Block of Joy

* Open

• Tommy Ahn: Did you leave your key here?
• Card Quiz
• Per. 4 M.C. Correction

* TTC Background

* M. C. Work

• Completed M. C. 
• 2009 (partial)
• 2004
• 1982
• Austen 
• Lear

* Essay Work

* The AP Strategy Page

HW: Finish Essay #1, Do Essay #2 (from your Green AP Packet)

Study for the Exam

• The AP Strategy
• AP English Literary Terms

Next week we will have practice AP exams and essays each day.  If you would like to concentrate in a certain direction, make a plan for me to approve for you.  I will quiz you on the mnemonics on Tuesday.

Vote For Character Awards

Please vote for your character awards!

Senior https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BMYRQFM
Juniors https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BTZYKWB
Sophomores https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BMQ9YZX
Freshman https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BMWXTK7

Thank you,

Mr. S

Graph of Grace

The Fabulous Four Mnemonics

Wednesday, 4/29

* Open

• Copy the four mnemonics on the board into your notes. You need to have these four memorized for next Tuesday. 

• On your own, finish
• Titles (10)
• Terms (6) 

• Begin reading the AP Essay Notes and Tricks

• I'm Binder checking  

• Open to your Dickens card

* Dickens' Background (per. 5,7)

* More glory if time allows.

HW: Card Quiz on Dickens and Beowulf or Sir Gawain; read AP Essay Notes and Tricks

A Glossary of Literary Terms for English Courses

Created, compiled & edited from Various Sources *

ALLEGORY: An extended story which carries a deeper meaning below the surface.  The story makes sense on a literal level but also conveys another more important meaning.  The deeper meaning is usually spiritual, moral or political.  An allegory (character, setting or action) is one-dimensional: it stands for only one thing.  Parables, fables and satires are all forms of allegory.  Famous allegories include: Dante's, Divine Comedy; Bunyan's, Pilgrim’s Progress; and C.S. Lewis’s, Chronicles of Narnia. 

Tuesday, 4/29

* Open

• Binder Checking (part 1)
• Punctuate, please: "I am the Resurrection and the Life saith the Lord he that believeth in me though he were dead yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die" (TTC 389 quoting John 11:25-26).  
• Add three terms to your notes from each of the two lists below:
• Reasonably Challenging List: AP English Literary Terms
• Horrifically Exhaustive List: Literary Elements Defined: Dr. Kip Wheeler

* Dickens

• See the original, handwritten manuscript of A Tale of Two Cities! 
• Notes and Discussion

http://charlesdickenspage.com/cities.html

• Card

* M.C. Quizzing

•  Binder Checking (part 2)

* Work On Your Card

HW: Finish Your Card for TTC

AP Literature Testing Strategy

A Test of Your Literary Analysis Skills

• Three hours of testing
• One multiple choice exam and three essays

Part I: Multiple Choice (60 min. to answer 55 questions)

• You will take one multiple choice exam of 55 questions.  
• There will be five passages with 10-15 questions each.  
• The passages will be from any literary period from the Renaissance to the present.  Your historical studies help, but the focus of all questioning is analysis.
• You should expect complete poems and selections from novels, play, short stories, or literary essays.
• You have less than one minute per question (due to reading time).  
• You should simply guess if you run out of time (there is no guessing penalty).   
• You don't have to get the highest score on the M.C. to pass the exam; see this example graph. 
• You must write in pencil.

• College Board's Released Exams
• 1999 AP English Literature and Composition Released Exam  
• 1987 AP English Literature and Composition Released Exam
• Barron's Online Test Practice 
• AP M.C. Question Stems

• Grammar
• Do you know the parts of speech?  Review Bedford Section XI, part 62. 
• Do you know how to use an apostrophe for possession?  Review Bedford VII, part 36. 

Part II: Three Analysis Essays (40 min. for each essay; 120 min. total)

• AP Essay Rubric
• AP Essay Notes and Tricks 

• You will respond to two passage-based prompts (one poetry and one prose/drama, generally) and one open or free-response prompt (based on a text you choose from your own previous reading). 
• You must write in pen. 

