Here are some options for your final essay:
- Is there a city from Invisible Cities that resembles A Heart of Darkness? Describe them in a close analysus.
- Read William Gass's essay "Invisible Cities." Discount Gass's thesis.
- Compare Waking Life to Invisible Cities.
- How does Invisible Cities embody everything we've read this semester? Prove with three cities.
I am open to other paper ideas as well.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Creative Writing Exercise
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/561/01/
Read all five steps before revising your piece today. Post your revision before the end of class today.
Read all five steps before revising your piece today. Post your revision before the end of class today.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Pre AP 10th Grade ELA Fall 2008
Your summer reading:
Dante's Inferno (translation by Allen Mandelbaum)
Additionally, you must pick two novel from the following:
1984
A Brave New World
Clockwork Orange
Farenheit 451
A Man in the High Castle
Dante's Inferno (translation by Allen Mandelbaum)
Additionally, you must pick two novel from the following:
1984
A Brave New World
Clockwork Orange
Farenheit 451
A Man in the High Castle
Creative Writing
Go to this page, read one of the writers' commentaries , then respond to it in your own blog:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/specials/writers.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
http://www.nytimes.com/books/specials/writers.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Pre AP 10th Grade ELA 5.27.08- 5.30.08
Read Pynchon's review of Love in The Time of Cholera:
http://community.livejournal.com/ru_pynchon/11938.html#cutid1
Finish A Heart of Darkness by next Tuesday.
Complete your short story revisions for next Wednesday.
http://community.livejournal.com/ru_pynchon/11938.html#cutid1
Finish A Heart of Darkness by next Tuesday.
Complete your short story revisions for next Wednesday.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Pre AP 10th Grade ELA 5.19.2008-5.23.2008
Monday
Read Voyage Act One and write one blog entry.
Tuesday
Read Voyage Act Two and write one blog entry.
Wednesday
Complete your analytic film essay for by next Wednesday.
Thursday
Read Shipwreck 127-147 of Act One and write one blog entry.
Friday
Read Shipwreck complet Act One.
Read Voyage Act One and write one blog entry.
Tuesday
Read Voyage Act Two and write one blog entry.
Wednesday
Complete your analytic film essay for by next Wednesday.
Thursday
Read Shipwreck 127-147 of Act One and write one blog entry.
Friday
Read Shipwreck complet Act One.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Senior English ELA
Your final blog entries for Candide should be organized:
Chapters 19-24
Chapters 25-28
Chapters 28-30
I will check them Friday.
Chapters 19-24
Chapters 25-28
Chapters 28-30
I will check them Friday.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Senior English ELA
This week you should:
- rehearse your scenes for presentation Wednesday
- complete final satire project by next Tuesday
Return any owed books to myself or the EVL.
- rehearse your scenes for presentation Wednesday
- complete final satire project by next Tuesday
Return any owed books to myself or the EVL.
Pre AP 10th Grade ELA
This week you should:
- rehearse your scenes with costumes
- read Act I and II of Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekov and write one blog entry for each scene
- write one blog entry that encompasses your final reaction to the play
- complete film analyis begun in class
- rehearse your scenes with costumes
- read Act I and II of Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekov and write one blog entry for each scene
- write one blog entry that encompasses your final reaction to the play
- complete film analyis begun in class
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Creative Writing
Today we'll be focusiing on contests and literary magazines:
http://www.newpages.com/magazineguide/newmags/newmags.htm
Try to find as many free and applicable possible submissions.
http://www.newpages.com/magazineguide/newmags/newmags.htm
Try to find as many free and applicable possible submissions.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Pre AP 10th Grade ELA
This week you must
- Rehearse your scenes.
- Complete your short story for next Wednesday.
- Rehearse your scenes.
- Complete your short story for next Wednesday.
Ap Language and Composition
Here you can find a list of words to describe tone
http://courseweb.hopkins.k12.mn.us/file.php/593/Unit_1/tonewords.pdf
Read this op-ed from the NYT and describe what sort of tone the article is written with three examples from the text
http://cavett.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/liar-liar-pants-aflame/index.html?ref=opinion
http://courseweb.hopkins.k12.mn.us/file.php/593/Unit_1/tonewords.pdf
Read this op-ed from the NYT and describe what sort of tone the article is written with three examples from the text
http://cavett.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/liar-liar-pants-aflame/index.html?ref=opinion
Senior English Assignments 5.6.08-5.10.08
Tuesday
Read Chapter 6-9 of Candide and write one blog entry.
Wednesday
Read Chapter 10-13 of Candide and write one blog entry.
Thursday
Rehearse your scene of Hamlet.
Friday
Read Chapters 14-18 of Candide and write one blog entry.
Final Project due May 22nd.
Read Chapter 6-9 of Candide and write one blog entry.
Wednesday
Read Chapter 10-13 of Candide and write one blog entry.
Thursday
Rehearse your scene of Hamlet.
Friday
Read Chapters 14-18 of Candide and write one blog entry.
Final Project due May 22nd.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Senior English Homework
By Tuesday May6th you must have:
- Read chapters 1-6 of Candide. There will be a quiz when you return.
- Also, you must finish Act IV of Hamlet and write a log entry for 4.6., 4.7 amd 4.8.
Logs will be turned in on Tuesday as well.
- Read chapters 1-6 of Candide. There will be a quiz when you return.
- Also, you must finish Act IV of Hamlet and write a log entry for 4.6., 4.7 amd 4.8.
Logs will be turned in on Tuesday as well.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Pre AP 10th Grade ELA
For next Tuesday you must have:
Read A Simple Heart and write one blog entry.
Read scenes iii.vi up to Act V and write one log entry in your notebooks for each scene.
Rehearse your scene.
Remember that Wednesday your analytic essays about The Crying of Lot 49 are due.
Read A Simple Heart and write one blog entry.
Read scenes iii.vi up to Act V and write one log entry in your notebooks for each scene.
Rehearse your scene.
Remember that Wednesday your analytic essays about The Crying of Lot 49 are due.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Pre AP 10th Grade ELA
Tuesday
Read III.i of MacBeth and write one log entry.
Wednesday
Read 15-20 pages of Seize the Day and write one blog entry.
Thursday
Revise your analytic essay.
Friday
Read III.iii of MacBeth and write one log entry.
Read 15-20 pages of Seize the Day and write one blog entry.
Keep in mind we'll be performing of Shakespeare scenes. You may want to rehearse with your group.
Read III.i of MacBeth and write one log entry.
Wednesday
Read 15-20 pages of Seize the Day and write one blog entry.
Thursday
Revise your analytic essay.
Friday
Read III.iii of MacBeth and write one log entry.
Read 15-20 pages of Seize the Day and write one blog entry.
Keep in mind we'll be performing of Shakespeare scenes. You may want to rehearse with your group.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Creative Writing Exercise
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/
Check out a piece on this website and respond to it on your blog, as well as looking at a piece from our class from Wednesday's punctuation exercise.
Check out a piece on this website and respond to it on your blog, as well as looking at a piece from our class from Wednesday's punctuation exercise.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Identify the genres for each of the following:
Immigration, Off the Books
Every American who has a job or wants one should be following the debates in Congress over bills to crack down on illegal hiring. Employment verification is one of the few ideas still lurching around the Capitol after last year’s Senate shootout mowed down a forest of immigration reforms. It’s boring and complicated — it’s about databases — but unlike other immigration fixes, it affects every worker and employer in America, native-born or not.
Two House bills — the SAVE Act, sponsored by Heath Shuler, and the New Employee Verification Act, sponsored by Sam Johnson — are designed to squeeze illegal immigrants out of the country by making it impossible for them to find work.
Immigration reform is always tricky, but employment verification is where the details get demonic.
It starts with a flawed database that everyone would have to rely on to get work or change jobs. Think of the “no-fly” list, the database of murky origins with mysterious flaws that you, the passenger, must fix if you are on it and want to fly. These immigration bills seek to take small, badly flawed “no-work” lists and explode them rapidly to a national scale. With an error rate of about 4 percent, millions of citizens could be flagged as ineligible to work, too.
That’s only part of the price. The Congressional Budget Office says the SAVE Act would cost $40 billion over 10 years, adding up lost tax revenue and spending on things like thousands of immigration judges. It is likely to overwhelm the Social Security Administration, which already is swamped with disability benefits and retiring baby boomers. It won’t do much for small businesses that would have to pay to comply.
The problem is not with employment verification itself. Illegal immigrants should not be allowed to work, and any system that is rational and lawful needs to be backed up with a hiring database. The trouble with these bills is that they don’t fix the database errors first, and they are strict enforcement-only measures, uncoupled from any path to legalization for undocumented workers.
Imagine that we end up with an airtight workplace verification system built on a perfect database — but without a path to legalization. In that world, an honest company that learns it has undocumented workers has the unhappy choice of firing them or taking them off the books. How many would choose option B?
Sleazy employers who already hire under the table would be encouraged, since the millions of workers stranded in the shadows would have nowhere else to go. (They will not deport themselves en masse, no matter what the Minutemen say.) American workers would then be more vulnerable to competition from illegal labor, not less.
Some employers, meanwhile, would readily abuse the system, prescreening job applicants, avoiding or discriminating against non-natives, not letting workers know their rights, firing them at will.
