November 16, 2015

My goodness.  It has been awhile.

I've compiled the information from your posters on the essential elements of an effective essay and added some of my own.  Let this be your "rubric" as you shape your personal essay.

An effective personal essay...

• explores an idea or a question utilizing the author's personal experience or events, experiences that he/she has witnessed.
• explores the idea or question utilizing details, examples, etc. from outside sources.
• pertains to the author, but also to the world at large.
• evokes emotion and provokes thought.
• engages the reader in the author's exploration of an idea, event, etc. 
• includes a combination of showing and telling, not only bringing the reader into the experiences relayed, but also commenting upon their significance.
• includes a variety of rhetorical schemes and tropes.
• illustrates purposeful diction that adds depth and meaning to the piece.
• is free of errors in grammar, usage and mechanics.
• relies on multiple modes of discourse to elaborate upon ideas.
• demonstrate examples of purposeful syntax.
• is organized in a manner that is best suited to the purpose and content of the essay.
• is typed in MLA format.
• is composed of "somewhere in the neighborhood" of 1,000 words.
• illustrates a writer voice that is appropriate to the audience, purpose and subject matter
• is focused and has a clear purpose. (Ultimately.  Think The Brown Wasps)
• contains effective shifts and smooth transitions between ideas. 
• establishes a tone through the use of imagery, diction, syntax, and figurative language  that is appropriate to the subject matter.

October 16, 2015

Today, I checked in the vocabulary assignment.  It's worth ten points. We read and analyzed Woolf's essay filling out a comparative analysis form for it.  We worked together so that students would know how to do the same for the Dillard essay on their own this weekend.  Because we have Independent Reading on Monday, it is technically due Tuesday.  You can find the form here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ci8frb5t3iu1b02/comparative%20analysis.docx?dl=0

Read the Dillard essay and fill out this form.  Call a fellow AP Langer who was in class today if you don't understand.  Your peers should always be your second source of information when you are absent.  The first is this blog, of course.

October 15, 2015

Today students picked up the next text set for comparative analysis.  The texts consist of Annie Dillard's, Death of A Moth, Virgina Woolf's, Death of a Moth, and Loren Eiseley's, The Brown Wasps. You can probably find them on line.
So first, vocab study.  Find the word in the text.  Put a box around it.  Write out the definition.
Here are the words.  They were due at the end of the hour today. We'll be having a narrative quiz on this vocabulary on October 22.

Bug Essays
benignant
lineage
dorsal
buttresses
chitin
immolate
keener
vigor
vociferation
clamor
meager
diminutive
circumspection
futile
tubercularly
stanchions
pneumatic
elusive
bole
runnel
obscure
inexorable
retort
dissident

Laziness Multiple Choice Vocab
preemptiveness
negation
subverting
elusive
supersede
predisposition
happenstance
concede
recombinant
constituent
trivialize
pragmatic
morose
significance
indignation
chastise
objective
subjective

Woolf Multiple Choice Vocab
synaesthesia
absolve
exquisite

October 9,2015

Homecoming.  That's all.

October 8, 2015

Today, students did an in class comparative rhetorical analysis of the moves that  Depp and Ozick made in their essays in order to understand the ways in which two essays about the same topic can be different.  Again, if you weren't in class, it's difficult to recreate this for you.  It's important to be in AP Lang every day.

October 7, 2015

Today students took part in a paraphrase activity of Ozick's essay.  They collaborated to create a mirror reflection of the essay in their own words.  Really difficult to make this one up if you missed today.

October 6, 2015

Today we took the vocab quiz for the Ozick essay.  Please see me to arrange for make up.  Tomorrow we begin deconstructing the Ozick essay.

October 5, 2015

Mondays are independent reading days.
Coming up: Narrative vocab quiz with words from the Ozick essay 10/6.

October 2, 2015

Today in class, we went over the narrative vocab quiz.  We spent some time highlighting the hidden context clues.  Our vocab quizzes are not just about applying knowledge of new vocabulary, but they also evaluate students' ability to read closely and carefully.

Some tips that we discussed:
Read the entire narrative when taking the quiz so that you don't miss any context clues.
Practice process of elimination skills by determining the required part of speech and eliminating all words that do not fit.
"Study" for the quiz by memorizing definitions and then by spending some time "researching" the use of the word on google to get an idiomatic, connotative and denotative sense of the word.

October 1, 2015

Oh, what a day in AP Lang!!!

Today we completed a silent gallery walk with the rhetorical precis.  Then we discussed all the ways in which the precis could be improved.  Students wrote a reflection about the process and now they will work in their groups to write another, improved draft. It was one of those days that is difficult to recreate for students who were absent.

Homework: study vocab for next Tuesday's quiz.  It's on quizlet. Work towards completing your reading goal.

September 30, 2015

Today students turned in the vocabulary definitions for Ozick's, She: Portrait of the Essay As a Warm Body.