• Previous Years' Prompts and Passages

• Poetry Prompts with Poems 
• Review poetry Forms (focus on the sonnet, the villanelle, and meter)
• Prose Passage Prompts
• Open Essay Prompts
• Quizlet Study Cards for Novels, Plays, and Long Poems 
• Prose, Drama, and Poetry Titles Listed from Open Essay Prompts

• Your Best Resource: SAMPLE STUDENT ESSAYS FOR ALL PROMPTS FROM THE COLLEGE BOARD

• SPECIFIC TERMS ARE VITAL TO CAREFUL ANALYSIS: LEARN THESE
• Quizlet Set: Terminal Velocity

• Review Your Study Cards for the Open Prompt

General Information and College Board Links

• AP Reading Skills (College Board)
  AP Writing Skills (College Board)
  Close Reading Guidance 
  Overview of the Test and Frequent Questions Answered
   
• General
• Bulletin for AP Students and Parents (PDF)

Other Term Review Lists 

• The old list from the blog: Literary Terms
• Horrifically Exhaustive List: Literary Elements Defined: Dr. Kip Wheeler
• Salty Rhetoric: 60 Terms (Website)
• Salty Rhetoric: 60 Terms (.pdf)
• Tropes (creative meaning)
• Schemes (creative structures)

Monday, 4/28

* Open

• Please punctuate:
• "It is a far far better thing that I do than I have ever done it is a far far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

• Binder Note 
• I will check your binder tomorrow whilst you work.  I want to see that all is in order quickly.  This will be your last check.  You may organize any way you wish henceforth!

• Card Quiz Change for Block Day
• Dickens
• Beowulf OR Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

* Group Work

• Choose two good texts from our reading that would apply to a prompt. 
• Choose any ten prompts from 2000 to the present to consider this.
• Do this in your notes:
• Write the prompt year; write the two selections
• Start at the bottom (2013): Open Essay Prompts

* Discuss Book III

* Work on a Dickens Card (due Wednesday)

HW: Prepare for Dickens Quiz and Binder Check

Block Day

* Open: Stroll the Links for Fun Whilst I Seek out Quiz Takers for their Doom!  Bru-ha-ha!

• Dickens
• Madame Defarge
• How Important Does Jane Austen Remain in British Culture?
• Mail
• Money
• Grammar Grazing at the Guardian
• Quiz takers?
• Low score?  High score on the M.C.?  1/2 point back for each you explain.  Due Monday

* M.C. #2

* Discussion

* Review your Cards

* Card Quiz

* Read in Class

HW: Finish Reading A Tale of Two Cities

Tuesday, 4/23: Light

* Open

•  Grammar

• First, just read this background: "One of the wise and awful truths which this brown-paper art reveals, is this, that white is a colour. It is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. When, so to speak, your pencil grows red-hot, it draws roses; when it grows white-hot, it draws stars. And one of the two or three defiant verities of the best religious morality, of real Christianity, for example, is exactly this same thing; the chief assertion of religious morality is that white is a colour. Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell. Mercy does not mean not being cruel or sparing people revenge or punishment; it means a plain and positive thing like the sun, which one has either seen or not seen."

• Now, please copy and punctuate the following: "Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong it means something flaming like Joan of Arc. In a word God paints in many colours but He never paints so gorgeously I had almost said so gaudily as when He paints in white." 

 * Tomorrow: I will quiz you near the end of the period tomorrow, so you will have some time to review your cards.  I will also give you time to work in class on your journal and will check the five responses during your quiz.  So, you should come to class having completed four. 

HW: Study your Shakespeare cards; work on your Dickens journal in Book III

Brief Reminders on Common Terms: Tone, Shift, Diction, Images, Structure

Tone is the writer's or speaker's attitude toward the subject and the audience. Understanding tone in prose and poetry can be challenging because the reader doesn't have voice inflection to obscure or to carry meaning. Thus, an appreciation of word choice, details, imagery, and language all contribute to the understanding of tone. To misinterpret tone is to misinterpret meaning.

Angry	Sad	Sentimental	Afraid
Sharp	Cold	Fanciful	Detached
Upset	Urgent	Complimentary	Contemptuous
Silly	Joking	Condescending	Happy
Boring	Poignant	Sympathetic	Confused
Apologetic	Hollow	Childish	Humorous
Joyful	Peaceful	Horrific	Allusive
Mocking	Sarcastic	Sweet	Objective
Nostalgic	Vexed	Vibrant	Zealous
Tired	Frivolous	Irrelevant	Bitter
Audacious	Benevolent	Dreamy	Shocking
Seductive	Restrained	Somber	Candid
Proud	Giddy	Pitiful	Dramatic
Provocative	Didactic	Lugubrious	Sentimental

