Poetry Karaoke: Upcoming Summative Project

What is poetry karaoke?

That's when you scan a song and then find a poem of more or less the same meter and combine. Then you sync the instrumental with your poetry version.

Wanna see an example? This is Shakespeare's renown Sonnet 18 matched with Pharrell Williams's "Happy".

So take a song scan it and try to match it to a poem. You should only use this search engine to guarantee you have a renown poem. Try sticking to poems before the 20th century. That will almost guarantee that you´ll have some form of meter.

This will be a summative assignment. It will be graded according to this rubric.

This will be due on Friday, September 15th.

Noredink

I have noticed that not everyone is completing the noredink assignments designed to improve your grammar skills. These grammar skills are evaluated in your writing (i.e, the timed writing we just completed). To further underline the importance of said skills we are going to have quizzes based on the grammar lessons in class.

A capitalization quiz (formative) will take place next Writers Workshop.

Homework for Thursday or Monday (depending on section)

Read the first chapter of The Awakening as slowly and with as much attention to detail as you can. Use post-its for questions and inferences.

The Awakening Questionnaire

In class we'll be filling this questionnaire out together.

Erasing: Poetry Lab #1

Bring your completed erasure poems to our next class.

A Visual Conversation

Flaubert Student Discussion (for those that missed class)

Note About E-mail Subscriptions

Some of you mentioned you have not received e-mail updates from my blog. You need to confirm your subscription by clicking on a link that is emailed to you. Please check your inboxes to do so.

The Capitol of Capitals: brief video to review capitalization

During Human Utopia

Keeping our momentum in class which has 10th, 11th and 12th graders this week will be difficult. However, I have structured our week in such a way that most of the key content will be available online.

Tuesday - types of rhymes, read "Because I could not stop for Death" by Emily Dickinson, identify types of rhymes in "Thunder" by Imagine Dragons and then Emily Dickinson poem

Wednesday - Review capitalization. Complete exercises on noredink.com. Review key moments of A Simple Heart, student-led discussion of the ending to be posted to blog for those unable to attend

Thursday - Review capitalization. Complete exercises on noredink.com. Review key moments of A Simple Heart, student-led discussion of the ending to be posted to blog for those unable to attend

Friday - Pre-assessment A Simple Heart exam; get copies of The Awakening

Monday - Pre-assessment A Simple Heart exam; get copies of The Awakening

Just in Time for Rhymes

Here's a brief video about different types of rhymes. While listening be sure to pause and take notes when necessary.

Key terms:

end rhyme
internal rhyme
perfect rhyme
half rhyme

Oops: Clarification About Titles

Things to capitalize in a title:

Nouns (man, bus, book)

Adjectives (angry, lovely, small)

Verbs (run, eat, sleep)

Adverbs (slowly, quickly, quietly)

Pronouns (he, she, it)

Subordinating conjunctions (as, because, that)

First Formative Assessment: The Title of Your Blog

For next class be sure to have decided on a CCOA title and update your blog. I'll be assessing your blogs on a scale of one to four. I will award a point for each successful part of CCOA completed.

What is a blog?

Before creating your blog's on Blogger let's review what a blog is, as we will be reading blog posts as well as writing blog posts.

Heck No, Hedda Gabler!

The vote has demonstrated that roughly half the class does not want to study the play - so we will not.

I appreciate everyone's honesty!

Wanna study Hedda Gabler?

Cinecolombia will be showing this play the weekend of September 3rd. It might be nice to take advantage of this class production and study it together.

Please respond whether or not you'd like to study it using the poll on the right-hand side of my blog. Be sure to watch the trailer first.

PS I actually saw this production live many years ago in New York. It is very intense!

Bring Post-Its

For next class, we'll have our first Life Skills assessment: bring in a pack of post-its that you can use this semester.

In Regards to Summer Reading

If you haven't received an email, or are new to this class you'll need to have read A Simple Heart by Gustave Flaubert (translated by Charlotte Mandell) by August 22nd. 

Please don't fret: the reading is very short (62 pages!). You can think of it either as a long short story or an extremely short novel (in class, we´ll refer to it as a novella). 

You can pick up a copy here at school (H301) or you can buy a pdf from the publisher Meville House for six dollars, or on iBooks, or on Amazon. However, be sure to get this particular edition, as it´s translated and so differs greatly depending on the translation. 

Welcome to AP Literature and Composition

On this blog you'll find information about assignments, links to readings and other resources you might need throughout the year.

But before we go any further you need to enter your email address into the bar above to get updates on my new posts. I'll never assign homework if we haven't discussed it in class first, but this will be the written record of assignments and dates.

In addition, you can find a summary of our syllabus on the AP Lit Links sidebar, listed as Course Description.