Remind us, again, why we wanted this so badly?
Oh, to protect American workers.
Doing that means, at the very least, fixing the employment database before beginning a huge, untested worker-verification experiment and imposing it only as part of a broader reform that allows the eight million undocumented workers to become legal. Otherwise, we would be giving countless employers and workers the incentive to go off the books, which would be exactly where we started, billions of dollars and countless lost jobs ago.
In Italy
by Derek Walcott April 21, 2008
I
Roads shouldered by enclosing walls with narrow
cobbled tracks for streets, those hill towns with their
stamp-sized squares and a sea pinned by the arrow
of a quivering horizon, with names that never wither
for centuries and shadows that are the dial of time. Light
older than wine and a cloud like a tablecloth
spread for lunch under the leaves. I have come this late
to Italy, but better now, perhaps, than in youth
that is never satisfied, whose joys are treacherous,
while my hair rhymes with those far crests, and the bells
of the hilltop towers number my errors,
because we are never where we are, but somewhere else,
even in Italy. This is the bearable truth
of old age; but count your benedictions—those fields
of sunflowers, the torn light on the hills, the haze
of the unheard Adriatic—while the day still hopes
for possibility, cloud shadows racing the slopes.
II
The blue windows, the lemon-colored counterpane,
the knowing that the sea is behind the avenue
with balconies and bicycles, that the gelid traffic
mixes its fumes with coffee—transient interiors,
transient bedsheets, and the transient view
of sea-salted hotels with spiky palms,
in spite of which summer is serious,
since there is inevitably a farewell to arms,
to the storm-haired beauty who will disappear.
The shifted absence of your axis, love
wobbles on your body’s pivot, to the carriage’s
shudder as it glides past the roofs and beaches
of the Ligurian coast. Things lose their balance
and totter from the small blows of memory.
You wait for revelations, for leaping dolphins,
for nightingales to loosen their knotted throats,
for the bell in the tower to absolve your sins
like the furled sails of the homecoming boats.
In the New York Public Library
He has pissed himself. Is he high or ill?
He swings towards me on a single crutch
And smells of the sympathetic hyacinths
Sent from Rotterdam which Hitler flattened.
Kerouac’s crutches are kept in the Berg.
Is not this the greatest of institutions,
With levels we both know nothing about?
We take the elevator past the top floor
To the imaginary roof garden.
Paradise Lost
Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime,Said then the lost Arch-Angel, this the seatThat we must change for Heav'n, this mournful gloomFor that celestial light? Be it so, since he [ 245 ]Who now is Sovran can dispose and bidWhat shall be right: fardest from him is bestWhom reason hath equald, force hath made supreamAbove his equals. Farewel happy FieldsWhere Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail [ 250 ]Infernal world, and thou profoundest HellReceive thy new Possessor: One who bringsA mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time.The mind is its own place, and in it selfCan make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n. [ 255 ]What matter where, if I be still the same,And what I should be, all but less then heWhom Thunder hath made greater? Here at leastWe shall be free; th' Almighty hath not builtHere for his envy, will not drive us hence: [ 260 ]Here we may reign secure, and in my choyceTo reign is worth ambition though in Hell:Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.But wherefore let we then our faithful friends,Th' associates and copartners of our loss [ 265 ]Lye thus astonisht on th' oblivious Pool,And call them not to share with us their partIn this unhappy Mansion, or once moreWith rallied Arms to try what may be yetRegaind in Heav'n, or what more lost in Hell? [ 270 ]
So Satan spake, and him BeelzebubThus answer'd. Leader of those Armies bright,Which but th' Onmipotent none could have foyld,If once they hear that voyce, thir liveliest pledgeOf hope in fears and dangers, heard so oft [ 275 ]
Devil's Dictionary
Pray
To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
Rational
Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience and reflection.
Religion
A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
Road
A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is too tiresome to be to where it is futile to go.
Sabbath
A weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.
Vote
The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
Witch
1, an ugly and repulsive old woman in a wicked league with the Devil; 2, a beautiful and attractive young woman in wickedness a league beyond the Devil.
Youth
The Period of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum, Cassandra has a following and seven cities compete for the honor of endowing a living Homer.
Youth is the true Saturnian Reign, the Golden Age on earth again, when figs are grown on thistles, and pigs betailed with whistles and, wearing silken bristles, live ever in clover, and cows fly over, delivering milk at every door, and Justice is never heard to snore, and every assassin is made a ghost and, howling, is cast into Baltimost--Polydore Smith.
Every American who has a job or wants one should be following the debates in Congress over bills to crack down on illegal hiring. Employment verification is one of the few ideas still lurching around the Capitol after last year’s Senate shootout mowed down a forest of immigration reforms. It’s boring and complicated — it’s about databases — but unlike other immigration fixes, it affects every worker and employer in America, native-born or not.
Two House bills — the SAVE Act, sponsored by Heath Shuler, and the New Employee Verification Act, sponsored by Sam Johnson — are designed to squeeze illegal immigrants out of the country by making it impossible for them to find work.
Immigration reform is always tricky, but employment verification is where the details get demonic.
It starts with a flawed database that everyone would have to rely on to get work or change jobs. Think of the “no-fly” list, the database of murky origins with mysterious flaws that you, the passenger, must fix if you are on it and want to fly. These immigration bills seek to take small, badly flawed “no-work” lists and explode them rapidly to a national scale. With an error rate of about 4 percent, millions of citizens could be flagged as ineligible to work, too.
That’s only part of the price. The Congressional Budget Office says the SAVE Act would cost $40 billion over 10 years, adding up lost tax revenue and spending on things like thousands of immigration judges. It is likely to overwhelm the Social Security Administration, which already is swamped with disability benefits and retiring baby boomers. It won’t do much for small businesses that would have to pay to comply.
The problem is not with employment verification itself. Illegal immigrants should not be allowed to work, and any system that is rational and lawful needs to be backed up with a hiring database. The trouble with these bills is that they don’t fix the database errors first, and they are strict enforcement-only measures, uncoupled from any path to legalization for undocumented workers.
Imagine that we end up with an airtight workplace verification system built on a perfect database — but without a path to legalization. In that world, an honest company that learns it has undocumented workers has the unhappy choice of firing them or taking them off the books. How many would choose option B?
Sleazy employers who already hire under the table would be encouraged, since the millions of workers stranded in the shadows would have nowhere else to go. (They will not deport themselves en masse, no matter what the Minutemen say.) American workers would then be more vulnerable to competition from illegal labor, not less.
Some employers, meanwhile, would readily abuse the system, prescreening job applicants, avoiding or discriminating against non-natives, not letting workers know their rights, firing them at will.
Remind us, again, why we wanted this so badly?
Oh, to protect American workers.
Doing that means, at the very least, fixing the employment database before beginning a huge, untested worker-verification experiment and imposing it only as part of a broader reform that allows the eight million undocumented workers to become legal. Otherwise, we would be giving countless employers and workers the incentive to go off the books, which would be exactly where we started, billions of dollars and countless lost jobs ago.
In Italy
by Derek Walcott April 21, 2008
I
Roads shouldered by enclosing walls with narrow
cobbled tracks for streets, those hill towns with their
stamp-sized squares and a sea pinned by the arrow
of a quivering horizon, with names that never wither
for centuries and shadows that are the dial of time. Light
older than wine and a cloud like a tablecloth
spread for lunch under the leaves. I have come this late
to Italy, but better now, perhaps, than in youth
that is never satisfied, whose joys are treacherous,
while my hair rhymes with those far crests, and the bells
of the hilltop towers number my errors,
because we are never where we are, but somewhere else,
even in Italy. This is the bearable truth
of old age; but count your benedictions—those fields
of sunflowers, the torn light on the hills, the haze
of the unheard Adriatic—while the day still hopes
for possibility, cloud shadows racing the slopes.
II
The blue windows, the lemon-colored counterpane,
the knowing that the sea is behind the avenue
with balconies and bicycles, that the gelid traffic
mixes its fumes with coffee—transient interiors,
transient bedsheets, and the transient view
of sea-salted hotels with spiky palms,
in spite of which summer is serious,
since there is inevitably a farewell to arms,
to the storm-haired beauty who will disappear.
The shifted absence of your axis, love
wobbles on your body’s pivot, to the carriage’s
shudder as it glides past the roofs and beaches
of the Ligurian coast. Things lose their balance
and totter from the small blows of memory.
You wait for revelations, for leaping dolphins,
for nightingales to loosen their knotted throats,
for the bell in the tower to absolve your sins
like the furled sails of the homecoming boats.
In the New York Public Library
He has pissed himself. Is he high or ill?
He swings towards me on a single crutch
And smells of the sympathetic hyacinths
Sent from Rotterdam which Hitler flattened.
Kerouac’s crutches are kept in the Berg.
Is not this the greatest of institutions,
With levels we both know nothing about?
We take the elevator past the top floor
To the imaginary roof garden.