SHIFT IN TONE: Good authors are rarely monotone. A speaker’s attitude can shift on a topic, or an author might have one attitude toward the audience and another toward the subject. The following are some clues to watch for shifts in tone:

• key words (but, yet, nevertheless, however, although)
• punctuation (dashes, periods, colons)
• paragraph divisions
• changes in sentence length
• sharp contrasts in diction

DICTION:

• Laugh: guffaw, chuckle, titter, giggle, cackle, snicker, roar, chortle, guffaw, yuk
• Self-confident: proud, conceited, egotistical, stuck-up, haughty, smug, condescending
• House: home, hut, shack, mansion, cabin, home, residence, dwelling, crib, domicile
• Old: mature, experienced, antique, relic, senior, ancient, elderly, senescent, venerable
• Fat: obese, plump, corpulent, portly, porky, burly, husky, full-figured, chubby, zaftig

IMAGES: The use of vivid descriptions or figures of speech that appeal to sensory experiences helps to create the author’s tone.

• My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun. (restrained)
• An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king. (somber, candid)
• He clasps the crag with crooked hands. (dramatic)
• Love sets you going like a fat gold watch. (fanciful)
• Smiling, the boy fell dead. (shocking)

SENTENCE STRUCTURE: How a sentence is constructed affects what the audience understands. Sentence structure affects tone.

• Parallel syntax (similarly styled phrases and sentences) creates interconnected emotions, feelings and ideas.
• Short sentences are punchy and intense. Long sentences are distancing, reflective and more abstract.
• Loose sentences hang all kinds of modifiers off the end of an independent clause. Periodic sentences point to the end, so modifiers build the to the final point (main clause).
• The inverted order of an interrogative sentence cues the reader to a question and creates tension between speaker and listener.  
• Short sentences are often emphatic, passionate or flippant, whereas longer sentences suggest greater thought, intelligence, abstraction, or distance.
• Sentence Structure -- fragments, simple, compound, complex, compound-complex. Sentence structure also deals with elements such as dependent and independent clauses.

Tuesday, April 22

* Open

• Upcoming week
• J15: Any five chapters from Book III due on Block Day
• Shakespeare Note Cards This Week (Next Week Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight). 
• Dickens Quiz Next Week

* Dickens

* Finally...Peer Edit of Austen Essay

• Peer Review
• Write: "PR" and your name at the bottom of the first page. 
• Estimating Word Count
• Count the words in five lines.
• Divide by five.
• Get an estimated word count per line for this writer.
• Multiply by the number of complete lines in the essay (usually about 28 lines per page).  Count opening lines of paragraphs but not closing lines if incomplete.  
• Underline the thesis if it is not underlined.

• Circle words that exhibit strong vocabulary.
• Circle any punctuators that are not periods.  
• Draw a sad face if there is more than one exclamation.  
• Draw a skull and crossbones if there are any hearts.  
• Draw dripping blood if the writer wrote "the end" at the conclusion. 
• Write down one thing you appreciate about this student. 
• Return it to the owner. 

HW: Book 3 (1/3)

Evan

Maddie

Bros

Frances

Don't Block the Glory!

* Open

•   Here are two prompts.  Which works would you use from our class reading?  Why?  Answer for each prompt.
  
  
  2001.      One definition of madness is “mental delusion or the eccentric behavior arising from it.” But Emily Dickinson wrote
  Much madness is divinest Sense—
  To a discerning Eye—
  Novelists and playwrights have often seen madness with a “discerning Eye.” Select a novel or play in which a character’s apparent madness or irrational behavior plays an important role. Then write a well-organized essay in which you explain what this delusion or eccentric behavior consists of and how it might be judged reasonable. Explain the significance of the “madness” to the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.
  2006.      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.
   

* Card Quiz

* Takes Notes on at Least One More Poetry Form of Interest to you from this List

• More Forms

* AP Preparation; these are good links to review as we head toward the test (also down on the right side of the blog under AP Prep)

• M.C.
• AP M.C. Question Stems

• Essay Testing

• Poetry Essay Prompts
• Prose Passage Prompts
• Prose Passages with Prompt in Full
• Open Essay Prompts

• Writing Strategies

• Best Analytical Writing Acronym: D.I.D.L.S.S.
• A Form for Literary Analysis
• Common Logical Fallacies
• Writing Reminders (Analysis Lists)

* Peer Edit of Austen Essay

• Peer Review
• Write: "PR" and your name at the bottom of the first page. 
• Estimating Word Count
• Count the words in five lines.
• Divide by five.
• Get an estimated word count per line for this writer.
• Multiply by the number of complete lines in the essay (usually about 28 lines per page).  Count opening lines of paragraphs but not closing lines if incomplete.  
• Underline the thesis if it is not underlined.

