Tuesday, 2/17/2009

AP ENGLISH

Organization

• We chatted with a partner about how the midterm exam review is going, as well as the paper.  People talked through their questions, then I took questions from the entire class to clarify some things.
• We put the thesis statements from Friday up on the Big Screen and chatted about how they're changing, becoming more precise.

Exam

• We took the Frankenstein Vocabulary Exam.

Workshop

In-Class Directions:

After you finish the vocabulary quiz, please start research on mythology.  You're looking at any and all of the following:

• first gods
  
• Olympian gods
  
• semi-gods and sprites
  
• monsters and creatures
  
• heroes
  
• places

Browse the following websites:

• www.mythweb.com
  
• www.greek-gods.info
• www.theoi.com
• www.godchecker.com (then click on "Greek Gods", and go from there)

Select one person, place, or thing of interest, that tells a compelling or interesting story.

Write your name and the person or topic you've chosen on the white board. 

Review

• People spent the remainder of the block reviewing for the mid-term tomorrow or working on their Frankenstein essays, which are due Friday.
  

CREATIVE WRITING

Homework Due

• Prompt Word Poem
  
• Fiction Writing Assignment
  
• Dialogue (p. 39)--an oldy I needed to give you points for
  

Writing Instruction

I put up a snippet from everyone's Autobiographical Poem rough draft up on the Big Screen.  We talked about the need to consider the following as you revised your poem today:

• line breaks
  
• title
  
• concrete detail
  
• honesty in voice
  

I handed out the rubric for the poem as well.

Writing Workshop--Revising

• Autobiographical Poem
  
• Life at Thirty
  

New Writing Assignment

• Theme for English B (p. 46-7)
  
• I read the Langston Hughes poem aloud, and then I read poems from previous Creative Writing students.  We talked about the variety of ways there are to do this assignment.  We had about fifteen minutes of class left, so some people started the Theme, and others worked on make-up work.
  

Homework

Theme for English B--due THURSDAY

TACW

Homework Due

• Stretching the Truth Memoir
  

Organization

• Journal (letter to me) about what problems/issues you see with our classroom atmosphere.  Are we establishing a learning setting?  What's up with the rude comments to each other?
  

Big Screen Sharing

• I asked a few people to read their "Valentine" poems aloud, and we looked at and discussed how they were extending the metaphor.
  

Writing Assignment

• Miranda handed out the new textbook section, and we looked at pages P1-P2 to find examples of poems which use extended metaphor.  We talked about how and why the poets did that.
  
• I handed out the rubric for the extended metaphor poem, and we had time to work on it in class.  
  

Organization

• We passed back papers, and we did a folder log-in.
  

Language Challenge

We looked at a couple of word challenges, tried our own skills and imaginations, then compared our responses.

• What in the Whirled?
  
• Watch Where You Put That Word!

Homework

• None  (We will spend twenty minutes tomorrow to finish our extended metaphor poems.)