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 3G: Legos & Literature

Today we spent time before lunch building lego constructs & using analogous thinking to explore literary constructs & analysis

PACE: Heroic Journeys & Essential Questions

Today we started our "I Am Hero" unit by first taking time to explore essential questions.

Essential Questions

Here's a video that will hopefully refresh your understanding of essential questions and add some ideas you may not have considered in class.




And here is a link to the essential question work that we did on a shared Google doc.  You can find that doc in your Drive under "PACE 2013 OUT."

The Hero's Journey

That lead us to watching this brilliant video about the hero's journey and the monomyth.



When then took some time to figure out our first reading groups.  You will be choosing your own reading schedule for either The Hunger Games or The Adventures of Ulysses.  
Teacher PACE: Finish the book by Sept. 30
Student PACE: Determine how you will chunk that reading between now and then.

Next week, we dig into the monomyth, what that means, and the expectations for your first big project including due dates, how I designed it, and how it will demonstrate your understanding.  We also open up the curriculum and figure out what it is you are supposed to know as sophomores and transform the school's language into your language.

Homework

Read: your group's chosen selection for Monday.
Teacher PACE: finish book by Sept 30
Student PACE: Determine how you will chunk that reading between now and then

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)

PACE: Freedom, Autonomy, Accountability, Independence & Education

Today's plan ended up changing a bit because of a fire drill.  Glad we are all safe and sound, though.

We started by watching this video on visual thinking.

We used these skills to visualize our thinking about

• Independence
• Autonomy
• Freedom
• Accountability

From there we watched Sir Ken Robinson's thoughts on education via RSA Animate.

And the big essential question we left thinking about?

How might we experience independence, autonomy, freedom and accountability . . . 

in schools?

at Mt. Blue Campus?

in PACE?

Next class we dive into our first unit and unlike traditional classes, I'll be showing you how I planned it, how I developed the essential questions guiding it (and what essential questions are), and you'll be getting your first book to read: Hunger Games or Adventures of Ulysses.  Your choice.  (WHAT?!? Choice?! Yes.)

Humanities: Goal Setting & Cardboard Planning

Today we break in two . .

One group will work with Mr. Tierney on goals setting.  You need to complete the goals form for Tuesday a.k.a. tomorrow!

Another will work with Mr. Ryder on thinking about the Cardboard Challenge.
That session includes watching this video on visual thinking.

After watching the video, you'll put your visual thinking skills to work answering these three questions:

1. If you could help one person today, who would it be and why?

2. What are problems you see in our community, nation, and world?

3. What makes you happy?

These questions tie right into the Caine's Arcade Cardboard Challenge project that Mr. Tierney has outlined for us. (Click on that link for a .PDF version.)

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?