Paradise Lost
Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime,Said then the lost Arch-Angel, this the seatThat we must change for Heav'n, this mournful gloomFor that celestial light? Be it so, since he [ 245 ]Who now is Sovran can dispose and bidWhat shall be right: fardest from him is bestWhom reason hath equald, force hath made supreamAbove his equals. Farewel happy FieldsWhere Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail [ 250 ]Infernal world, and thou profoundest HellReceive thy new Possessor: One who bringsA mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time.The mind is its own place, and in it selfCan make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n. [ 255 ]What matter where, if I be still the same,And what I should be, all but less then heWhom Thunder hath made greater? Here at leastWe shall be free; th' Almighty hath not builtHere for his envy, will not drive us hence: [ 260 ]Here we may reign secure, and in my choyceTo reign is worth ambition though in Hell:Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.But wherefore let we then our faithful friends,Th' associates and copartners of our loss [ 265 ]Lye thus astonisht on th' oblivious Pool,And call them not to share with us their partIn this unhappy Mansion, or once moreWith rallied Arms to try what may be yetRegaind in Heav'n, or what more lost in Hell? [ 270 ]
So Satan spake, and him BeelzebubThus answer'd. Leader of those Armies bright,Which but th' Onmipotent none could have foyld,If once they hear that voyce, thir liveliest pledgeOf hope in fears and dangers, heard so oft [ 275 ]
Devil's Dictionary
Pray
To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
Rational
Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience and reflection.
Religion
A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
Road
A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is too tiresome to be to where it is futile to go.
Sabbath
A weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.
Vote
The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
Witch
1, an ugly and repulsive old woman in a wicked league with the Devil; 2, a beautiful and attractive young woman in wickedness a league beyond the Devil.
Youth
The Period of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum, Cassandra has a following and seven cities compete for the honor of endowing a living Homer.
Youth is the true Saturnian Reign, the Golden Age on earth again, when figs are grown on thistles, and pigs betailed with whistles and, wearing silken bristles, live ever in clover, and cows fly over, delivering milk at every door, and Justice is never heard to snore, and every assassin is made a ghost and, howling, is cast into Baltimost--Polydore Smith.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Senior English Homework
Monday
Read and log III.i of Hamlet.
Tuesday
Read and log III.ii of Hamlet.
Wednesday
Complete your first draft of maxims, axioms or propositions for new Wednesday.
Thursday
Read and log III.iv of Hamlet.
Friday
Rehearse your scene with your group outside of class.
Read and log III.i of Hamlet.
Tuesday
Read and log III.ii of Hamlet.
Wednesday
Complete your first draft of maxims, axioms or propositions for new Wednesday.
Thursday
Read and log III.iv of Hamlet.
Friday
Rehearse your scene with your group outside of class.
Pre AP 10th Grade ELA
Monday
Read scene Act II.i of MacBeth and write a log entry in your notebooks.
Tuesday
Choose a short story from newyorker.com to read. Respond to it in a blog.
Wednesday
Complete your first draft of your analytic essay for next Wednesday.
Thursday
Read Act II.iii-iv and write one blog entry.
Friday
Begin Seize the Day and write one blog entry.
Read scene Act II.i of MacBeth and write a log entry in your notebooks.
Tuesday
Choose a short story from newyorker.com to read. Respond to it in a blog.
Wednesday
Complete your first draft of your analytic essay for next Wednesday.
Thursday
Read Act II.iii-iv and write one blog entry.
Friday
Begin Seize the Day and write one blog entry.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
College Report!
Take a look at how difficult it was to enter the top universities this year:
Here's some articles that might interest you:
http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2007/09/30/magazine/index.html
Here's some articles that might interest you:
http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2007/09/30/magazine/index.html
Monday, April 7, 2008
Senior English ELA
Monday
Read I.iv of Hamlet and write one log entry.
Tuesday
Read I.v of Hamlet and write one log entry.
Wednesday
Revise your essays based on sentence structure.
Thursday
Read II.i of Hamlet and write one log entry.
Friday
Rehearse your scenes of Hamlet.
Read I.iv of Hamlet and write one log entry.
Tuesday
Read I.v of Hamlet and write one log entry.
Wednesday
Revise your essays based on sentence structure.
Thursday
Read II.i of Hamlet and write one log entry.
Friday
Rehearse your scenes of Hamlet.
Pre AP 10th Grade ELA
Monday
Read Chapters 16-20 of Candide and write one blog entry.
Wednesday
Revise your analytic essays.
Thursday
Rehearse your scene from MacBeth.
Friday
Complete Candide and write one blog entry.
Read Chapters 16-20 of Candide and write one blog entry.
Wednesday
Revise your analytic essays.
Thursday
Rehearse your scene from MacBeth.
Friday
Complete Candide and write one blog entry.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Pre AP 10th Grade ELA
Monday
Read Candide 1-3 and write one blog entry.
http://itsmystory.net/Writers/Voltaire/candide01.htm#1
Tuesday
Read Candide and write one blog entry identifying the four elements of satire.
Wednesday
Bring in your analytic literary essays today.
Bring in your analytic film essay drafts today.
Thursday
Read up to Chapter Fifteen and write one blog entry.
Friday
Complete Candide and write one blog entry.
Criteria
1
2
3
Development
Student began with an unclear thesis, began to develop an argument and re-summarized his/her argument in his/her conclusion.
Student began with a clear thesis, developed an argument with little analysis and re-summarized his/her argument in his/her conclusion.
Student began with a clear thesis followed by a succinctly developed argument based on close reading, as well as an interesting conclusion.
Mechanics
Student use an excessive amount of semi-colons or did not punctuate correctly inside quotation marks, or made spelling and subject-verb errors.
Student didn’t use an excessive amount of semi-colons, yet did punctuate inside quotation marks, or made some a few spelling errors.
Student wrote extremely well, fluidly moving between ideas as represented in paragraphs with good word choices.
Read Candide 1-3 and write one blog entry.
http://itsmystory.net/Writers/Voltaire/candide01.htm#1
Tuesday
Read Candide and write one blog entry identifying the four elements of satire.
Wednesday
Bring in your analytic literary essays today.
Bring in your analytic film essay drafts today.
Thursday
Read up to Chapter Fifteen and write one blog entry.
Friday
Complete Candide and write one blog entry.
Criteria
1
2
3
Development
Student began with an unclear thesis, began to develop an argument and re-summarized his/her argument in his/her conclusion.
Student began with a clear thesis, developed an argument with little analysis and re-summarized his/her argument in his/her conclusion.
Student began with a clear thesis followed by a succinctly developed argument based on close reading, as well as an interesting conclusion.
Mechanics
Student use an excessive amount of semi-colons or did not punctuate correctly inside quotation marks, or made spelling and subject-verb errors.
Student didn’t use an excessive amount of semi-colons, yet did punctuate inside quotation marks, or made some a few spelling errors.
Student wrote extremely well, fluidly moving between ideas as represented in paragraphs with good word choices.
Senior English ELA 3.31.08 - 1.4.08
Monday
Finish today's short story from Cathedral and write one blog entry.
Tuesday
Complete your travel essay to be handed in tomorrow and graded.
Wednesday
Read a short story from Cathedral and write one blog entry.
Begin working on your scene in Hamlet.
Thursday
Complete Cathedral and write one blog entry.
Friday
Cathedral Reading Quiz.
Finish drafting your ideas for your analytic film essay.
Finish today's short story from Cathedral and write one blog entry.
Tuesday
Complete your travel essay to be handed in tomorrow and graded.
Wednesday
Read a short story from Cathedral and write one blog entry.
Begin working on your scene in Hamlet.
Thursday
Complete Cathedral and write one blog entry.
Friday
Cathedral Reading Quiz.
Finish drafting your ideas for your analytic film essay.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
12th Grade ELA
Wednesday
Revise your essays based on today's workshop.
Thursday
Make predictions for Hamlet based on the following clip:
http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07ej4zNlhpU
Friday
Read on short story from Cathedral and write one blog entry.
Revise your essays based on today's workshop.
Thursday
Make predictions for Hamlet based on the following clip:
http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07ej4zNlhpU
Friday
Read on short story from Cathedral and write one blog entry.
Pre AP 10th Grade ELA
Wednesday
Re-read a part of The Crying of Lot 49 that interests you or requires a second reading and write one blog entry.
Thursday
Re-read a part of The Crying of Lot 49 that interests you or requires a second reading and write one blog entry.
Friday
Please complete your entry for "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot.
Re-read a part of The Crying of Lot 49 that interests you or requires a second reading and write one blog entry.
Thursday
Re-read a part of The Crying of Lot 49 that interests you or requires a second reading and write one blog entry.
Friday
Please complete your entry for "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Creative Writing
As requested here's one defintion of exactitude according to Italo Calvino:
On Exactitude
To my mind exactitude means three things above all:
(1) a well-defined and well-calculated plan for the work in question;
(2) an evocation of clear, incisive, memorable images;
(3) a language as precise as possible both in choice of words and in expression of the subtleties of thought and imagination.
Italo Calvino
from Six Memos for the Next Millenium
On Exactitude
To my mind exactitude means three things above all:
(1) a well-defined and well-calculated plan for the work in question;
(2) an evocation of clear, incisive, memorable images;
(3) a language as precise as possible both in choice of words and in expression of the subtleties of thought and imagination.
Italo Calvino
from Six Memos for the Next Millenium
Monday, March 10, 2008
Senior English 3.10.08-3.14.08
Monday
Read one short story from Cathedral and write one blog entry.
Tuesday
Read one short story from Cathedral and write one blog entry.
