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AP Lit 2B/3B: Embedding Text Evidence & Building Power Guides

We focused our energy today on uncovering understandings about embedding effective text evidence.

We took a rather non-traditional approach to this work, reading through a number of sources for highlights and insights and then creating our own . . .

POWER GUIDES.

A power guide includes the key takeaways from the sources as well as examples of those takeaways in practice.  What's important about those examples?  They must be your own!

Here are some pics of the various approaches folks took to solving this challenge so far.

HOMEWORK

Blog: 3+ Posts
Req'd Post: Use Colourlovers.com  to create a custom palette of at least three colors relating to meaning in Frankenstein.  You will need to name the palette and each color within it.  Be certain to choose purposeful names and push your self to go beyond the concrete.  (Concrete:  "blue sky" because the sky was blue.)
Due: March 7

Complete: Synthesis #3
Due: Mar 7

Humanities: Merryweather High Orientation ReDesign Presentations

Today was fantastic.

Five great presentations.

We will be using time on Wednesday to dig deeper into what made them great and how we can use that information to help us better solve our design challenge.

HOMEWORK

Blog: 3+ Posts
Req'd Post:  Think back to those first weeks of high school school.  Make a list of five or more things you wish someone had told you about life at Mt. Blue.  Explain your thinking behind each of them.

Roots: 10 (Over 6 - 10)
Roots Quiz 10: Thurs., March 6
Roots Product Due: Thurs., March 6

Present: Merryweather High Orientation Proposal
Due: Today!

Speak: Finish 3rd Marking Period (page 148)
Due: Thursday, Feb 27

AP Lit 3G: On-Demand & Synthesis Thinking

So we'll open with a test prep session: writing prompt.

You'll be given a poem and a writing prompt and fifteen minutes to complete
a) Pre-Writing
b) Thesis Statement
c) 1st Body Paragraph

That's it.

We'll then workshop your pieces and approaches.  See if we can find trends and strategies that seem to be lending themselves to more confident thinking.

From there, we'll spend some time brainstorming our next synthesis pieces by digging into "How to Read Lit Like a Professor" and the Joyce decks you've built.  We'll try to uncover some ideas and big thinking that could produce an epic synthesis.

Well I wanted us to end our work today with Hamlet, as I'd like us to make some progress these next two weeks.  I think Prince Hamlet and Victor Frankenstein could have some fascinating conversations.  Instead we got talking about 3-D printing and other cool things I'm hoping to make part of your senior year before it's all said and done.

HOMEWORK

Blog: 3+ Posts
Req'd Post: Casting Call. Frankenstein. Please. Please. Please. Can we have a good one? Please.
Due: Feb 28

Write: Frankliners: 1st Submission
Due: Tues/Wed., Feb 25/26
Note: Be certain to put a clean "1st submission" draft in your Google Drive IN folder

Read: Frankenstein
Due: Thr/Fri. Feb 27/28
Prepare: To discuss & explore at length! 

Think & Design: Synthesis #3
Prepare: Thesis Statement & Map
Thesis & Map Due: Thr/Fr. Feb 27/28

Study: MUGS Comprehensive 1-3 Quiz
Prepare: Retakes & Comprehensive Quiz
Due: Thr/Fri Feb 27/28

PACE: Macbeth & Quack & Pitches

We started Tuesday with an activity using the Quack vocab and refreshing our Macbeth brains.

We broke into groups of two or three, each group was given a couple of Quack words from Unit 1 Part 1 of Quack.  Then the groups were told to create a two to three sentence pitch for movie/TV show/video game based on Macbeth using those words effectively.  The pitches were then posted to the class blogs.

Quiz on QUACK Unit 1 Part 1 on Thursday.

From there, folks had three choices.

One, work with Ms. Campbell on a close reading of Macbeth Act 2.1 and completing the Macbeth organizers.

Two, work with Mr. Ryder on developing ideas for pitches.

Three, work independently on graphic organizers, pitches, studying for QUACK, blogging and more.

We had some productive work in each area including the ideas below.

HOMEWORK 

Blogs: 3+ 

Req'd Post: Where's the Macbeth in that?  What have you watched, seen, read, heard that prove Macbeth's themes and characters are still relevant to today? Explain your thinking.
Due: Friday, Feb 28

Macbeth Graphic Organizers: Must Complete 3

Teacher Pace Due Dates:

Wed: Feb 12

Tue: Feb 25

Wed: Mar 5

MUGS: Commonly Confused Words #2
Quiz: Friday, Feb 14 (NEW MAKE UP DATE - FRIDAY, Mar 7)

QUACK: Unit 1 Part 1
Quiz & Product Due: Thursday Feb 27

Start Thinking & Planning: Movie/Video Game/TV Show Pitches & Bibles
Due: March 13

Humanities: Back on Track

So, we had a weird couple of days before break with snow and snow days and here we go  . . . 

