical strategies. For homework, write the perfect hook + the perfect thesis to create the perfect introductory paragraph. Be creative - this is your chance because you have time!

Meeting Day

In all hours today, we commenced and/or finished Banneker prompt meetings. If any remain in your hour, we will finish up tomorrow and then have a new class close read to practice our identification of words, patterns, and eventually strategies that connect to the purpose and the prompt itself.

Banneker Rangefinders

In all classes today, we continued forward with vocab and then worked with the rangefinders: scoring the essays for 1-9, finding out the official scores (which we all agree were over-marked), analyzing the + and - of each essay, and going over reminders/tips for writing.

And don't forget to take the survey linked in the previous blog!

In first hour, our small class today did something very impressive: organizing all the strategies/modes of discourse with their definitions in 12 minutes! Normally, we don't play this review mix and match until the end of first semester, so this was an extremely impressive example of teamwork, knowledge, and savant power! (By the way, my former AP Lang students were impressed by this feat.)

In fifth hour, you received your Banneker prompts back, filled out the next line on your RA chart, and commenced essay meetings with me. We will continue with those meetings on Thursday and then have another close reading activity to keep up with those skills.

School Survey - Complete by 9/19

Our school needs a little information from you in a (approximately) 5 minute survey. Please take this at some point by the end of the day Wednesday so that the information can be tabulated to help our school.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdzxMXd13V3XhDi23roVgQ6n7HSoi9hkDM4psulBpBns2b3-A/viewform

Prompt Writing Tips - Courtesy of Last Year

Before we have our essay meetings, whether that be tomorrow or later this week, we will be going over the following tips in class. These tips, which may seem redundant to some of you, are reminders of what a strong rhetorical analysis prompt will need to have for higher scores. Check out the link for last year's tips, which happen to be the same areas to keep an eye upon while you continue your rhetorical analysis ethos.

http://fznaplang.blogspot.com/2017/09/notes-on-banneker-evaluation.html

P. S. Lastly, remember that you are not writing a persuasive essay. That means no rhetorical questions to make your audience think, no "Imagine" scenarios that would force the reader to create an idea, and no "you" usage that conveys the reader to do, believe, or adjust his or her line of thinking. Stick with the text and third person, and you will most likely avoid going into persuasion.

The Number

Congratulations to Jayson for knowing me a little too well and coming closest to the correct number of shoes that are currently inhabiting my shoe room and other rooms on the second floor: 428.