Wednesday
Revise your personal essay based on today's and last week's workshop.
Thursday
Read one short story from Cathedral and write one blog entry.
Friday
Read one short story from Cathedral and write one blog entry.
Read one short story from Cathedral and write one blog entry.
Tuesday
Read one short story from Cathedral and write one blog entry.
Wednesday
Revise your personal essay based on today's and last week's workshop.
Thursday
Read one short story from Cathedral and write one blog entry.
Friday
Read one short story from Cathedral and write one blog entry.
Pre AP 10th Grade ELA 3.10.08-3.14.08
Monday
Revise your analytic essay for Wednesday.
Tuesday
Read Chapter One of The Crying of Lot 49 and write one blog entry.
Wednesday
Revise your analytic essay based on today's workshop.
Thursday
Read Chapter Two of The Crying of Lot 49 and write one blog entry.
Friday
Read Chapter Three of The Crying of Lot 49 and write one blog entry.
Revise your analytic essay for Wednesday.
Tuesday
Read Chapter One of The Crying of Lot 49 and write one blog entry.
Wednesday
Revise your analytic essay based on today's workshop.
Thursday
Read Chapter Two of The Crying of Lot 49 and write one blog entry.
Friday
Read Chapter Three of The Crying of Lot 49 and write one blog entry.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Iberoamericano Festival de Teatro
I highly recommend seeing some of these shows:
www.festivaldeteatro.com.co/
I am also offering extra credit for ticket stubs of English plays, Shakespeare or the Samuel Beckett production.
www.festivaldeteatro.com.co/
I am also offering extra credit for ticket stubs of English plays, Shakespeare or the Samuel Beckett production.
Pre AP 10th Grade ELA 3.3.08 - 3.7.08
Monday
Re-read "The Wasteland" 1 and 2 and write a blog entry in which you agree or disagree with your blog from last week.
Dowload the mp3s at http://librivox.org/the-waste-land-by-t-s-eliot/.
Tuesday
Re-read "The Wasteland" 3 and 4. Write a blog that focuses only on any allusions you find.
Wednesday
Revise your essay based on today's workshop for next Wednesday.
Thursday
Read "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Choose a love song to copy and paste into your blog to compare it to Eliot's poem. Be sure to use close reading as an aide.
Friday
Read "The Hollow Men" and write one blog entry.
Re-read "The Wasteland" 1 and 2 and write a blog entry in which you agree or disagree with your blog from last week.
Dowload the mp3s at http://librivox.org/the-waste-land-by-t-s-eliot/.
Tuesday
Re-read "The Wasteland" 3 and 4. Write a blog that focuses only on any allusions you find.
Wednesday
Revise your essay based on today's workshop for next Wednesday.
Thursday
Read "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Choose a love song to copy and paste into your blog to compare it to Eliot's poem. Be sure to use close reading as an aide.
Friday
Read "The Hollow Men" and write one blog entry.
Senior English Homework 3.3.07 - 3.7.03
Monday
Read sections 31-40 in The Handbook and write one blog entry.
Tuesday
Read sections 41- to the end of The Handbook and write one blog entry.
Wednesday
Revise your essay based on today's workshop. Have the new essay for next Wednesday with your changes underlined.
Thursday
Read the first short story of Cathedral and write one blog entry.
Friday
Read the second short story of Cathedral and write one blog entry.
Read sections 31-40 in The Handbook and write one blog entry.
Tuesday
Read sections 41- to the end of The Handbook and write one blog entry.
Wednesday
Revise your essay based on today's workshop. Have the new essay for next Wednesday with your changes underlined.
Thursday
Read the first short story of Cathedral and write one blog entry.
Friday
Read the second short story of Cathedral and write one blog entry.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
AP Language and Compostion
Your blogs for the last three weeks will be assesed on a three point scale in the following categories:
Consistency
Development
Application of Class Themes
Consistency
Development
Application of Class Themes
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Monday, February 25, 2008
Homework 2.25.08 - 2.29.08 Pre AP 10th Grade ELA
Monday
Read sections 1-15 of Epicetetus' The Handbook and write one blog entry.
Tuesday
Please remember to bring in your persuasive essay drafts.
Read sections 16-30 of Epictetus' The Handbook and write one blog entry.
Wednesday
Revise your essay based on today's lesson for next Wednesday.
Finish Epictetus' The Handbook and write one blog entry.
Thursday
Read Part I of The Waste Land. After completing your reading, listen to T. S. Eliot read the poem. How does his reading differ from yours? What does he accent? What does he enjamb?
Friday
Finish The Waste Land this weekend. This in fact the largest reading assignment we've had thus far and should be treated as such. I would like to see an extremely focused and detailed blog entry about this poem.
Read sections 1-15 of Epicetetus' The Handbook and write one blog entry.
Tuesday
Please remember to bring in your persuasive essay drafts.
Read sections 16-30 of Epictetus' The Handbook and write one blog entry.
Wednesday
Revise your essay based on today's lesson for next Wednesday.
Finish Epictetus' The Handbook and write one blog entry.
Thursday
Read Part I of The Waste Land. After completing your reading, listen to T. S. Eliot read the poem. How does his reading differ from yours? What does he accent? What does he enjamb?
Friday
Finish The Waste Land this weekend. This in fact the largest reading assignment we've had thus far and should be treated as such. I would like to see an extremely focused and detailed blog entry about this poem.
Homework 2.25.08-2.29.08 Senior English
Monday
Read Part Two, Chapter Four and write a blog entry.
See "Killing An Arab" video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD1uGPkxQfA
Tuesday
Finish The Stranger and write a final blog entry about the entire novel.
Remember that your drafts will be due tomorrow.
Wednesday
Read sections 1-15 of The Handbook and write one blog entry.
Thursday
Read sections 16-30. Be sure to make at least one connection with The Stranger if you haven't already.
*There will be a reading quiz on Friday. Also, bring in your copies of The Stranger to return.
Friday
In preparation for next Friday's in class compartive essay explain a few connections you've made between the film and our reading. You may want to refer to wikipedia or imdb for directors' names, etc.
Read Part Two, Chapter Four and write a blog entry.
See "Killing An Arab" video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD1uGPkxQfA
Tuesday
Finish The Stranger and write a final blog entry about the entire novel.
Remember that your drafts will be due tomorrow.
Wednesday
Read sections 1-15 of The Handbook and write one blog entry.
Thursday
Read sections 16-30. Be sure to make at least one connection with The Stranger if you haven't already.
*There will be a reading quiz on Friday. Also, bring in your copies of The Stranger to return.
Friday
In preparation for next Friday's in class compartive essay explain a few connections you've made between the film and our reading. You may want to refer to wikipedia or imdb for directors' names, etc.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Pre AP 10th Grade ELA
Homework 2.18.08 - 2.22.08
Monday
Read pages 119-136 and write one blog entry.
Tuesday
Read pages 136-153 and write one blog entry.
Wednesday
Revise your persuasive essay based on your partner's criticisms.
Thursday
Read pages 154-182 and write one blog entry.
Friday
Read page 182-to end and write one blog entry. Include details from:
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1609650,00.html
Monday
Read pages 119-136 and write one blog entry.
Tuesday
Read pages 136-153 and write one blog entry.
Wednesday
Revise your persuasive essay based on your partner's criticisms.
Thursday
Read pages 154-182 and write one blog entry.
Friday
Read page 182-to end and write one blog entry. Include details from:
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1609650,00.html
Senior English 2.18.08 - 2.22.08
Monday
Read Part One, Chapter Six and write one reading blog entry.
Tuesday
Read Part Two, Chapter One and write one reading blog entry.
Wednesday
Revise your personal essay draft based on your partners' critcism for next Wednesday.
Thursday
Read Part Two, Chapter Two and write one reading blog entry.
Friday
Read Part Two, Chapter Three and write one reading blog entry. Be sure to mention today's film in regards to the novel.
Read Part One, Chapter Six and write one reading blog entry.
Tuesday
Read Part Two, Chapter One and write one reading blog entry.
Wednesday
Revise your personal essay draft based on your partners' critcism for next Wednesday.
Thursday
Read Part Two, Chapter Two and write one reading blog entry.
Friday
Read Part Two, Chapter Three and write one reading blog entry. Be sure to mention today's film in regards to the novel.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Reading Blog Rubric
The reading blog rubric can be found at:
http://mrtangenenglish.blogspot.com/2007/08/what-do-these-numbers-mean.html
http://mrtangenenglish.blogspot.com/2007/08/what-do-these-numbers-mean.html
Valentine's Day Commentary
I thought this blog was pertinent to today's flurry of roses and chocolate:
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/the-macroeconomics-of-love-a-valentines-day-analysis/
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/the-macroeconomics-of-love-a-valentines-day-analysis/
Creative Writing Elective
Please respond with commentary. Be sure to include the genre in which you write in and your name.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
What is a reading blog?
All of my classes should read this blog before continuing. Post any questions you may have.
Reading to Blog
What’s more important the book or our interpretations of the book? Can there be a book without there being interpretation? We’ll be able to answer some of those questions after we’ve recorded the history of our relationships with our books. In order to preserve paper and promote our communication with the academic world outside of CNG, we’ll be keep blogs about the books we read.You will write you own blogs, and respond to your blogs as prescribed by your weekly homework sheet.
