AP Lit: Chess and Lit

Metaphors abounded as connected chess to the processes of both constructing and deconstructing literature.

AP Lit 2B/3B: Chess & Literature

We begin by submitting our synthesis essays.  Create a Google Drive folder called "[First & Last Names] AP Lit 2013 IN," make me an editor of that folder.  Finally, put a Google Doc version of your essay in that folder.

Note: It has to be a Google doc, not just a Pages document uploaded.  I need to be able to comment on it using Google, not Pages.

This should only take a few moments.

Then . . .

Chess.

Why chess?

We'll discuss at length in class.

And speaking of discussions . . .

We will practice using a class discussion protocol that we will use next week for our first formally assessed class discussion.

Homework

Write: Work on your college essay.  (If no school chosen yet, go w/ the common app prompt.  You can find that all over the interwebs.)  Your submission draft is due next Thursday or Friday, depending on which class you are in.
Due:  Friday, 8/4 (I know there's no school!  Yay internet!)

Blog: 3+ entries for Friday, 9/27

Assigned Creative Blog Post:  Mrs. Dalloway employs color in meaningful, powerful ways.  Perhaps you have noticed this, perhaps  you have not.  (Pay particular attention to flowers, foods, skies, clothing and faces.)

Use Colourlovers.com  to create a custom palette of at least three colors relating to meaning in Mrs. Dalloway.  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.)

Share your palette on your blog w/ explanations of your choices.

Added Challenge: Create a piece of digital art employing the color palette in a way congruent to Virginia Woolf.

Read

Dallowinian Reading Chunks (pg. #s are Mt. Blue copies, Harcourt ed.)

1: a t an O an F (1 - 29)

2: he never saw her again (29 - 64)

3: Dr. Holmes, looking not quite so kind. (64-94)

4. Elizabeth Dalloway mounted the Westminster Omnibus (94 - 139)

5. For there she was (139 - End)

One reading per night.

Blue Day classes finish the book for Tuesday, the 1st.   Gold Day classes  finish for Monday the 30th.

AP Lit 3G: Legos & Literature & Synthesis Thinking

Today's AP Lit 3G class started with a quick trip to our new Make Space design & innovation lab in the incubator room here at Mt. Blue Campus.  (It's still getting refined  down there and when it is all ready to go?  Look out, cook out.)

Legos & Literary Analysis

There we built Lego constructs, reflected on the construction process, and then developed analogies between that process and the literary construction and analysis processes.

And it was super fun.  See more here.

Assessment & Synthesis

After lunch, we returned to the room to discuss our strengths and weaknesses as literary analysis essayists and construct rubric drafts for our first synthesis essay.

This lead to our first foray into synthesis thinking. 

Our examples of synthesis thesis statements are on the board (which is away from me at the moment so I will update this soon).

At the heart of our synthesis work lays this process:

Analyze the literature we read
Reflect upon your life experience and content knowledge across your spectrum of contexts
Identify threads, patterns, meaning, symbols across the literature, experience & knowledge
Focus upon a single, powerful idea/understanding that emerges from the above work
Defend your understanding with evidence from the above work

Synthesis thinking is what writers and thinkers like Malcolm Gladwell, Dan Pink, and Steven Johnson do every day.  Chuck Klosterman and Sarah Vowell, Cintra Wilson and Barbara Ehrenreich do it too.

We are in age where the amount of information exceeds our ability to consume it.  We have to cull and curate, extract and explicate, and then find the underlayment, the powerful notions holding it all together.  Then we might be able to start making sense of this world in which live and figuring out ways to make it better.

Finally, a heads up.  As we haven't had our primary means of communication, the laptop, at our disposal until now, I have been soft on due dates and submitting work.  Starting Monday, timeliness rubrics (see Guidelines & Expectations in their colorful glory) will be strictly enforced on all assigned homework.

Homework

Finish: Ender's Game for Monday
Complete: Student Designed Essay Rubric - send along ASAP
Draft: 1st Working Draft of Synthesis Essay Due for Workshop Next Wednesday, 9/18

Major Due Dates

AP Lit: Rubrics & Wheelbarrows

Mr Ryder is out for period 2 on Wednesday while I make an effort to improve everyone's lives around Mt. Blue RSD.  (That is actually what Mr. Dunbar and I are doing at this meeting.)

Here is the plan for the day written out as a lesson plan.  It is also in e-mail.

1. 20 min. Copy “The Red Wheelbarrow” up on one of the marker boards (okay to erase one)

Annotate as a class; what do you notice? what questions does it raise? What about the structure seems important? Why this particular language?  Key words?  Images?   

Take a picture of your class annotations and send it to me.  I’ll be looking for it around 9:40 or so.

Only 20 minutes to do this!  Keep careful eye on the time.  

2. 10 min. Take the survey I’ve sent you in your e-mail regarding essay writing. (Also here: https://docs.google.com/a/mtbluersd.org/forms/d/1ppSPxVQuZxwzUxn05i-wi6lLpNE_1M_14DG5t79d5tA/viewform)  If you’ve already taken it, relax and enjoy the mountain air.  I’ll be seeing how many are completed around 9:50 or so.

3. 30 min. Using the blank rubric in Google Docs that I’ve shared with you, work in groups to craft language you feel should be on our essay writing rubric.  Make a copy of the blank I have there and then share the copy amongst your group members and me - make sure you make me an owner of your copy too.  Lets me work with it more.

