Loving the Limitations: iPads, Paper, and Creativity

We all know how useful and ubiquitous our digital devices are.  Paper is said often said to be too expensive, clunky, and limited.  We don't return to the typewriter; why keep paper around now that we can replace it?  I'd like to consider whether or not paper-based reading and writing are worth encouraging, and, if-so, why? 

California Buckeye (not yet blooming)

Week 32: Tuesday, 3/22

* Open

• Read Your Poem to the Class 
• Last Class Day to Sign Up for the AP Test or Opt Out

* Conrad :

• Get Heart of Darkness on paper if you plan to switch to this text after today (though you may start with this .pdf)
•  Annotations for Heart of Darkness:
  • Titles can be important, this one is key: annotate for physical, emotional, spiritual, and social darkness.  How many hearts of darkness do we find in this novella?
  • Kurtz is the mysterious character Marlow will have to find in the heart of the Congo River, Africa.  Annotate for the developing understanding that Marlow and you (the reader) have of Kurtz.  How does Kurtz relate to the heart of darkness? 
   

*  Out of Class Possibility: Submit Your Poem to Poetry Santa Cruz TODAY Following These Instructions: Poetry Contest Entry Form

 HW: 

Annotate and finish your outside reading novel, on paper.

Week 32: Monday, 3/21

* Open

• Sign Up for the AP Test or Opt Out, Today, Please
• Absent on Block Day: Please write your essay today during class in the hall
• Read Your Poem to the Class

Work On Annotations (Due Tomorrow)

HW: Five Correctly Formatted Annotations

• Put a normal MLA heading on the first page, please
• You should end up with five pages (no entry longer than one page)
• Do not include any sources that do not have annotations (you only have to annotate five, two of which need to be scholarly sources)
• Be sure that your scholarly sources treat credibility in their annotations (and in serious detail, not "She has a degree in the subject," or merely "this is a credible source.")

You Thought You Were Accepted to that College

But were you?  See this article. 

Kyla's Excellent Poem Reminded Me to Remind You...

* Poetry Idea: Slam?

•  We have not had time for this as we were focusing on types expected on future exams (AP and college).  But slam poetry can be very fun.  It often deals with hot topic issues (race, gender, or injustice...but ) and delivers the memorized piece with passion and, often, rhythm and rhyme...and usually a fair amout of swearing, so listener be warned if you go youtube spelunking:
• Higher Quality Slam Poem on Education
• Slam Poetry Parody (light swearing)

Block Day: Week 31

* Open

• Today's Prayer Below
• Look Over the Poetry Contest Entry Form
• Send In Your Very Best Before Your Leave on the Senior Trip

* Work on Your Best Poem

• Edit Together
• Share with the Class

* Regular Course

• A Bit More Perrine's Ch. 7

AP Only:

* Prepare for Your Essay

• Look over the sample prompt and essay below
• Make sure your paper notes are stellar...keep adding goodness to them. 
• Our Excellent Terms List
• Rhetoric: .pdf

  
Writing About Literature:

an analysis (literally a "breaking up" or separation of something into its constituent parts)--instead of trying to examine all parts of the work in relation to the whole--selects for examination just some elements or parts that relate to the whole. Clearly, an analysis is a better approach to longer works and to prose works than is an explication. A literary work may be usefully approached through almost any of its different elements--point of view, characterization, plot, setting, symbolism, structure, and the like--so long as you relate this element to the central meaning or the whole. 

The same book on comparison and contrast essays:

The comparison and contrast of two stories may be an illuminating exercise, because the similarities highlight the differences, or vice versa, and thus lead to a better understanding not only of both pieces but of literary processes in general. The works selected may be similar in plot but different in theme, similar in subject but different in tone, similar in theme but different in literary value, or, conversely, different in plot but similar in theme, different in subject but similar in tone, and so on. In writing such a paper, it is usually best to decide first whether the similarities or the differences are more significant, begin with a brief summary of the less significant, and then concentrate on the more significant. 

HW: Send In Your Poem

The Great Song of St. Patrick

St. Patrick's Breastplate (Lorica, Armor, Defense, Ward)


I bind unto myself today
The strong Name of the Trinity,
By invocation of the same
The Three in One and One in Three.