You should not approach each blog the same way. With variety comes varied thought; therefore, I propose focusing on different topics and using different approaches in each entry. Here are some possibilities:
- Respond to the text personallyI never had my house blown down by a wolf, but I did have felt loss. For example, I once abandoned my favorite apartment. I left most of my furniture there, some clothes, even a television!
- Connect text to another book, a film, work of art, a comic or any other creation.The Three Little Pigs reminds me of The Matrix. When the Wolf “huffed and puffed and blew his house down” he acted just as Morpheus did for Reeve’s character. Suddenly, Reeves was without the security he once felt.
- Ask questions to later answerWhat might the grandmother represent?Why would the Wolf want to blow down the houses?How might I write a better ending?I would then maybe answer these questions in later blogs.You may use any combination of these, or you can write your own type of entries. Let your reading guide your entries.
You will be assessed using the a rubric to be posted on my blog. I look forward to reading your responses.
Reading to Blog
What’s more important the book or our interpretations of the book? Can there be a book without there being interpretation? We’ll be able to answer some of those questions after we’ve recorded the history of our relationships with our books. In order to preserve paper and promote our communication with the academic world outside of CNG, we’ll be keep blogs about the books we read.You will write you own blogs, and respond to your blogs as prescribed by your weekly homework sheet.
You should not approach each blog the same way. With variety comes varied thought; therefore, I propose focusing on different topics and using different approaches in each entry. Here are some possibilities:
- Respond to the text personallyI never had my house blown down by a wolf, but I did have felt loss. For example, I once abandoned my favorite apartment. I left most of my furniture there, some clothes, even a television!
- Connect text to another book, a film, work of art, a comic or any other creation.The Three Little Pigs reminds me of The Matrix. When the Wolf “huffed and puffed and blew his house down” he acted just as Morpheus did for Reeve’s character. Suddenly, Reeves was without the security he once felt.
- Ask questions to later answerWhat might the grandmother represent?Why would the Wolf want to blow down the houses?How might I write a better ending?I would then maybe answer these questions in later blogs.You may use any combination of these, or you can write your own type of entries. Let your reading guide your entries.
You will be assessed using the a rubric to be posted on my blog. I look forward to reading your responses.
Monday, February 11, 2008
12th Grade English Homework 2.11.08 - 2.15.08
12th Grade English Homework 2.11.08 - 2.15.08
Monday
Read Part One, Chapter Two and write one reading blog entry.
Tuesday
Read Part One, Chapter Three and write one reading blog entry.
Wednesday
Complete your personal essay draft for next Wednesday.
Thursday
Read Part One, Chapter Four and write one reading blog entry.
Friday
Read Part One, Chapter Five and write one reading blog entry.
Monday
Read Part One, Chapter Two and write one reading blog entry.
Tuesday
Read Part One, Chapter Three and write one reading blog entry.
Wednesday
Complete your personal essay draft for next Wednesday.
Thursday
Read Part One, Chapter Four and write one reading blog entry.
Friday
Read Part One, Chapter Five and write one reading blog entry.
Pre AP ELA 10th Grade Homework
2.11.08 - 2.15.08
Monday
Read pages 23-51 and write one reading blog entry.
Tuesday
Read pages 52-71 and write one reading blog entry.
Wednesday
Complete your first draft of your persuasive essay for next Wednesday with imaginary sources.
Thursday
Read pages 71-96 and write one blog entry.
Friday
Read pages 96-119 and write one reading blog entry. Be sure to mention the following interview with Vonnegut in your entry http://wiredforbooks.org/kurtvonnegut/
Monday
Read pages 23-51 and write one reading blog entry.
Tuesday
Read pages 52-71 and write one reading blog entry.
Wednesday
Complete your first draft of your persuasive essay for next Wednesday with imaginary sources.
Thursday
Read pages 71-96 and write one blog entry.
Friday
Read pages 96-119 and write one reading blog entry. Be sure to mention the following interview with Vonnegut in your entry http://wiredforbooks.org/kurtvonnegut/
Thursday, February 7, 2008
AP Language and Composition
As promised the following is a list of weekly tasks due on the Friday of every week:
read and respond to in a formal letter to an op-ed at www.nyt.com
read and respond in a reading memoir to one short story from www.newyorker.com
listen to one speech from http://www.americanretoric.com/ post you reaction
Each week you want to try to relate the themes from class in your responses. Post all responses on your blog.
You will be graded based on your consistency and ability to link the ideas together.
read and respond to in a formal letter to an op-ed at www.nyt.com
read and respond in a reading memoir to one short story from www.newyorker.com
listen to one speech from http://www.americanretoric.com/ post you reaction
Each week you want to try to relate the themes from class in your responses. Post all responses on your blog.
You will be graded based on your consistency and ability to link the ideas together.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
What is a blog?
Today we'll learn what a blog is.
The word derives from web log, that evolved into the word blog.
This review taken from an article in the New York Book Review explains some of the most recent ideas about blogs. Read the article, then answer the questions posted below A-E on a new document from Microsoft Word.
Volume 55, Number 2 · February 14, 2008
Blogs
By Sarah Boxer
Two years ago, I was given a dreadful idea for a book: create an anthology of blogs. It could not be done, I was sure. Books are tight. Blogs are reckless. Books are slow. Blogs are fast. Books ask you to stay between their covers. Blogs invite you to stray. Books fret over copyright and libel. Blogs grab whatever they want with impunity —news, gossip, pictures, videos. Making a book out of bloggy material, if it could be done at all, would kill it, wouldn't it?[1]
A blog, for those who don't know, is a journal or log that appears on a Web site. It is written on line, read on line, and updated on line. It's there for anyone with an Internet connection to see and (in many cases) comment on. The entries, or posts, are organized in reverse chronological order, like a pile of unread mail, with the newest posts on top and the older stuff on the bottom. Some blogs resemble on-line magazines, complete with graphics, sidebars, and captioned photos. Others just have the name of the blog at the top and the dated entries under it. You can find blogs by doing a regular Google search for the blog name (if you know it) or by doing a Google Blog search using keywords.
The word "blog" is a portmanteau term for Web log or Weblog. In 1997 Jorn Barger, the keeper of Robot Wisdom, a Web site full of writings about James Joyce, artificial intelligence, and Judaism as racism (he's reputedly a racist himself), coined the word "Weblog." In 1999 Peter Merholz, the author of a Weblog called Peterme, split it in two like this—"We blog"— creating a word that could serve as either noun or verb. "Blog" was born.
Today there are, by one count, more than 100 million blogs in the world, with about 15 million of them active. (In Japan neglected or abandoned blogs are called ishikoro, pebbles.) There are political blogs, confessional blogs, gossip blogs, sex blogs, mommy blogs, science blogs, soldier blogs, gadget blogs, fiction blogs, video blogs, photo blogs, and cartoon blogs, to name a few. Some people blog alone and some in groups. Every self-respecting newspaper and magazine has some reporters and critics blogging, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker.
Every sport, every war, every hurricane brings out a crop of bloggers, who often outdo the mainstream media in timeliness, geographic reach, insider information, and obsessive detail. You can read about the Iraq war from Iraqi bloggers, from American soldiers (often censored now), or from scholars like Juan Cole, whose blog, Informed Comment, summarizes, analyzes, and translates news from the front. For opera, to take another example, you have Parterre Box, which is kind of campy, or Sieglinde's Diaries and My Favorite Intermissions, written by frequent Met-goers, or Opera Chic, a Milan-based blog focused on La Scala (which followed in great detail the scandal of Roberto Alagna's walkout during Aida a year ago). And that doesn't begin to cover it.
With such riches to choose from, you might think it would be a snap to put a bunch of blogs into a book and call it an anthology. And you would be wrong. The trouble? Links—those bits of highlighted text that you click on to be transported to another blog or another Web site. (Links are the Web equivalent of footnotes, except that they take you directly to the source.) It's not only that the links are hard to transpose into print. It's that the whole culture of linking—composing on the fly, grabbing and posting whatever you like, making weird, unexplained connections and references— doesn't sit happily in a book. Yes, I'm talking about bloggy writing itself.
Is there really such a thing? A growing stack of books has pondered the effects of blogs and bloggers on culture (We've Got Blog and Against the Machine), on democracy (Republic .com 2.0), on politics (Blogwars), on privacy (The Future of Reputation), on media (Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation and We're All Journalists Now), on professionalism (The Cult of the Amateur), on business (Naked Conversations), and on all of the above (Blog!). But what about the effect of blogs on language?
Are they a new literary genre? Do they have their own conceits, forms, and rules? Do they have an essence?
Reading blogs, it's pretty clear, is not like reading a newspaper article or a book. Blog readers jump around. They follow links. They move from blogs to news clips to videos on YouTube, and they do it more easily than you can turn a newspaper page. They are always getting carried away—somewhere. Bloggers thrive on fragmented attention and dole it out too—one-liners, samples of songs, summary news, and summary judgments. Sometimes they don't even stop to punctuate. And if they can't put quite the right inflection on a sentence, they'll often use an OMG (Oh my god!) or an emoticon, e.g., a smiley face :-) or a wink ;-) or a frown :-( instead of words. (Tilt your head to the left to see the emoticons here.)