Mr. Dunbar explained the new grade book set up.  There will be more information sent home to your folks AND if they have any questions at all, please encourage them to call and/or email.

After that, we reconnected with Speak.  We used GoSoapbox to do a little surveying of where we are all with the book.  And then Mr. Dunbar ran an activity where we imagined what various characters from the book would say about contemporary issues such as the Olympics and Miley Cyrus.

Mr. Ryder read aloud starting from the beginning of the third marking period, right around page 95 or so.

Presentations on Merryweather High Orientation Proposals are due in class on Tuesday.  There will be no make up on this one.  Either you deliver the presentation to the board and admin, or you do not.

HOMEWORK

Blog: 3+ Posts
Req'd Post:  Think back to those first weeks of high school school.  Make a list of five or more things you wish someone had told you about life at Mt. Blue.  Explain your thinking behind each of them.

Roots: 10 (Over 6 - 10)
Roots Quiz 10: Thurs., March 6
Roots Product Due: Thurs., March 6

Present: Merryweather High Orientation Proposal
Due: Tuesday, Feb 25

Speak: Finish 3rd Marking Period (page 148)
Due: Thursday, Feb 27

AP Lit 2B/3B: Test Prep & Hamlet & Synthesis Thinking

Welcome back from vacation.  

The hard way.

Yup.  We've got a little ground to make up with the weather messing with us.

So we'll open with a test prep session: writing prompt.

You'll be given a poem and a writing prompt and fifteen minutes to complete
a) Pre-Writing
b) Thesis Statement
c) 1st Body Paragraph

That's it.

We'll then workshop your pieces and approaches.  See if we can find trends and strategies that seem to be lending themselves to more confident thinking.

From there, we'll spend some time brainstorming our next synthesis pieces by digging into "How to Read Lit Like a Professor" and the Joyce decks you've built.  We'll try to uncover some ideas and big thinking that could produce an epic synthesis.

We'll end our work today with Hamlet, as I'd like us to make some progress these next two weeks.  I think Prince Hamlet and Victor Frankenstein could have some fascinating conversations.

HOMEWORK

Blog: 3+ Posts
Req'd Post: Casting Call. Frankenstein. Please. Please. Please. Can we have a good one? Please.
Due: Feb 28

Write: Frankliners: 1st Submission
Due: Tues/Wed., Feb 25/26
Note: Be certain to put a clean "1st submission" draft in your Google Drive IN folder

Read: Frankenstein
Due: Thr/Fri. Feb 27/28
Prepare: To discuss & explore at length! 

Think & Design: Synthesis #3
Prepare: Thesis Statement & Map
Thesis & Map Due: Thr/Fr. Feb 27/28

Study: MUGS Comprehensive 1-3 Quiz
Prepare: Retakes & Comprehensive Quiz
Due: Thr/Fri Feb 27/28

Blogger Fodder: "4 Ladies Get The 'Cover Model' Makeover Of Their Dreams ... And Then Hate The Results" (Video)

This appeared on my Facebook feed via Upworthy.com.  It was originally posted by BuzzFeed.

All Classes: Commonly Mistaken Words (Video)

AP Lit 3G: Frankliners Workshopping

Today was an early release day.

We chose to break into two smaller work groups: one for tuning, one for developing.

The conversations were fantastic.

HOMEWORK

Blog: 3+ Posts (next week, you get to take off for vacation! woot!)

Req'd Post: Analytical work.  By this week you will have read three chapters from "How to Read Lit" -- "Blind," "Geography," and "Season." Foster delivers a great deal of thinking across these three chapters and I believe strongly they apply to Joyce's stories.

Find three powerful ideas from Foster -- one from each chapter -- and then apply those thoughts as lenses for looking at Dubliners.  Explain how each applies and can illuminate understanding from Joyce's work.  (You might focus on multiple stories or only one or two -- that is up to you.  Having a strong sense of Foster's thinking is more important than having a strong sense of each of these stories.) 

