4/6

Happy Monday, Juniors!

I have posted a brief survey regarding the Great Gatsby on Google Classroom that I'd like you to complete by tomorrow.  It is not graded so don't panic if you do yours late, but I really need to see student responses from all of you this week before we go "live" with our distance learning next week.  It's a good opportunity to work out any hitches we might have with the technology.  Speaking of, I have not done a lot of work with Google Forms yet, so someone please be nice and email me if I messed up the technology and I will do a "take two" attempt.

Google Classroom is going to become the main way of conveying information to you, so please make sure that you have notifications "on" so that you know when a new assignment or material is posted.  For a while, I will continue to post on my blog, but we may end up transitioning away from that entirely in an attempt to streamline the number of places you have to check for your work.

Looking forward to getting back to our learning!

McE

4/1 Updates and Gastby Post

You should have received a long email to your student email account explaining the next steps for our learning.

Your main assignment for now is to do a post for Gatsby Chapter 4 in the discussion tab on Turnitin.  I will send you an email and post here when there are new discussion topics available for you to comment on.

We will be working on Gatsby for the next few days as we wait for more information from the AP people about what our AP Lang exam will look like.

Congratulations, Juniors!

You are DONE with the research paper!

I'm proud of all of you for completing this task under the most unusual of circumstances.  This says a lot about you and your commitment to learning.

At the bottom of this post, I'm going to include my thoughts on what I hope you've learned from the process.  You don't have to read it, but it's there if you are curious about why we did what we did.

For right now, your main task is to finish reading the Great Gatsby.  I'm sure the district will be providing us more guidance in the upcoming days now that our out of school time has been extended.  But give yourself a little break after finishing your paper, and then finish up with your Gatsby reading.

The AP people are exploring a testing from home option, so as of now, we are assuming you will be doing your AP tests.  Stay tuned.

Research Paper Goals:

I hope you've learned the importance of breaking down a large job into smaller less horrible pieces.

I hope you've learned how to polish take home writing and the process of how to tear apart a sentence a rebuild a stronger one.

I hope you've learned how literature analysis looks at smaller claims (observations) and their larger significance (importance.)

I hope you've learned that academic articles exist in all disciplines, that they may be challenging to read, but that they present important ideas.

I hope you've learned that MLA formatting is just one of many style schools that you will have to follow at the college level.

I hope you've learned how to collaborate with your instructor and peers to help create the strongest possible end product.

I hope you've learned how to synthesize information from various texts into a cohesive and well reasoned argument. 

I hope you've learned how to stick with an assignment that probably drove you crazy at times and to find the motivation and persistence to get it done anyway.

Finally, I hope you feel proud that the essay you turned in is better than an essay you would have written at the beginning of the year and that you've grown as a writer and thinker!

Editing Resources

Here are some of the resources that we used in class today.

Quotation Station

Link to MLA page on quoting dialog

Measuring Station

Content Editing (See scoring rubric from previous posts)

Style Editing  (See scoring rubric from previous posts)

Research Paper Conclusions

Conclusion Slideshow!

So many research paper resources!

MLA Formatting Slideshow (updated for 2020)

Work Cited Formatting. Remember individual entries are outdated. This is just for formatting the page purposes.

Research Paper Style Rubric

Research Paper Content Rubric

Academic Honesty Information

Research Paper Introduction

Introduction Slideshow

Style Considerations

Style Considerations

Use the link above to help inspire your body paragraph polishing.

Importance Paragraph Checkpoint due Friday, 3/6

Importance Thinking Activity Example

Importance Paragraph Example

Practice Synthesis

2009 Practice Synthesis Documents

Importance Quotation/Citation Outline Due Feb 28

You will be turning in two checkpoints on this day, but don't worry:  you've essentially already done one of them.

The first one is to submit your research quotations.  You will list off your minimum of three sources, then include six quotations that you think will support your importance claim.

The second one is to choose from these and your observation quotations and create a citation outline.  This is essentially your quotation finalists--the ones that are most likely to appear in your paper.

The only weird thing is that I'd like your citation outline to come first in the document, followed by your importance research quotations.    The document here should show you about how this will look.

Due Tuesday

Today we discussed the concept of your research paper's importance by looking at the last half of the research paper slideshow that was previously posted.  Your next deadline with be two weeks from today.

Please read the Margolis essay that I handed out in class today and mark for comprehension.  Marking for comprehension (as opposed to marking for analysis) just focuses on writing down the main ideas of what your author is saying,   A PDF version is available here.

