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