Saint Patrick

• Feastday: March 17
  Patron of Ireland
  Birth: 387
  Death: 461
• His hymn: St. Patrick's Breastplate (or St. Patrick's Lorica, Latin for body armor or breastplate)
   

Jamie's Memorial Service

4:30 PM - Carmel Monastery Beach - Hwy 1 1.7 miles south of Carmel Valley Rd. (Part of Carmel River State Beach)

This will be a beautiful Catholic service with prayer, incense and loving remembrance of Jaime.

Beautiful Flowers

I may have told you that there is a place to get beautiful flowers inexpensively.  It's here.  This is a google map link to the farm; you'll see a sign on Amesti road if it's open; the flowers are in the barn. 

Sample Poetry Essays: Love

Here is a very hard prompt: Free-Response Questions

• Read the first prompt that deals with the two views of Eros, the Greek god of love.  
• Note: How would you compare and contrast these two poems?  

Here are example essays to compare with what you might have written:

• Sample Responses Q1

Week 31: Wednesday, 3/16/16

* Open

• Note: Your last day to turn in your FD of Your Annotations is Next Tuesday, Due to the Senior Trip

* Continue Reading Perrine's Ch. 7, Poetry (pg. 829 and following)

• Focus on the Following (those not hearing things in class):
• "Much Madness is Divinest Sense"
• "The Chimney Sweeper"
• "The Unknown Citizen"
• "Departmental" 
• Specifically on these last two, how do they compare?  

With our in-class essays, remember that your work is analysis.

In Writing about Literature the authors tell us that

an analysis (literally a "breaking up" or separation of something into its constituent parts)--instead of trying to examine all parts of the work in relation to the whole--selects for examination just some elements or parts that relate to the whole. Clearly, an analysis is a better approach to longer works and to prose works than is an explication. A literary work may be usefully approached through almost any of its different elements--point of view, characterization, plot, setting, symbolism, structure, and the like--so long as you relate this element to the central meaning or the whole. 

Also in Writing about Literature the authors discusses comparison/contrast papers.

The comparison and contrast of two stories may be an illuminating exercise, because the similarities highlight the differences, or vice versa, and thus lead to a better understanding not only of both pieces but of literary processes in general. The works selected may be similar in plot but different in theme, similar in subject but different in tone, similar in theme but different in literary value, or, conversely, different in plot but similar in theme, different in subject but similar in tone, and so on. In writing such a paper, it is usually best to decide first whether the similarities or the differences are more significant, begin with a brief summary of the less significant, and then concentrate on the more significant. 

* Work On Annotations or Your Poem

* Per. 1 Annotations

HW:

• Poem of Remembrance of At Least Five Lines Due Tomorrow, Printed or Handwritten 
• Finish Reading Through Ch. 7

MLA: What does n.d., n.p. or n.pag. mean in my citation?

Abbreviations in citations (capitalize after a period, do not capitalize after a colon, semicolon, or comma):

N.p or n.p. ("no publisher") means that the publisher's name is missing
N.p or n.p. ("no place") means the city of publication is missing
N.d. or n.d. ("no date) means that the publication date is missing
N. pag. or n. pag. ("no pagination") means that the book's pages are unnumbered

Week 31: Tuesday, 3/15

* Open

• Annotation Update for Your FD

* Journal Response: Psalm 88

• Answer in your journal in groups

• Briefly review the upcoming in-class essay. 

* Continue Reading Perrine's Ch. 7, Poetry (pg. 829 and following)

• Find 10 Vocabulary Words This Week from Perrine's and/or A Tale of Two Cities

*Work On Annotations

HW: Annotations and Perrine's

Annotation Format Update

• Issues with Purdue (consistency)
• Please use the format give below for your FD of five annotations. 
• You may choose to indent or not indent new paragraphs. 
• Turn them in before you leave for your senior trip.  
• If you have them earlier (block day this week), I'll tell you if your format is correct. 

"A light exists in spring" by Emily Dickinson

A light exists in spring
Not present on the year
At any other period—
When March is scarcely here

A color stands abroad
On solitary fields
That science cannot overtake
But human nature feels.

It waits upon the lawn,
It shows the furthest tree
Upon the furthest slope we know;
It almost speaks to me.

Then, as horizons step,
Or noons report away,
Without the formula of sound,
It passes, and we stay:

A quality of loss
Affecting our content,
As trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a sacrament.

Week 31 Assignments

1. Read Perrine's Ch. 7 of Poetry; due block day, but do some each night

• Take notes on the introduction

• Read all poems by block day.  We will review some together.  