Additionally, the precis for Michael Depp's essay was due.  Students then worked in groups to evaluate each other's precis with a rubric.  They then participated in a "Precis Mash-up" to create one "Power Precis" with contributions for all group members.  Tomorrow students will participate in a silent gallery to evaluate each group's efforts.

I will be posting the vocab for Ozick's essay on our quizlet classroom at the end of the day.  The quiz will be Oct. 6.

Septermber 29, 2015

Students took the vocabulary quiz for the word list from Michael Depp's, On Essay's Literature's Most Misunderstood Form.

September 25, 2015

Today in class we analyzed the methods that Depp uses to blend quoted material into his essay and to set up a conversation between his sources.  Our goal is to be able to emulate that style of synthesis in our own writing.  Additionally, students picked up handouts on the rhetorical precis, tone words, rhetorical verbs and our next essay which is by Cynthia Ozick.  Please find the vocab words for this essay below.  Next week's schedule is as follows:

Monday, 9/28: Independent Reading
Tuesday, 9/29: Vocabulary Quiz covering  On Essays: Literature's Most Misunderstood Form
                         Typed Rhetorical Precis for On Essays: Literature's Most Misunderstood Form is                                    due.
Wednesday, 9/30:  Reading Quiz: Ozick Essay
                               Vocabulary definitions for the Ozick essay due.

Tuesday, 10/6:  Ozick vocabulary quiz.

Rhetorical Precis handouts:  https://drive.google.com/a/fhps.net/file/d/0B0ndMsFKkNibRU1TajZIX08xTVlGMjdwb1FxOWRaTEpkYTVz/view?usp=sharing

Rhetorical Verb Handout:

https://drive.google.com/a/fhps.net/file/d/0B0ndMsFKkNibam1XQ051aHhxUFhwRl92TkZCZFRvekViOGMw/view?usp=sharing

Tone Words Handout:
https://drive.google.com/a/fhps.net/file/d/0B0ndMsFKkNibNHF3RGo3R3dUUnI4bEZQWEdHV3BqRzdwZEdJ/view?usp=sharing

Find the essay here: 
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/98sep/ozick.htm

Ozick vocab:
Polemic
poetaster
oblique
aspirant
rotary phone (ha!)
caveat
compulsion
cadence
coerce
assent
suasion
overt
doctinaire
tract
lepidopterist
disparate
idiosyncratic
cosmogony
quietude
disgruntlement
antic
garrulous
conflagration
admixture
salience
marrow
eros

September 24, 2015

Today we worked on finding a "Pithy Quotation" from the piece, "On Essay's: Literature's Most Misunderstood Form." Students worked in groups to choose a line from the piece that they felt was the most important or central to the essay as a whole.  They then shared their choices with the whole class providing a justification for their choice.  Additionally, we discussed the difficulty students had identifying claims from the piece and analyzed all the parts of the essay that did not seem to be the author's own words.  This is a tough hour to recreate on a blog entry.  You really had to be there.  No homework, unless your group failed to provide an adequate justification.

September 23, 2015

Today students turned in the vocab and claims from On Essay's: Literature's Most Misunderstood Form.  Additionally, they wrote an informal reflective letter to me describing the state of their reading lives.  Does it exist?  If not, why not?  What was the last book you read?  How do you feel about reading overall?  In this letter, each student set a realistic reading goal for him/herself.  That is how many books can you read by the end of the semester if you take into consideration that I will give you an entire independent reading hour every Monday? Also, maybe cut out a little Netflix or Facebook or Instagram?  Upon your return, please turn in the letter and the previous night's homework.

September 22, 2015

Today in class students took the vocabulary quiz.  If you were absent today, you will need to make that up during a time other than our actual class hour.  See me to schedule this.

Additionally, students picked up the essay, "On Essays: Literature's Most Misunderstood Form."  I drew a box around 42 words in the essay that I thought might be problematic for students and might impede comprehension.

For tomorrow, students are writing definitions for these words in the margins of the essay.  Our next vocab quiz covering these words will be Monday, September 28. Format to be announced.

Additionally, for tomorrow, students are reading the essay and making a list of the author's assertions about the essay form.  These should be written in complete sentences.

That's it.

You can find the essay here: http://www.pw.org/content/essays

The vocab words are as follows: cleave, inconclusive, assertion, practitioners, revelatory, artifice, postmodernism, machinations, in flagrante delicto, dialectic, metaphysical, self-effacing, tincture, accrue, systemic, vacillations, anecdote, amorphous, protean, epiphanies, crescendo, excursions, cinematic, render, narcissism, subordinate, distillation, tier, hypertextuality, insatiable, musings, inconceivable, poignancy, potency, pithiness, adverse, succinctness, flippancy, mutable, protoplasmic, terra firma, divulgence

https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=fhps.net_i741rppii03fo1i2f13bg13uvk%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/New_York