AP Lit 2B/3B: Gallery Walk and Hamlet

Today, we'll start with a quick recalibrating -- this feels more like a start to a new quarter than last week did.

Let's climb on to NoRedInk.com for a couple of minutes, play with Apostrophes 3, explore the practice areas.  We can do this while transitioning into our next work.

We'll review effective feedback.  Take a look at all of these pictures from the way back machine when we were doling out feedback on our last round of projects.  Let's see if we can increase our rate of meaningful, effective feedback for these.

Then it is time for the gallery walk for the latest round of book projects.  Post-It Notes will abound.


From there, a few minutes with How to Read Lit Like a Professor and powerful takeaways worth putting up on the board.

We will end today with a Hamlet viewing, picking up where we left off just after "To be or not to be."

HOMEWORK

Blog: 3+ Posts
Req'd Post: Create a visual 3x3 of the town (or county) where you live.  What does that place mean to you?  How can you capture your relationship with your town through pictures?  Consider taking or drawing/painting your own.  Give considerable thought to how you arrange them.

MUGS: Apostrophes 3 on NoRedInk.com
Quiz: Thursday/Friday Feb 6 & 7

Read:  Read & and review Joyce's "The Dead" & all three other Joyce stories; be certain to 3x3 "The Dead"
Be Prepared: To work with all four 3x3s, Wed/Th/Fri

Read & Annotate: How to Read Lit Like a Professor "Geography Matters . . ."
Post: Annotations on the blog

Heads Up: Frankenstein is next!  Will need to be read by Thursday AFTER Feb break.  Let me know if you need a hard copy.  Many, many, many places to get it free online including here.

Blogger Fodder: "Red Bull Stratos - The Full Story"

Last year, a couple of classes followed the story of Felix Baumgartner and his journey skyward.

On Friday, January 31st, 2014, the GoPro footage of the event was released.

Watch this.  Think about maybe grabbing a quote and responding to it.

Blogger Fodder: Short Film: "End of Dates"

Some silly fun.  And aliens.  And stuff blowing up.

And . . . some pretty fantastic storytelling here, too.  Why do we care about this guy?  I mean, I do.  I'm thinking others would, too.  And there are a few twists here on what we usually expect from this sort of relationship, as well.

What do you folks think?  Could you make something like this?

Blogger Fodder: Old People, Young People, Music & Pete Seeger

This letter to the editor in The Daily Bulldog this week raises some interesting points about the relationship between adults and teenagers in our communities.

What do you folks think?

Could make an interesting post.

http://www.dailybulldog.com/db/opinion/letter-to-the-editor-pete-seeger-and-our-youth/

BTW, who is Pete Seeger?  Just one of the most important voices in American music.  Ever.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2014/01/28/267488551/american-folk-singer-pete-seeger-dies-at-94

Humanities: Speak & New Design Challenge: How Might We Improve 8th Grade Orientation?

A few weeks ago, Guidance asked Mr. Dunbar and Mr. Ryder if our students would be interested in redesigning eighth graders' high school orientation experience.  We said yes.  (We did not consult you folks; we just figured you'd be keen on doing a project around something that actually matters, will actually happen, and for which you have a lot of expertise as you went though it all yourselves.

All of the work we do for the next several weeks will be about the following design challenge:

How might we improve the eight grader's orientation to the high school?

We did some writing in the lobby, the food court, and the forum, three places were the current ninth grade spent a lot of time last spring and fall.   We tried to recapture our experiences in those places.   We've done some examining of that writing, and will finish off that work on Friday -- for now.

This week, we started Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson.  One reason we are reading it now?  It's all about a girl and her transition into ninth grade and dealing with very grown up situations.  We are going to be using the "reciprocating questions" strategy a great deal -- where you folks as Mr. Ryder questions that stem from the reading.

And finally we started on Roots 9.

This blog post is a bit of a messy catchall for the week.  We will get back on more proper track next week with the blog.

HOMEWORK:

Blog: 3+ posts
Req'd Post: "Ten Lies."  Make up a your own list of "Ten Lies" inspired by the list in Speak.  You may want to come with "Ten Lies They Tell You About Freshman Year" or "Ten Lies They Told Me on the First Day that I Found Out Weren't True on the Second."  How creative and insightful can you be?

Vocab: Roots 9
Study & Complete: Word Map or Roots Product
Roots Quiz: Thursday Feb 6 over 6 to 9

PACE: Introducing the Pitching Power Project & More Introducing of Macbeth

We'll start with a NoRedInk.com MUGS quiz over Commonly Confused Words #1.

Remember, if you are not satisfied with the degree of your understanding, study, come to me for extra help and explanation, look for examples online, show me evidence of practice and I will let you retake the quiz to show your growth.

From there, we will explore Macbeth by looking at some famous lines from the play in one of the tools in the Google Drive.  We'll try to determine what the line might be saying without having seen or read the rest of the play.  The idea is to make a prediction based on an interpretation of the words and then see if it bears out.   These are fairly famous lines -- let's see if we can figure out why.

You will then have time to work on your teaser posters.  Think about how using a line of dialogue could transform those posters.

Finally, we can talk more about the projects.  There are some more parts and pieces in the Google Drive to look at - show bible examples and such. And you can see the rubric that will be updated next week here.

HOMEWORK
Blog: 3+ Posts

Req'd Blog Post: Create a teaser poster for a new film version of Macbeth.  Look at these examples of teaser posters, posters intended to generate interest well in advance of a movie coming out.  They tend to be very minimal and only hint and suggest as what is to come in the film.  They also tend to rely and on people already being somewhat familiar with the characters and/or story.

Examples of teaser posters here.