2. All classes: Write One Poem of Remembrance of at least five lines; due block day

3. Finish Your Five Annotations; I will make a window for this starting block day

4. AP Only: Block Day Essay: One of the Poems You Are Reading in Ch. 7 of Perrine's Will be in Your Prompt

• You may have any paper notes with you to write (elements, note cards, etc.)

We Miss You, Jaime

Week 31: Monday, March 14, 2016

Open

* Journal: Remembering

• Write about a person you lost that you loved or admired. It may take you five minutes of just thinking to arrive at the opening of your thoughts.  Write anything.  It may be happy...or angry...this is a journal, an appropriate place for raw ideas, raw materials. 
• Just write out things that you loved, little things you liked, little stories, little situations or events...or big ones.
• If you get stuck, you could write a letter to the person. Or imagine you will eventually post something with a picture of the person.  What kind of things might your write?

* Read in class: A Tale of Two Cities

HW:

  * Work on a Remembrance Poem of Your Own

• For Ideas: A List of Elegies and Dirges 

  * Read Perrine's Ch. 7 of Poetry; due block day, but begin tonight if you are able

Psalm 88

NKJV A Prayer for Help in Despondency: A Song Contemplation of Heman the Ezrahite (not Haman of the Book of Esther).

O Lord, God of my salvation,
I have cried out day and night before You.

Let my prayer come before You;
Incline Your ear to my cry.

For my soul is full of troubles,
And my life draws near to the grave.

I am counted with those who go down to the pit;
I am like a man who has no strength,

Adrift among the dead,
Like the slain who lie in the grave,
Whom You remember no more,
And who are cut off from Your hand.

You have laid me in the lowest pit,
In darkness, in the depths.

Your wrath lies heavy upon me,
And You have afflicted me with all Your waves.  

Selah

You have put away my acquaintances far from me;
You have made me an abomination to them;
I am shut up, and I cannot get out;

My eye wastes away because of affliction.

Lord, I have called daily upon You;
I have stretched out my hands to You.

Will You work wonders for the dead?
Shall the dead arise and praise You?  

Selah

Shall Your lovingkindness be declared in the grave?
Or Your faithfulness in the place of destruction?

Shall Your wonders be known in the dark?
And Your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?

But to You I have cried out, O Lord,
And in the morning my prayer comes before You.

Lord, why do You cast off my soul?
Why do You hide Your face from me?

I have been afflicted and ready to die from my youth;
I suffer Your terrors;
I am distraught.

Your fierce wrath has gone over me;
Your terrors have cut me off.

They came around me all day long like water;
They engulfed me altogether.

Loved one and friend You have put far from me,
And my acquaintances into darkness.

For Interest:

• In the King James and New King James (version here), words in italics indicate that words were added to the original to make it work, grammatically, in English.  Try reading a few lines without the added words.

Journal: Psalm 88

• Find two differences between this Psalm and any Psalm you have ever heard or read (if none come to mind, read what may be most famous poem in human history for comparison: Psalm 23).   Explain the differences you observe.

Block Day, Week 30

* Open

• Top Tray: Annotations
• Bottom Tray: Out of Class Experience
• Work on a New Poem
• Make 1-3 Good Ones Over the Next Week!

* Peer Review of Annotations

• Scholarly?  Check for credibility. 
• Primary? How does it suit the thesis?

* Poetry

• Work on your poem

*  A Tale of Two Cities

• "The Wine-Shop" pp. 30 ff. in the class text
• Out of Class Annotations for Dickens:
•  You will notice that Dickens is rhetorically gifted, like a poet trapped in a novelist's career.  Annotate rhetorical devices as you meet them (extended metaphor, types of imagery, polysyndeton, etc.).  Be sure to make at least one annotation per chapter.  This will be very helpful training for the AP exam. 

• Literary Terms Review

• The Most Important Terms: Terminal Velocity at Quizlet

                    From 11th Grade

• Rhetoric: .pdf
• Rhetoric: Website

HW:

Read Some More of A Tale of Two Cities 

* Read: Story and Symbolism #1: "The Swimmer" by John Cheever

• Think/Annotate (no written answers required): Is there any symbolism in this story?  Irony?

