The texture of time during a pandemic is such a strange thing. It inches by, and yet, I feel like I blinked and it's progress report time. This blog post will cover:
Welcome to Poetry LandWhat makes something a poem? I challenged you to start thinking about this in class on Tuesday. One of the best parts of the genre of poetry is the diversity of subject, matter, form, voice, language, length, and structure. That being said, there are three characteristics of the genre that I want us to think about as we begin studying poems. 1. Concentrated Meaning No matter the poet or the poem, part of the job of poetry is to concentrate a lot of meaning into a small amount of language. If short stories are atoms, poems are just the nucleus: the dense hard center of gravity and meaning. 2. Lines (and other structural choices) as meaning Poems are usually organized on the page differently, into lines and stanzas. Even if they aren't, the choices of the author of how to visual organize meaning and when to break language into a new line are part of the meaning of the poem. Structural choices create meaning in poetry. 3. Attention to Sound Sound also creates meaning in poetry. Rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, and all the sound devices in poetry land are there to help poets fine-tune meaning and emphasis. Paragraph Debriefings: Consider the ClaimOur writing objective as we embark on our poetry unit is to strengthen our claims. We will be writing a claim for every dialectical journal we do, basically a claim per school day. So let's take a look at a couple of examples from our Butler analytical paragraphs. Claim Example #1 Gan has a moment of realization and rapid maturity during and after the Lomas Incident. I can tell from the rest of this student's paragraph that they did have some insight on Gan's character arch as it connect to the "Lomas Incident." But I can't really tell that from the claim. Here's a way this claim could be revised to help build a stronger paragraph: Claim Example #1, revised In Octavia Butler's short story "Bloodchild," the main character Gan's transition into adulthood begins when he sees his own future violently played out in the Lomas incident. Breaking it down, the first green section identifies the author, title, genre: boom, boom, boom. Done. The second blue section focuses on character arch and movement. It takes the word "maturity" from the first draft and makes it a little more specific. It's also a callback to the first line of the text. This is our abstraction. The purple is our concrete evidence: according to this student writer, the purpose of this scene was to incite Gan's development as a character. Octavia Butler uses this scene to force Gan to grow up. Claim Example #2 In Octavia Butler’s “Bloodchild” the first person point of view exposes Gan’s naivete to the harsh realities of his life and allows the reader to better understand Gan’s struggle to accept that he must sacrifice his happiness in life to ensure the happiness and security of his family. I chose to share this claim because it's an example of a strong claim. It's also an example of analyzing POV for those of us who are still confusing character perspective with POV. Notice how the concrete comes before the abstract in this claim. AP Essay RubricsSo, about the grading of your paragraphs. I used the AP rubric for Question #2 to help me evaluate them. Here's a link to the rubrics. On the HUB, I scored you on a scale 0-6 as described on rubric, and I also notated "Row A, B, or C" in the comments to let you know where you lost points. Basically, here's how it works: Row A: You need a stronger claim. Worth 1 point. Row B: You need stronger evidence and abstractions. Worth 4 points. Row C: Your idea needs more sophistication. Worth 1 point. It's the beginning of the year, and we are just embarking on our analytical writing adventure, so the grading scale that matches the rubric is pretty generous: 6=100 5=95 4=90 3=85 2=80 1=75 As we become stronger analytical writers, the difficulty of the grading scale will probably increase. Like on video games. As your character gets stronger, the bad guys get harder to beat. The Blind AssassinThe votes are in, and we're all reading The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood for our Unit 3 novel. Good choice, classes. If there are any very committed students out there who are thinking: "This novel looks too interesting to be helpful on the AP test. WHERE'S THE GREEK TRAGEDY?!" I want to mention that the Iliad has only been referenced by the AP Open Response (Question 3) 3 times since 1971. Margaret Atwood, on the other hand, is the darling of the College Board. Her works have been referenced a total of 20 times, and 3 of those were for The Blind Assassin. You're going to need to get your hands on a physical or digital copy of the novel by Monday, October 19th. Let me know if you come across any difficulties with this by Monday, October 12th. In the meantime, watch the trailer below for Margaret Atwood's Masterclass. She says a lot of great things: "It was dark inside the wolf." (authorial plot structure choices!?!?) "The main rule is: HOLD MY ATTENTION." "Fail. Fail better." Preach it, Margaret. Comments are closed.
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AuthorI'm a Houston high school teacher. Welcome to my adapted, socially-distanced, quarantined AP English Literature and Composition classroom. Archives
May 2021
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