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

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