You may write, record, film or otherwise capture your thinking, so long as it is clear and can stand on its own without tremendous interpretation on the part of your audience.  Lots of digital tools you can use for this AND it could just be a series of paragraphs as well.  Work to your strengths/interests.

Due: Fri, Feb 14

Read: How to Read Lit Like a Professor "And so Does Season"

Due: Fri, Feb 14 

Write: Working Draft of "Frankliners" story/poem

Due: Wednesday Workshop, Feb 13

Upcoming: Read Frankenstein

Due: Thursday/Friday following Feb break.

PACE: Macbeth & Pitches & More

Today was an early release day, so we didn't have time to dig too deep.  What we did today, however, can be repeated on Friday with a little bit more teacher PACE time at each area.  Also, I'm hoping to create some flipped classroom videos for you folks.

One station: Independence.  Work at your own pace on the Macbeth organizers, MUGS studying, QUACK studying and/or the Pitching Power project.

Another station: Pitching power.  We looked at the show bibles in the Google Drive and the rubric for the project.  We used a "I wish, I wonder, I noticed" protocol to capture our thinking.

And yet another station: Guided reading of scene 1.7 from Macbeth as Lady Macbeth and Macbeth discuss the possibility of Duncan's murder.


HOMEWORK

Blogs: 3+ 
Req'd Post: Pre-Thinking Your Pitch.  Take some time to brainstorm, to mess around with ideas, to talk out loud, to sketch and design, to use whatever tools you like -- digital or not -- to come up with some ideas for your project.  Questions you could answer that might help:
Would you make a movie, TV show, video game or book series?
Where might you set your story? Think about settings that feature a lot of people, a lot of relationships, and a lot of power dynamics.
Who might be an interesting main character? What does this character want? What is keeping this character from getting it?
Due: Friday, Feb 14

Macbeth Graphic Organizers: Must Complete 3

Teacher Pace Due Dates:

Wed: Feb 12

Tue: Feb 25

Wed: Mar 5

MUGS: Commonly Confused Words #2
Quiz: Friday, Feb 14

QUACK: Unit 1 Part 1
Quiz & Product Due: Thursday Feb 27

Start Thinking & Planning: Movie/Video Game/TV Show Pitches & Bibles
Due: Early March

Humanities: Working on the Merryweather RAFT Project

Today we started with some time on Roots 10.  You'll find a link over in the right sidebar.

Then there was a big chunk of time to work on the Speak/Merryweather High RAFT.

You have presentations due on Friday.  There WILL be an audience you must impress.

At the end of class will be a few minutes to read Speak.  Please have finished the Second Ranking Period for Wednesday.

HOMEWORK

Blog: 3+ Posts
Req'd Post: 
Empathy.  After break we will be interviewing students, faculty, and others about orientation so we can create the best experience possible.
Create a list of 5 to 7 questions for each of the following users/demographics.  You might use some of the questions for multiple users.

1. 8th Grade Students
2. 9th Grade Students
3. Upperclassmen Students
4. Middle School Teachers
5. High School Teachers
6. Middle School Administrators
7. High School Administrators
8. High School Guidance Counselors
9. Parents of 8th Grade Students
10. Parents of 9th Grade Students
11. Upperclassmen Parents

Due: Friday, Feb 14

Need ideas for more blog posts?  Check out the tag "Blogger Fodder" and the videos/links that have been posted.

Read: Complete the "Second Ranking Period" (pg 102)

Due: Wednesday, Feb 12

Joycean Qualities and Frankliner's Workshop

Happy Birthday, Thomas Alva Edison!

  FREE BOOK ABOUT AWESOME THINGS.

Today is kicking off with some (much needed) test prep-- multiple choice style.

Ryder will undoubtedly rant. This is simply a fact. It will probably be pretty entertaining.

Next we will delve into Joyce for exactly fifteen minutes. The goal is to look for evidence of three of his styles: epiphanies, manipulation of language & aesthetics and free indirect discourse. To do this, we will bust out your design kits and mark up hard copies of the stories. There doesn't need to be any rhyme or reason to how you do your marking-- doodles, brackets, lines, etc-- as long as you know what it is you are highlighting from the text and why... so feel free to get creative!

Following the Joycean Exploration we will sort all the feedback stickies from the board and place them all together on the dragon board, again in a spectrum from least to most helpful.

To wrap up class we will have a writing workshop using the Frankliner's drafts you brought in today.

HOMEWORK

Blog: 3+ Posts (next week, you get to take off for vacation! woot!)