Many bloggers really don't write much at all. They are more like impresarios, curators, or editors, picking and choosing things they find on line, occasionally slapping on a funny headline or adding a snarky (read: snotty and catty) comment. Some days, the only original writing you see on a blog is the equivalent of "Read this.... Take a look.... But, seriously, this is lame.... Can you believe this?"
Consider these two quite unrelated early-morning posts on December 5 from Instapundit, a well-known political blog operated by Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee:
HUCKABEEING AND NOTHINGNESS: Great title.
posted at 07:28 AM
by Glenn Reynolds
ALCEE HASTINGS resigns from Intel committee. That seems like a good thing, though Hastings disagrees:
In an interview with Congressional Quarterly in April, Hastings expressed some anger at "Democrats in high places" who made an issue—during his bid for the chairmanship —of the fact that he was impeached and removed from office as a federal judge in 1989 on corruption and perjury charges.
Yeah, can you believe they'd be so uptight?
posted at 07:21 AM
by Glenn Reynolds
The items are short and elliptical— teasers. To see what they are about you click on the links. Here, clicking on the highlighted words "AND NOTHINGNESS" whisks you to a blog post by John Podhoretz on the Web site of Commentary magazine with the title "Huckabeeing and Nothingness"; clicking on "resigns from Intel committee" brings you to an article about Hastings quitting the House Intelligence Committee that was posted on CQ Today, the daily news Web site of Congressional Quarterly. Following links is like putting on 3-D glasses. Too bad there is no equivalent in print.
Political blogs are among the trickiest to capture in a book because they tend to rely heavily on links and ephemeral information. But even blogs that have few or no links still show the imprint of the Web, its associative ethos, and its obsession with connection—the stink of the link. Blogs are porous to the world of texts and facts and opinions on line. (And this is probably as close as I can come to defining an essence of blog writing.)
Bloggers assume that if you're reading them, you're one of their friends, or at least in on the gossip, the joke, or the names they drop. They often begin their posts mid-thought or mid-rant—in medias craze. They don't care if they leave you in the dust. They're not responsible for your education. Bloggers, as Mark Liberman, one of the founders of the blog called Language Log, once noted, are like Plato. :-) The unspoken message is: Hey, I'm here talking with my buddies. Keep up with me or don't. It's up to you. Here is the beginning of Plato's Republic:
I went down yesterday to the Peiraeus with Glaucon, the son of Ariston, to pay my devotions to the Goddess, and also because I wished to see how they would conduct the festival since this was its inauguration.
Wait a second! Who is Ariston? What Goddess? What festival?
And here, for comparison's sake, is a passage from Julia {Here Be Hippogriffs}, a blog about motherhood and infertility:
Having left Steve to his own devices for the past three days I am being heavily pressured to abandon the internet (you! he wants me to abandon you!) and come downstairs to watch SG-1 with him....
So this will have to be quick. Vite! Aprisa aprisa!
I went to Blogher. It was rather fun and rather ridiculous and I am quite glad I went although I do not know if I would ever go again. One thing of note for my infertile blogging friends: DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT. Do not go. Do not ever ever go to Blogher.
Huh? Who's Steve? What's Blogher? A blog? (No.) A mothers' club? (No.) A blogging conference? (Yes.)
You get the point. Bloggers breeze through places, people, texts, and blogs that you might or might not know without providing any helpful identification. They figure that even if they don't provide you with links you can get all the background you need by Googling unfamiliar terms, clicking through Wikipedia (the collaborative on-line encyclopedia) or searching their blog's archives.
The very tone of most blogs—reactive, punchy, conversational, knowing, and free-associative—is predicated on linkiness and infused with it. And that's no accident. Once upon a time blogs were nothing but links with bits of commentary.
Although blogging has precedents going back to the early 1980s—on-line newsgroups, on-line diaries, and the "What's New" sections of personal homepages—blogging as we know it (according to Rebecca Blood's essay in We've Got Blog) began gathering steam around 1998. That was when a number of people began using their Web sites to record and to link to the new sites they had discovered. These early bloggers didn't always offer much commentary. What they did do was offer place names and coordinates on the Web—like a ship's log. They provided, Blood notes, "a valuable filtering function for their readers." They "pre-surfed" the Web.
That small, cozy world exploded in 1999, the year that a handful of build-your-own-web-log tools for setting up blogs popped up on the Internet— LiveJournal, Diaryland, and, most importantly, Blogger, a free blogging tool courtesy of Pyra Labs. After that anyone with a computer and Internet access could start a blog. You'd simply go to a service like Blogger (now owned by Google) or, in later years, to a social networking site like MySpace. Then you'd follow the instructions: choose a name for your blog, consider how much to reveal on the "About Me" page, decide whether to allow comments from readers, and pick a template—including the layout, font, and background screen.
At the beginning of 1999 there were a few dozen blogs, Blood reports. By the end of the year there were thousands, and it was impossible for anyone to keep up. At the end of 2003 there were two million blogs and the number was doubling every five months. In early 2006 Technorati, a search engine that tracks blogs, counted 27 million. In late 2007, the count passed 100 million. (The largest number of blog posts, some 37 percent, are now in Japanese, according to a recent Washington Post article by Blaine Harden, and most of these are polite and self-effacing—"karaoke for shy people." Thirty-six percent of posts are in English, and most of them are the opposite of polite and self-effacing.)
When the blog boom came, the tone of the blogosphere began to shift. A lot of the new blogs—though certainly not all of them—weren't so much filters for the Web as vents for opinion and self-revelation. Instead of figuring out ways to serve up good fresh finds, many of the new bloggers were fixated on getting found. So the very significance of linking began to change. The links that had once mattered were the ones you offered on your blog, the so-called outbound links pointing to other sites. Now the links that mattered most—and still do—are those on other blogs pointing toward your blog, the so-called inbound links. Those are the ones that blog-trackers like Technorati count. They are the measure of fame.
Now that fame and links are one and the same, there are bloggers out there who will do practically anything— start rumors, tell lies, pick fights, create fake personas, and post embarrassing videos—to get noticed and linked to. They are, in the parlance of the blogosphere, "link whores." And those who succeed are blog celebrities, or "blogebrities."
One of the surest ways to hoist your blog to the top of the charts is to bring down a big-time politician or journalist. (Bloggers who constantly dog the mainstream media, or MSM, have been dubbed the Pajamahadeen.) In 2004 the blogs Little Green Footballs and Power Line helped set Rathergate in motion when they spread the allegation that the memos Dan Rather presented on 60 Minutes II about President George W. Bush's Air National Guard duty were fakes. (Since then, a CBS panel investigating the matter has failed to prove that Rather's account of Bush's military career was substantially wrong,[2] and Rather has pressed a suit against CBS for "wrongful dismissal.") In 2006 Little Green Footballs scored another hit by pointing out that a Reuters photograph of an Israeli air strike had been doctored to make the smoke plumes over Lebanon larger and darker. In 2004 many right-wing blogs helped the Swift Boat Veterans sink John Kerry's bid for the presidency. In 2002 it was bloggers like Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking Points Memo and Atrios (a pseudonym) of Eschaton who first publicized Trent Lott's racist remarks at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party, leading to Lott's resignation as Senate majority leader.
BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS ARTICLE
We've Got Blog: How Weblogs Are Changing Our Culture
compiled and edited by John Rodzvilla, with an introduction by Rebecca Blood
Basic Books, 242 pp., $20.00
Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob
by Lee Siegel
Spiegel and Grau, 182 pp., $22.95
Republic.com 2.0
by Cass R. Sunstein
Princeton University Press, 251 pp., $24.95
Blogwars
by David D. Perlmutter
Oxford University Press, 235 pp., $24.95
The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet
by Daniel J. Solove
Yale University Press, 247 pp., $24.00
We're All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Lawin the Internet Age
by Scott Gant
Free Press, 240 pp., $26.00
Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World
by Hugh Hewitt
Nelson Books, 225 pp., $14.99 (paper)
The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture
by Andrew Keen
Doubleday/Currency, 228 pp., $22.95
Naked Conversations: How Blogs Are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers
by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, foreword by Tom Peters
Wiley, 252 pp., $24.95
Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution Is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture
by David Kline and Dan Burstein
CDS Books, 402 pp., $24.95
A. What is the difference between a blog and a book?
B. How have blogs changes recently?
C. Why might you read a blog?
D. Is there reason to doubt the objectivity of a blog? Why? Why not?
E. If you kept your own blog, what would you title it?
The word derives from web log, that evolved into the word blog.
This review taken from an article in the New York Book Review explains some of the most recent ideas about blogs. Read the article, then answer the questions posted below A-E on a new document from Microsoft Word.
Volume 55, Number 2 · February 14, 2008
Blogs
By Sarah Boxer
Two years ago, I was given a dreadful idea for a book: create an anthology of blogs. It could not be done, I was sure. Books are tight. Blogs are reckless. Books are slow. Blogs are fast. Books ask you to stay between their covers. Blogs invite you to stray. Books fret over copyright and libel. Blogs grab whatever they want with impunity —news, gossip, pictures, videos. Making a book out of bloggy material, if it could be done at all, would kill it, wouldn't it?[1]
A blog, for those who don't know, is a journal or log that appears on a Web site. It is written on line, read on line, and updated on line. It's there for anyone with an Internet connection to see and (in many cases) comment on. The entries, or posts, are organized in reverse chronological order, like a pile of unread mail, with the newest posts on top and the older stuff on the bottom. Some blogs resemble on-line magazines, complete with graphics, sidebars, and captioned photos. Others just have the name of the blog at the top and the dated entries under it. You can find blogs by doing a regular Google search for the blog name (if you know it) or by doing a Google Blog search using keywords.