• Circle words that exhibit strong vocabulary.
• Circle any punctuators that are not periods.  
• Draw a sad face if there is more than one exclamation.  
• Draw a skull and crossbones if there are any hearts.  
• Draw dripping blood if the writer wrote "the end" at the conclusion. 
• Write down one thing you appreciate about this student. 
• Return it to the owner.

* Dickens

HW: Finish reading Book 2 of Dickens; rejoice!

The resurrection miracle depicted by the miraculous painter, Fra Angelico.

Wednesday, 4/8

* Open

• Work on your journal

* Read your limerick or clerihew

* Dickens

HW: Study cards; TTC--11 (I will check the journal through ch. 7)

Tuesday, 4/7

* Open

• Work on your AP Study Cards and memorization
• Minimum of 10 words each from three quotes memorized from each card (Lewis and Austen for block day)

* Grammar Question:

• 1. Which is correct?
• We will study grammar for a while. OR
• We will study grammar for awhile.  

• 2.  Which is correct?
• Jesus' teaching is surprising. OR
• Jesus's teaching is surprising. 

   Let's look at these together:

• 1. Usage: a while vs awhile
• a while (article + noun; means "a short time")
• I've been eating caterpillars for a while. 
• A while after reading Dickens, I was still haunted by his rhetoric.  

• awhile (adverb; means "for a short time" or "for a while")
• I've been eating caterpillars awhile (for a while).   

• While (noun; to pass)
• Don't simply while away your years.   

• While (conjunction; means that they occur at the same time)
• I don't text while driving. 

• 2. And Abusage: Possessive case when you noun is singular and already ends in -s:
• Oh, the confusion
• Strunk and White
• Chicago
• OWL
• Dictionary.com
• MLA
• The end of the matter? 

* Journal Goodness

* Dickens

HW: TTC--7 (checked on block day)

Monday, 4/7/14: Death in the Camp

* Open

• Book 2, Ch. 1 Passage
• "But indeed, at that time, putting to death was a recipe much in vogue with all trades and professions, and not least of all with Tellson's. Death is Nature's remedy for all things, and why not Legislation's? Accordingly, the forger was put to Death; the utterer of a bad note was put to Death; the unlawful opener of a letter was put to Death; the purloiner of forty shillings and sixpence was put to Death; the holder of a horse at Tellson's door, who made off with it, was put to Death; the coiner of a bad shilling was put to Death; the sounders of three-fourths of the notes in the whole gamut of Crime, were put to Death" (Dickens 56). 
• Rhetoric
• Considerations
• (Vocabulary later)
• Check Running Journal While You Work

* HW: Book 2, Chapters 1-3

A Block of Two Cities

* Open

• Ch. 5 Passage
• " 'Is it possible!' repeated Defarge, bitterly. 'Yes. And a beautiful world we live in, when it is possible, and when many other such things are possible, and not only possible, but done—done, see you!—under that sky there, every day. Long live the Devil. Let us go on' " (Dickens 39).
• Consideration
• Rhetoric
• (vocabulary later)

• Contra Defarge: Shakoshi
• MVCS Midweek update

* Poetry Glory (share Journal 14)

* Work on J15: Compose one limerick and one clerihew.

* Dickens

HW: Book 1 Journal Due Monday

Wendesday, 4/2: Dickens

Open

•  Copy and respond for your running journal (Book 1, Ch. 3):
• "A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this" (Dickens 14-15). 
• Consideration 
• Rhetoric 
• (Add vocabulary later)

* A few poems

* A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens 

HW: TTC -- Ch. 4

Tuesday, 4/1: A Tale of Two Cities

* Open

• Journal 16, Running Assignment
• • For each chapter, hand copy a quotation you think rich, insightful, or nicely composed.  Explain the significance of the quote in more than one sentence.  List one rhetorical device within the quote.  Then find and define one new vocabulary word.
• Assignment: copy the following passage:
• "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 – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only" (Dickens 1).  
• Respond to the text.
• Identify at least one rhetorical term.
• Find and define one new vocabulary word.

* A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens 

* J14 (Check)


HW: Reading (A Tale of Two Cities)--Finish Book 1 for Monday