Annotate Or You're Too Late

* Open

• Poems from you

* Work in Class

• Tardy Quizzers (Pride and Prejudice)
• Annotated Bibliography
• 1/2 to 1 page
• Each entry on a separate page
• Credibility is essential to your secondary sources (scholarly sources). 
• It may say "Stanford" or "Oxford"...but it is really the school, or is it a related group or city publisher riding the school's reputation? 
• Look up the author's name.  Is the author a respected authority?  
• For literature, basically any time-period can have relevance.  Even previous periods (such as Aristotle's ideas from Poetics) can be richly helpful.  
• For science, the date is much more critical.  Freud was once considered a respectable authority.  Now he is not.  It was once scientific wisdom to bleed sick people; now it is not.  Consider. 
• If you find your source isn't that credible, toss it. Get a better one.  

• Credibility is not a concern with primary sources (your literary texts, the Bible, your own poems, etc.).  For these, you spend more time detailing how the text informs, relates to, supports your thesis. 

• Out of Classroom Experience (Due Week 30 or Before, On Paper)

HW: See above

Follow-up from Chapel

If you want to go through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee, do so.  Or find another good way to get into God's word (such as just starting with any book...I suggest Mark, Proverbs, and Timothy).

Random fact: Both McGee and Peyton Manning have ties to Tennessee.

Inspirational Quote from Manning: "My faith has been number one since I was thirteen years old and heard from the pulpit on a Sunday morning in New Orleans a simple question: 'If you died today, are you one hundred percent sure you'd go to heaven,'" Manning wrote in [his autobiography].

"The minister invited those who would like that assurance through Jesus Christ to raise their hands, and I did. Then he invited us to come forward, to take a stand, and my heart really started pounding. And from where we sat, it looked like a mile to the front. And I committed my life to Christ, and that faith has been most important to me ever since," the quarterback added (The Christian Post, Feb. 8, 2016).

Cross Fit in SFO

All the great groups that stood about the Cross represent in one way or another the great historical truth of the time; that the world could not save itself. -- G. K. Chesterton 

Week 30, Monday

* Open

• Would you like to share a poem?

* A Few Ch. 6 Poems Reviewed

* A Tale of Two Cities (just a taste)

• Per. 1, 3: Sales
• Per. 4-6: Test-drive

* Annotations

HW:

• Out of Class Experience due Wednesday
  
• Annotations (Three due next block day)

Service Announcement

Essay Example Reminders

Let's say you had this prompt:

Many writers use a country setting to establish values within a work of literature. For example, the country may be a place of virtue and peace or one of primitivism and ignorance. Choose a novel or play in which such a setting plays a significant role. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the country setting functions in the work as a whole.

Here are sample responses to get your navigational bearings:

• Example: 06 Sample Responses Q3

Week 29, Block Day

 I. Essay (45 min.)

• The substitute will distribute your prompt after the bell rings.
• You may have paper, pens, and any of your own paper notes or a paper book out.  You may not have a digital device/iPad out once the essay work begins. 
• Some prompts will be stricken out with an X.  Do not respond to those, obviously.  Respond to any prompt with an arrow to the left of it.  Different periods have different options.
• Of the prompts with an arrow, choose the one you will reply to.  Circle it. 

Once you finish:

II. Begin reading A Tale of Two Cities (it is on the desk).  We will read the beginning of this novel and the beginning of Heart of Darkness later.  You will then choose which book you will finish.  If you read both, you will receive extra credit. 
  

HW:

• Out of Class Experience: The Tempest (not what we watched together; see the entire play, please)
  
• All Classes: Annotate One Works Cited Entry (Three due next block day)

For the Class Essay

Make a study card on paper for the essay.

Bring your paper, annotated book for the essay.

Wednesday

See you in the theater for The Tempest.

Tuesday, 3/1: Quiz and Such

Open

• Just For Fun...Maybe: Are We Politically Challenged?

Review:

* Chiasmus:

• “Never let a fool kiss you or a kiss fool you.”
• “Love as if you would one day hate,
  and hate as if you would one day love.”
• “Bad men live that they may eat and drink,
  whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.” – Socrates (5th Century B.C.)

* Conduplicatio or anaphora:

• “O LORD, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure. Have mercy upon me, O LORD; for I am weak: O LORD, heal me; for my bones are vexed. My soul is also sore vexed: but thou, O LORD, how long?”

* Antithesis

• “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.” 
• “To err is human; to forgive divine.”

* Quiz

• I Check Your Journal

HW: Study this Annotated Bibliography Sample Form and Content.  We will use Purdue as our guide. Your rough draft of five annotations is due next week on block day.