The word "blog" is a portmanteau term for Web log or Weblog. In 1997 Jorn Barger, the keeper of Robot Wisdom, a Web site full of writings about James Joyce, artificial intelligence, and Judaism as racism (he's reputedly a racist himself), coined the word "Weblog." In 1999 Peter Merholz, the author of a Weblog called Peterme, split it in two like this—"We blog"— creating a word that could serve as either noun or verb. "Blog" was born.
Today there are, by one count, more than 100 million blogs in the world, with about 15 million of them active. (In Japan neglected or abandoned blogs are called ishikoro, pebbles.) There are political blogs, confessional blogs, gossip blogs, sex blogs, mommy blogs, science blogs, soldier blogs, gadget blogs, fiction blogs, video blogs, photo blogs, and cartoon blogs, to name a few. Some people blog alone and some in groups. Every self-respecting newspaper and magazine has some reporters and critics blogging, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker.
Every sport, every war, every hurricane brings out a crop of bloggers, who often outdo the mainstream media in timeliness, geographic reach, insider information, and obsessive detail. You can read about the Iraq war from Iraqi bloggers, from American soldiers (often censored now), or from scholars like Juan Cole, whose blog, Informed Comment, summarizes, analyzes, and translates news from the front. For opera, to take another example, you have Parterre Box, which is kind of campy, or Sieglinde's Diaries and My Favorite Intermissions, written by frequent Met-goers, or Opera Chic, a Milan-based blog focused on La Scala (which followed in great detail the scandal of Roberto Alagna's walkout during Aida a year ago). And that doesn't begin to cover it.
With such riches to choose from, you might think it would be a snap to put a bunch of blogs into a book and call it an anthology. And you would be wrong. The trouble? Links—those bits of highlighted text that you click on to be transported to another blog or another Web site. (Links are the Web equivalent of footnotes, except that they take you directly to the source.) It's not only that the links are hard to transpose into print. It's that the whole culture of linking—composing on the fly, grabbing and posting whatever you like, making weird, unexplained connections and references— doesn't sit happily in a book. Yes, I'm talking about bloggy writing itself.
Is there really such a thing? A growing stack of books has pondered the effects of blogs and bloggers on culture (We've Got Blog and Against the Machine), on democracy (Republic .com 2.0), on politics (Blogwars), on privacy (The Future of Reputation), on media (Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation and We're All Journalists Now), on professionalism (The Cult of the Amateur), on business (Naked Conversations), and on all of the above (Blog!). But what about the effect of blogs on language?
Are they a new literary genre? Do they have their own conceits, forms, and rules? Do they have an essence?
Reading blogs, it's pretty clear, is not like reading a newspaper article or a book. Blog readers jump around. They follow links. They move from blogs to news clips to videos on YouTube, and they do it more easily than you can turn a newspaper page. They are always getting carried away—somewhere. Bloggers thrive on fragmented attention and dole it out too—one-liners, samples of songs, summary news, and summary judgments. Sometimes they don't even stop to punctuate. And if they can't put quite the right inflection on a sentence, they'll often use an OMG (Oh my god!) or an emoticon, e.g., a smiley face :-) or a wink ;-) or a frown :-( instead of words. (Tilt your head to the left to see the emoticons here.)
Many bloggers really don't write much at all. They are more like impresarios, curators, or editors, picking and choosing things they find on line, occasionally slapping on a funny headline or adding a snarky (read: snotty and catty) comment. Some days, the only original writing you see on a blog is the equivalent of "Read this.... Take a look.... But, seriously, this is lame.... Can you believe this?"
Consider these two quite unrelated early-morning posts on December 5 from Instapundit, a well-known political blog operated by Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee:
HUCKABEEING AND NOTHINGNESS: Great title.
posted at 07:28 AM
by Glenn Reynolds
ALCEE HASTINGS resigns from Intel committee. That seems like a good thing, though Hastings disagrees:
In an interview with Congressional Quarterly in April, Hastings expressed some anger at "Democrats in high places" who made an issue—during his bid for the chairmanship —of the fact that he was impeached and removed from office as a federal judge in 1989 on corruption and perjury charges.
Yeah, can you believe they'd be so uptight?
posted at 07:21 AM
by Glenn Reynolds
The items are short and elliptical— teasers. To see what they are about you click on the links. Here, clicking on the highlighted words "AND NOTHINGNESS" whisks you to a blog post by John Podhoretz on the Web site of Commentary magazine with the title "Huckabeeing and Nothingness"; clicking on "resigns from Intel committee" brings you to an article about Hastings quitting the House Intelligence Committee that was posted on CQ Today, the daily news Web site of Congressional Quarterly. Following links is like putting on 3-D glasses. Too bad there is no equivalent in print.
Political blogs are among the trickiest to capture in a book because they tend to rely heavily on links and ephemeral information. But even blogs that have few or no links still show the imprint of the Web, its associative ethos, and its obsession with connection—the stink of the link. Blogs are porous to the world of texts and facts and opinions on line. (And this is probably as close as I can come to defining an essence of blog writing.)
Bloggers assume that if you're reading them, you're one of their friends, or at least in on the gossip, the joke, or the names they drop. They often begin their posts mid-thought or mid-rant—in medias craze. They don't care if they leave you in the dust. They're not responsible for your education. Bloggers, as Mark Liberman, one of the founders of the blog called Language Log, once noted, are like Plato. :-) The unspoken message is: Hey, I'm here talking with my buddies. Keep up with me or don't. It's up to you. Here is the beginning of Plato's Republic:
I went down yesterday to the Peiraeus with Glaucon, the son of Ariston, to pay my devotions to the Goddess, and also because I wished to see how they would conduct the festival since this was its inauguration.
Wait a second! Who is Ariston? What Goddess? What festival?
And here, for comparison's sake, is a passage from Julia {Here Be Hippogriffs}, a blog about motherhood and infertility:
Having left Steve to his own devices for the past three days I am being heavily pressured to abandon the internet (you! he wants me to abandon you!) and come downstairs to watch SG-1 with him....
So this will have to be quick. Vite! Aprisa aprisa!
I went to Blogher. It was rather fun and rather ridiculous and I am quite glad I went although I do not know if I would ever go again. One thing of note for my infertile blogging friends: DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT. Do not go. Do not ever ever go to Blogher.
Huh? Who's Steve? What's Blogher? A blog? (No.) A mothers' club? (No.) A blogging conference? (Yes.)
You get the point. Bloggers breeze through places, people, texts, and blogs that you might or might not know without providing any helpful identification. They figure that even if they don't provide you with links you can get all the background you need by Googling unfamiliar terms, clicking through Wikipedia (the collaborative on-line encyclopedia) or searching their blog's archives.
The very tone of most blogs—reactive, punchy, conversational, knowing, and free-associative—is predicated on linkiness and infused with it. And that's no accident. Once upon a time blogs were nothing but links with bits of commentary.
Although blogging has precedents going back to the early 1980s—on-line newsgroups, on-line diaries, and the "What's New" sections of personal homepages—blogging as we know it (according to Rebecca Blood's essay in We've Got Blog) began gathering steam around 1998. That was when a number of people began using their Web sites to record and to link to the new sites they had discovered. These early bloggers didn't always offer much commentary. What they did do was offer place names and coordinates on the Web—like a ship's log. They provided, Blood notes, "a valuable filtering function for their readers." They "pre-surfed" the Web.
That small, cozy world exploded in 1999, the year that a handful of build-your-own-web-log tools for setting up blogs popped up on the Internet— LiveJournal, Diaryland, and, most importantly, Blogger, a free blogging tool courtesy of Pyra Labs. After that anyone with a computer and Internet access could start a blog. You'd simply go to a service like Blogger (now owned by Google) or, in later years, to a social networking site like MySpace. Then you'd follow the instructions: choose a name for your blog, consider how much to reveal on the "About Me" page, decide whether to allow comments from readers, and pick a template—including the layout, font, and background screen.
At the beginning of 1999 there were a few dozen blogs, Blood reports. By the end of the year there were thousands, and it was impossible for anyone to keep up. At the end of 2003 there were two million blogs and the number was doubling every five months. In early 2006 Technorati, a search engine that tracks blogs, counted 27 million. In late 2007, the count passed 100 million. (The largest number of blog posts, some 37 percent, are now in Japanese, according to a recent Washington Post article by Blaine Harden, and most of these are polite and self-effacing—"karaoke for shy people." Thirty-six percent of posts are in English, and most of them are the opposite of polite and self-effacing.)
When the blog boom came, the tone of the blogosphere began to shift. A lot of the new blogs—though certainly not all of them—weren't so much filters for the Web as vents for opinion and self-revelation. Instead of figuring out ways to serve up good fresh finds, many of the new bloggers were fixated on getting found. So the very significance of linking began to change. The links that had once mattered were the ones you offered on your blog, the so-called outbound links pointing to other sites. Now the links that mattered most—and still do—are those on other blogs pointing toward your blog, the so-called inbound links. Those are the ones that blog-trackers like Technorati count. They are the measure of fame.