We discussed when reading academic writing how important it is to

1.  Look up new vocabulary

2.  Pay attention to complicated sentences like periodic sentences, confusing antecedents, and contrasting transition words.

3.  Write down a summary of the articles main ideas or assertions

4.  Look for quotations that support your importance idea.  For this article, we are looking for quotation to support my importance:  Twain criticizes the continued mistreatment of African American.

5.  Use the article to get ideas about what other authors you might want to research.

Please bring your marked text to class on Tuesday.  You can also begin the process of reading articles on JSTOR that will help you support your importance idea.

Style Revisions

Here is a writing sample that really needs some help!

Style Revision Resources

Uses of "To Be"
Style Considerations

Observation Paragraph Checkpoint due Friday, 2/14

Your first Observation Paragraph is due. Please read the information on writing your observation paragraph here. Note again the Google docs did not allow me to preserve the formatting, so it's not in perfect MLA style, but it's pretty close.

Please make sure to be applying all polishing and style considerations.

Also, make sure you format this paragraph using MLA style. A powerpoint is available here.

Reading due Monday

Please read the Jacob Riis excerpt from your white book (870-874--I think).

Observation Quotations due Friday, 2/7

Please submit your observation notecards to Turnitin by Friday, 2/7 at 7:30 a.m.  You will not need to provide a paper copy.  Remember, you will need to find quotations from your text that will clearly allow you to support (prove) your observation claim.

Information and kind of a template are available here.

*Updated* Research Paper Observation and White Book Assignment due Monday

Please make sure I have a paper copy of the observation topic you want to pursue for your research paper.  The slideshow that we looked at in class is available here.  Remember, we only looked at the "observation" part of the slideshow.

Then, please read pages 935-940 in your white book, which is an excerpt from an autobiography of Zitkala Sa.

After you have done reading, please choose a section that you are going to analyze for style, focusing on what words mean (diction, imagery, figurative language) and where words are (syntax, structure, pacing.)  Type up a paragraph (one half page or so) analysis of the use of language and the effect that these choices are having on the reader.  You should use direct quotations and formal voice.  Please try to make observations like your white book modeled on the Ellison and Didion passages.

Submit your analysis to Turnitin.

Huck Finn and Finals Review Activities

Satire Review
Timeline reviews
Mega Timeline
Mega Timeline answers

Previous Unit 1 Kahoot
AP Language terms (there may be some we haven't learned yet, but refer to the finals study guide for what is on the test.

By student request:

Huswifery
Waterfowl

Semester 1 Finals Information and Huck Finn Reading

Please finish reading Huck Finn for Monday!

AP Language Semester 1 Study Guide

Your final exam will have approximately 125 multiple choice questions.  The semester one reading list below covers authors that will be asked about on the final exam.  There are some passages that we read this year that will not be covered on the exam.  

Reading List

Novels:

•  The Scarlet Letter
• Huckleberry Finn

Literature Passages:

• “Huswifery” (Edward Taylor)
•  “To His Excellency, General Washington” (Phillis Wheatley)
•  “To a Waterfowl” (William Cullen Bryant)
• “Fall of the House of Usher” (E.A. Poe)

Non-Fiction Passages/Excerpts:

• On Plymouth Plantation (William Bradford)
• General History of Virginia (John Smith)
• Wonders of the Invisible World (Cotton Mather)
• Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (Johnathan Edwards)
• Declaration of Independence (Thomas Jefferson)
• Speech in the Virginia Convention (Patrick Henry)
• The Crisis (Thomas Paine)
• Speech of Miss Baker (Benjamin Franklin)
• Nature (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Harriet Jacobs)
• My Bondage, My Freedom (Frederick Douglass)
•   Self-Reliance (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
•  Walden (H. D. Thoreau)

Question Breakdown:

• Two 5-event Huck Finn Timeline questions
• 12 HF character to quotation matching
• 6 HF social commentary
• 11 HF character analysis 
• 10 general HF questions
• 8 Literary device quotation identification
• 10 literary device definition matching
• 14 Author to title matching
• 11 Romanticism quotation or author identification
• 7 Critical reading passage questions
• 6 Fallacy identification
• 10 Scarlet Letter True/False
• 10 Writing process questions

Synthesis Reflection due Thursday

Here are the questions for the synthesis essay reflection that are due on Thursday.