Req'd Post: Analytical work.  By this week you will have read three chapters from "How to Read Lit" -- "Blind," "Geography," and "Season." Foster delivers a great deal of thinking across these three chapters and I believe strongly they apply to Joyce's stories.

Find three powerful ideas from Foster -- one from each chapter -- and then apply those thoughts as lenses for looking at Dubliners.  Explain how each applies and can illuminate understanding from Joyce's work.  (You might focus on multiple stories or only one or two -- that is up to you.  Having a strong sense of Foster's thinking is more important than having a strong sense of each of these stories.) 

You may write, record, film or otherwise capture your thinking, so long as it is clear and can stand on its own without tremendous interpretation on the part of your audience.  Lots of digital tools you can use for this AND it could just be a series of paragraphs as well.  Work to your strengths/interests.

Due: Fri, Feb 14

Read: How to Read Lit Like a Professor "And so Does Season"

Due: Fri, Feb 14 

Write: Working Draft of "Frankliners" story/poem

Due: Wednesday Workshop, Feb 13

Upcoming: Read Frankenstein

Due: Thursday/Friday following Feb break.

All Classes: Feedback Wheel

AP Lit 3G: Diving Deeper Into Joyce (and some test prep, too)

We opened our day with some much needed test prep in the form of a multiple choice item.

From there, Mr. Ryder ranted a little bit.  It was a thing.  It had nothing to do with you folks, but of course, we already knew this.  We missed out on Hamlet time as a result and that's too bad.  He feels rather unpleasant about that as he writes this.

Then we did some amazing deep diving into Joyce and uncovered epiphanies, manipulation of language & aesthetics and free indirect discourse.  We used your design kits and marked up copies of the stories -- big strokes, lots of messy thinking, doodles and highlights and brackets abounded!  Also, super glad you captured your thinking with your phones -- so important to document your processes.

And wow.  You folks did an exceptional job on this.  I was impressed by what we found, including such observations as:
* Free indirect discourse can be as short as a word
* Little epiphanies tend to surface early in a story and build to a larger understanding
* Joyce loved the sound of words and the sounds often reflected his themes and ideas

We had a few minutes at the end of class to start a short brainstorm for "Frankliners."

Important to note!  The major due dates calendar is WAY OFF right now.  I'm adjusting it on Monday evening.

HOMEWORK

Blog: 3+ Posts (next week, you get to take off for vacation! woot!)

Req'd Post: Analytical work.  By this week you will have read three chapters from "How to Read Lit" -- "Blind," "Geography," and "Season." Foster delivers a great deal of thinking across these three chapters and I believe strongly they apply to Joyce's stories.

Find three powerful ideas from Foster -- one from each chapter -- and then apply those thoughts as lenses for looking at Dubliners.  Explain how each applies and can illuminate understanding from Joyce's work.  (You might focus on multiple stories or only one or two -- that is up to you.  Having a strong sense of Foster's thinking is more important than having a strong sense of each of these stories.) 

You may write, record, film or otherwise capture your thinking, so long as it is clear and can stand on its own without tremendous interpretation on the part of your audience.  Lots of digital tools you can use for this AND it could just be a series of paragraphs as well.  Work to your strengths/interests.

Due: Fri, Feb 14

Read: How to Read Lit Like a Professor "And so Does Season"

Due: Fri, Feb 14 

Write: Working Draft of "Frankliners" story/poem

Due: Wednesday Workshop, Feb 13

Upcoming: Read Frankenstein

Due: Thursday/Friday following Feb break.

PACE: Macbeth & Quack & Work & Due Dates & Working Smarter Not Harder

I'll be spending class saving the world from itself at a meeting in the The Chef's Table.

While I'm gone, you folks will be doing all sorts of awesome.

For one, we start vocabulary this week, using the QUACK words that are part of the sophomore year.  There will be a quiz every Thursday as well as a QUACK product due.  (The first will be on the Thursday following break, Feb 27.) That QUACK product could be the word map (found in the PACE OUT folder on Google Drive) OR may be any product you wish to make that demonstrates your understanding of the QUACK words.

• Poems
• Songs
• Comics
• Stories

Unit 1 Part 1 can be found here.

You might want to take a few minutes to complete the Commonly Confused Words #2 assignment on www.NoRedInk.com.  It's optional AND there's a quiz on Friday.

By 8 a.m., I recommend watching a large chunk of the Macbeth documentary in your Google Drive - perhaps 30 minutes? If someone would like to hook up to the dongle and audio plug at the front of the room, that's totally fine with me.