Now that fame and links are one and the same, there are bloggers out there who will do practically anything— start rumors, tell lies, pick fights, create fake personas, and post embarrassing videos—to get noticed and linked to. They are, in the parlance of the blogosphere, "link whores." And those who succeed are blog celebrities, or "blogebrities."
One of the surest ways to hoist your blog to the top of the charts is to bring down a big-time politician or journalist. (Bloggers who constantly dog the mainstream media, or MSM, have been dubbed the Pajamahadeen.) In 2004 the blogs Little Green Footballs and Power Line helped set Rathergate in motion when they spread the allegation that the memos Dan Rather presented on 60 Minutes II about President George W. Bush's Air National Guard duty were fakes. (Since then, a CBS panel investigating the matter has failed to prove that Rather's account of Bush's military career was substantially wrong,[2] and Rather has pressed a suit against CBS for "wrongful dismissal.") In 2006 Little Green Footballs scored another hit by pointing out that a Reuters photograph of an Israeli air strike had been doctored to make the smoke plumes over Lebanon larger and darker. In 2004 many right-wing blogs helped the Swift Boat Veterans sink John Kerry's bid for the presidency. In 2002 it was bloggers like Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking Points Memo and Atrios (a pseudonym) of Eschaton who first publicized Trent Lott's racist remarks at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party, leading to Lott's resignation as Senate majority leader.
BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS ARTICLE
We've Got Blog: How Weblogs Are Changing Our Culture
compiled and edited by John Rodzvilla, with an introduction by Rebecca Blood
Basic Books, 242 pp., $20.00
Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob
by Lee Siegel
Spiegel and Grau, 182 pp., $22.95
Republic.com 2.0
by Cass R. Sunstein
Princeton University Press, 251 pp., $24.95
Blogwars
by David D. Perlmutter
Oxford University Press, 235 pp., $24.95
The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet
by Daniel J. Solove
Yale University Press, 247 pp., $24.00
We're All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Lawin the Internet Age
by Scott Gant
Free Press, 240 pp., $26.00
Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World
by Hugh Hewitt
Nelson Books, 225 pp., $14.99 (paper)
The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture
by Andrew Keen
Doubleday/Currency, 228 pp., $22.95
Naked Conversations: How Blogs Are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers
by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, foreword by Tom Peters
Wiley, 252 pp., $24.95
Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution Is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture
by David Kline and Dan Burstein
CDS Books, 402 pp., $24.95
A. What is the difference between a blog and a book?
B. How have blogs changes recently?
C. Why might you read a blog?
D. Is there reason to doubt the objectivity of a blog? Why? Why not?
E. If you kept your own blog, what would you title it?
Getting Started
Reading to Blog
What’s more important the book or our interpretations of the book? Can there be a book without there being interpretation? We’ll be able to answer some of those questions after we’ve recorded the history of our relationships with our books. In order to preserve paper and promote our communication with the academic world outside of CNG, we’ll be keep blogs about the books we read.
You will write you own blogs, and respond to your blogs as prescribed by your weekly homework sheet. You should not approach each blog the same way. With variety comes varied thought; therefore, I propose focusing on different topics and using different approaches in each entry. Here are some possibilities:
- Respond to the text personally
I never had my house blown down by a wolf, but I did have felt loss. For example, I once abandoned my favorite apartment. I left most of my furniture there, some clothes, even a television!
- Connect text to another book, a film, work of art, a comic or any other creation.The Three Little Pigs reminds me of The Matrix. When the Wolf “huffed and puffed and blew his house down” he acted just as Morpheus did for Reeve’s character. Suddenly, Reeves was without the security he once felt.
- Ask questions to later answerWhat might the grandmother represent?Why would the Wolf want to blow down the houses?How might I write a better ending?
I would then maybe answer these questions in later blogs.
You may use any combination of these, or you can write your own type of entries. Let your reading guide your entries.
You will be assessed using the a rubric to be posted on my blog.
I look forward to reading your responses.
What’s more important the book or our interpretations of the book? Can there be a book without there being interpretation? We’ll be able to answer some of those questions after we’ve recorded the history of our relationships with our books. In order to preserve paper and promote our communication with the academic world outside of CNG, we’ll be keep blogs about the books we read.
You will write you own blogs, and respond to your blogs as prescribed by your weekly homework sheet. You should not approach each blog the same way. With variety comes varied thought; therefore, I propose focusing on different topics and using different approaches in each entry. Here are some possibilities:
- Respond to the text personally
I never had my house blown down by a wolf, but I did have felt loss. For example, I once abandoned my favorite apartment. I left most of my furniture there, some clothes, even a television!
- Connect text to another book, a film, work of art, a comic or any other creation.The Three Little Pigs reminds me of The Matrix. When the Wolf “huffed and puffed and blew his house down” he acted just as Morpheus did for Reeve’s character. Suddenly, Reeves was without the security he once felt.
- Ask questions to later answerWhat might the grandmother represent?Why would the Wolf want to blow down the houses?How might I write a better ending?
I would then maybe answer these questions in later blogs.
You may use any combination of these, or you can write your own type of entries. Let your reading guide your entries.
You will be assessed using the a rubric to be posted on my blog.
I look forward to reading your responses.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Freshman Farewell
I know have all of your papers and am looking forward to reading them. Looking at just a few I feel we'll need to write analytic essays as well next year. Still, the writing appears to have improved. Remember, the text reveals things to us. We can't write an analytic essay without explore details of the text.
I hope you feel that you have had a door opened to you. I can only say that the QUESTions offered here continue to haunt humanity in its literature. We will see many of these themes next year in novels of various genres and time periods. We've already contributed as readers in our blogs now available for anyone to read who wants an authority on some classic texts. In the future, I hope you see how you can answer these QUESTions in any field that interests you: dance, science, theater, and for some maybe, novels.
To improve for next year, please answer in (FULL SENTENCES) my survey in the response section of my blog:
How would you describe this class as opposed to your other English classes?
Was the instruction clear? If not, how can it be improved?
How would you describe yourself as a student?
Are there policies you think are unfair? Explain.
Did you like the literary circles? Why? Why not?
What book did you like the most?
What book did you like the least?
Was there a book you didn’t read? Which? Why?
Would you recommend this class to a friend? Why? Why not?
What do you think you’ll take away from this?
I hope you feel that you have had a door opened to you. I can only say that the QUESTions offered here continue to haunt humanity in its literature. We will see many of these themes next year in novels of various genres and time periods. We've already contributed as readers in our blogs now available for anyone to read who wants an authority on some classic texts. In the future, I hope you see how you can answer these QUESTions in any field that interests you: dance, science, theater, and for some maybe, novels.
To improve for next year, please answer in (FULL SENTENCES) my survey in the response section of my blog:
How would you describe this class as opposed to your other English classes?
Was the instruction clear? If not, how can it be improved?
How would you describe yourself as a student?
Are there policies you think are unfair? Explain.
Did you like the literary circles? Why? Why not?
What book did you like the most?
What book did you like the least?
Was there a book you didn’t read? Which? Why?
Would you recommend this class to a friend? Why? Why not?
What do you think you’ll take away from this?
Monday, January 14, 2008
Pre-AP 9th Grade English Homework 1.14.08-1.18.04
Monday
Read chapters 60-77 and write one blog entry.
Tuesday
Read chapters 78-92 and write one blog entry.
Wednesday
Read chapters 93-105 and write one blog entry.
Thursday
Read chapters 106- 126 and write one blog entry.
Friday read chapters 127-136 and write one blog entry.
You're final paper must be turned in by Thursday 24th.
Read chapters 60-77 and write one blog entry.
Tuesday
Read chapters 78-92 and write one blog entry.
Wednesday
Read chapters 93-105 and write one blog entry.
Thursday
Read chapters 106- 126 and write one blog entry.
Friday read chapters 127-136 and write one blog entry.
You're final paper must be turned in by Thursday 24th.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Pre AP 9th Grade English
Wednesday
Read Njal's Saga 19-29 and write one blog entry.
Thursday
Read Njal's Saga 30-38 and write one blog entry.
Friday
Read Njal's Saga 39- 59 and write one blog entry.
Final draft of our final essay due 1.22.08.
Read Njal's Saga 19-29 and write one blog entry.
Thursday
Read Njal's Saga 30-38 and write one blog entry.
Friday
Read Njal's Saga 39- 59 and write one blog entry.
Final draft of our final essay due 1.22.08.
Senior English Homework 1.9.08 - 1.12.08
Senior Homework Agenda 1.9.08 - 1.12.08
Wednesday
Adapt one chapter of Candide into a short scene for a screenplay (for use Friday).
Thursday
Make any necessary revisions in your essays for extra HW points.
Friday
Over this weekened decide media and with whom you will be doing your satire.
Final Project due January 22nd.
Wednesday
Adapt one chapter of Candide into a short scene for a screenplay (for use Friday).
Thursday
Make any necessary revisions in your essays for extra HW points.
Friday
Over this weekened decide media and with whom you will be doing your satire.
Final Project due January 22nd.
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