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.