Consider your own strengths/weaknesses and what you know good writing to look like. I’ll be using this input to inform my rubric design for your 1st essay.  In the DEEP design thinking process, this is both empathy stage  and playing into experiment stage.  You did a little discovery work for homework and I’m going to use it to create a prototype essay rubric that may need refining as we move forward.  See? This is how design thinking works!  (Man, I LOVE it.)

4. Remaining time: look at examples of visual thinking posted on the Flight307.blogspot.com blog (and those remaining around the room).  Work as a class to do your own viz thinking where you look for connections between Ender’s Game, Great Expectations & Empire Falls.

H/W:

Reminders:

• Need Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway in hand for next Monday & Tuesday, Sept 16 & 17.  If you are expecting to get an English dept. copy, you need to ask ahead of time as per last week’s e-mail
• Always check the major due dates form at http://goo.gl/Z4PqCx

Read: Finish Ender’s Game for Tuesday, 9/17

Read: “Anything Can Happen” by Seamus Heaney http://goo.gl/jNemdA; annotate for Friday

Finish: Rubric Draft for Friday

Turn In: What makes a good essay & strengths & weaknesses; any other work for me (signatures, activities, annotations)

AP Lit: Jago, Viz Think, Ender, Pip & Miles Roby

Monday and Tuesday, AP Lit will be all about finding common threads and ideas, training our brains to get beneath the surface, and practicing visual thinking or "viz think."

Discussing

We begin by looking at the "What Is Literature?" chapter from Carol Jago's text and identifying highlights, the moments that stuck with us, and the poetry and fiction we each chose from the selection.  We'll be tossing ideas up on the boards.

We'll take a moment to watch this video on visual thinking.

Analysis & Visual Thinking

This will propel us into work with Ender's Game, Empire Falls, Great Expectations and the selections from the Jago chapter.  

We will use visual thinking to conceptualize the connections between these two works as we continue our question to answer the essential question: Why do we study Literature?

Homework

Read: The rest of Ender's Game for the first class of next week.
Read: "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams for next class
Write/Create/Answer:  
Part I: What makes a great analytical essay? What are the essential qualities? Necessary component?  
Part II: To what extent are you capable of producing a great analytical essay?  What are your strengths & weakness as an essayist?    

AP Lit: Designing, Sharing, Norming, Discussing, Connecting

Discussion & Analysis

Today we talk about the introduction Foster's How to Read Literature Like a Professor.   We'll share our insights & understandings and how Gibson's ideas connect to our past experiences.

Design

We will also post our design models of the classroom and plot our thinking on what changes should be made and how we can get those changes to happen.

Community

We will take time to discuss our norms as a class, the habits of culture in the room that each of us really need to be successful.  For example, I need a space where it's okay to be raggedy -- to express half-ideas, not quite formed thoughts, almost there notions, and to then be able to say, "You know what? I wasn't quite on with that."    

What are your particular needs?

Producing & Sharing

But we'll start the day with another round of sharing our summer projects.  Four more folks will share their thinking, ideas, and products.  

Homework

Read: Ender's Game (1-100)
Prepare to Discuss: To what extent does EG qualify as "Literature?" 

Read: "Thinking About Literature" packet
Complete: One of the activities based on the poetry & short stories embedded in the packet.  This is another benchmarking piece for me.  I'm looking to see what you choose, the quality of the work you produce.

AP Lit: Designing, Guiding, Expecting, Sharing, Uniting, Ending

A tremendous amount to accomplish in a very short amount of time, these first two classes of the week.

Essential Question: Why Study Literature?

Sub EQ's:

• How do we define literature?
• How do we study literature?
• How can our space help us to better understand literature?

I will hand you a selection from How to Read Like a Professor that you are to close read and be prepared to apply and discuss next class.

Design

We'll start with the continuance of our design project by completing the Four Compass Points interview process.  During the interview, you will learn about your fellow classmates and what needs they have for this space as a place to study and understand literature, as well as problem solve, collaborate, and enjoy themselves.  This interview, along with your other observations and the ideas upon the walls, will inform the design work you will complete for homework: a diagram/model of the room as you believe it would best function.

Guidelines & Expectations

From here we will take some time to discuss the course guidelines & expectations.  You receive so much of this material in the first week of school, I prefer to save it for the second.  

Preview of Our Guidelines & Expectation

During this session we'll also talk about class norms: the behaviors and understandings we each need from one another in order to function well as a problem solving team.  I like to think of it as "How We Roll . . ."

Sharing Projects

Another round of summer project sharing.  I'll be asking folks to get ready for this during our Guidelines & Expectations conversation.  We can multitask like that, right?

Uniting Great Expectations & Empire Falls

I've begun assessing summer essays and I thought it might be helpful to the revision process if we explored some of the connections between these two works.   

Ender's Game

Today I assign the first one hundred pages of Ender's Game to be read for the first class of next week. We'll sign those out of the library to end class today.  This title is going to be our chief point of discourse around our essential question.  

H/W

Read: Ender's Game page 1-100 - Due 1st Class of Next Week (9th/10th)
Close Read: Intro to How to Read Like a Professor - Due Next Class (5th/6th)
Close Reading includes annotations: what you notice, questions you have, connections you can make
Design: Map/Visual of the classroom as you believe it would best suit the classes' needs - Due Next Class (5th/6th)