Here are some time coded notes to help you out.  These are in your Google Drive.


If you pay attention, you will see that this documentary tells the entire story of Macbeth, shows it performed in different ways, and let's you know about the major ideas and themes in the play.

It's pretty darn well done.

As you watch, you may want to take notes using your first graphic organizer.  Of course, you need to base MOST of this graphic organizer on one of the ten scenes I identified last class.   I recommend using one of the scenes from Act I or II, because we've been talking a great deal about the action early on in the play.
Link to All of the Scenes and Summary is here

1.3 

1.5 

1.7 

2.1 

3.4 

4.1 

4.3 

5.1 (out damn spot)

5.5 (out out brief candle)

5.8 (death and new king)

Finally,  open up the Due Dates form.  If you don't believe you can keep up with Teacher PACE, establish your own PACE.  

Next class will be all about the project.  It's a short class because of early release and we will focus entirely on story bibles and pitches and brainstorming ideas.  

HOMEWORK

Blogs: 3+ 
Req'd Post: Pre-Thinking Your Pitch.  Take some time to brainstorm, to mess around with ideas, to talk out loud, to sketch and design, to use whatever tools you like -- digital or not -- to come up with some ideas for your project.  Questions you could answer that might help:
Would you make a movie, TV show, video game or book series?
Where might you set your story? Think about settings that feature a lot of people, a lot of relationships, and a lot of power dynamics.
Who might be an interesting main character? What does this character want? What is keeping this character from getting it?
Due: Friday, Feb 14

Macbeth Graphic Organizers: Must Complete 3

Teacher Pace Due Dates:

Wed: Feb 12

Tue: Feb 25

Wed: Mar 5

MUGS: Commonly Confused Words #2
Quiz: Friday, Feb 14

QUACK: Unit 1 Part 1
Quiz & Product Due: Thursday Feb 27

Start Thinking & Planning: Movie/Video Game/TV Show Pitches & Bibles
Due: Early March

Humanities: Continuing to RAFT Merryweather High

We'll start the day with Roots 9 because that didn't happen yesterday.

From there, we'll split into work areas, both Ryder's and Dunbar's rooms, to work on the Merryweather High Orientation RAFT.    Remember, this is an orientation design for Melinda's high school; not Mt. Blue.  We are doing this as a prototype in our design process for designing the Mt. Blue Transition.

At 1:25, we will get back to Speak.  One room will be for independent reading and the other will be a read-aloud-get-questions-answered with Mr. Ryder

HOMEWORK
Blog: 3+ Posts
Req'd Posts:
2 Req'd Post for the Week
1) Give yourself grades for the first semester, similar to how Melinda grades herself.  Notice that she grades herself in things that aren't just academic classes. After grading yourself, include the reasons behind your grades.  Be specific and clear.

2) Brainstorm the video/transition experience for the incoming ninth graders in April.  List every idea of what that video could be, what the activities could look like, or what else could happen next fall.

Need ideas for more blog posts?  Check out the tag "Blogger Fodder" and the videos/links that have been posted.

Read: Complete the "First Ranking Period" (pg 46)

Due: Thursday, Feb 6

Roots: Roots 9 Product & Quiz

Roots Quiz 9 (6, 7, 8, 9) & Product Due: Thursday, Feb 6

AP Lit: Literary 3x3s: James Joyce & Dubliners

Here's the work we've been doing with Literary 3x3s & Joyce's Dubliners.

We only read four of the stories:

• "Araby"
• "Eveline"
• "The Boarding House"
• "The Dead"

The selection was chosen because of common threads running across those particular texts, relative ease of reading and lack of background knowledge required to understand even the nuances, and because they represent something of a life arc, beginning with childhood in "Araby," late adolescence in "Eveline," early adulthood in "The Boarding House," and mature adulthood and old age in "The Dead."

After creating literary 3x3s for each of the stories, we put them on index cards to build Joyce decks.  (We used letters in the corners of each to indicate which cards belong to which story.)

We did a variety of activities with them including:

• Finding common threads across the four stories by "tapping" (a la Magic: The Gathering) related cards.
• Shuffling the deck, laying out nine cards, and trying to determine which story emerges from the deal.
• Swapping decks and trying to determine the original creators' intended 3x3s layouts.
• Partners dealing out nine cards each and finding common threads across two different decks.

We will be keeping these decks and coming back to them using other author's works as we try to identify common threads across the other literature we read this year.

Here are some pics of the work we've done.