Friday, 2/20/2009

AP ENGLISH

Exam Practice

• Mrs. Stender was here to talk to us about the AP EXAM information she has.
  
• MARCH 13TH is the DEADLINE for registering for the exam.
  
• Take the info. home to your parents, please.
  

Backbone Literature

• We talked about pages B9 and B10 and noted where these phrases originated from in mythology, and how and why they are still used today.
  

Oedipus Rex

• I talked about the important of reading the text with FRESH EYES, not going in with any pre-conceived ideas about the play.  I also talked about the need to respect everyone else's ideas during discussion next week.
• Homework for Monday--read pages 11-28 of the play, and answer the study guide questions #1-10 on page B11 of your textbook.

Quite Work Time

We had about thirty-five minutes to work, so people did one or more of the following:

• finished the mythology powerpoint, and saved it in the AP folder
  
• worked on the Frankenstein essay
  
• read Oedipus

Homework

See above!

CREATIVE WRITING

Writing Instruction

• Imagery--we read the Bronte sentence on page 53, and we took daily notes.  We discussed our answers.  We talked about how even one word can convey a sight or a sound, and sometimes both.
  

Sense Poem

• I handed back the first drafts of the Sense Poem.  I talked about four things you need to consider as you do your final draft:  title, punctuation, last line, letting the lines flow naturally.  I also handed out the rubric and went over it.  We spent time creating our final drafts, filling out the rubric, then turning them in.
  

Cliché Story

• Tanaeya read her story from a while back.  :-)  It was funny, and filled with clichés.  
  

Life at Thirty

• I read the rest of these pieces, then we had the reveal of who wrote which one.
  

Homework

• Musical Memoir (See the little slip I gave you in class.)
  

TACW

Brain Pain

• The Sounds of Silence
  
• Got a Bee In Your Bonnet?
  
• The first one had to do with words that have a silent letter (dumb; gnat; corps), and the second involved listing words with three or more of the same letters (beekeeper; Australia).  We spent time coming up with words, and then we shared them with the whole class.
  

Writing Assignments

• Form and Meaning (Follow the directions on page 5 of the text.  Focus on the SOUNDS of your words, more than their meaning.)  We talked some about sound elements:  alliteration, cacophony, harmony, assonance, consonance, rhythm, rhyme, onamotopoeia....
  
• Sentence as a Poem--we typed this up (handwritten yesterday).
  

Ending the Week

• Everyone wrote three nice things about every other person in class.  We shared a few, then passed our comments to the subject.
  

Homework

• None