A Million Visions and Revisions

Be sure to bring in your revised essays this week, either Wednesday or Thursday.

In addition, over the course of this week write two reading blogs. Respond to any two other reading blogs.

And That Has Made All the Difference

For next Monday, have completed three reading blogs in response to The Road. You must focus in one of those blogs on vocabulary. We´ll be discussing those words in Writers Workshop.

Also, bring in your revised drafts of the synthetic essay on Wednesday or Thursday depending on your section.

What is a reading blog?

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, as well as to promote our communication with the academic world outside of CNG, we'll be keeping blogs about the books we read.

You will write your own blogs, and respond to your blogs as prescribed by your weekly homework blog entry. You should not approach each blog the same way. With variety comes varied thought; therefore, I hope you focus on different topics and take 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 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 answer:

What 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.

-Visual Vocabulary

Select the words you think it was important to define in the text. Match a picture to it on your blog post.

-Hyperlink

You might want to use the 21^st century's answer to footnotes when you're talking about something that is not common knowledge. We'll do a demo of how to insert a hyperlink in class.

You may use any combination of these, or you can write your own type of entries. Let your reading guide your entries. Check StandardScore weekly for your reading blog grades starting next Friday.

Apocalypse How?

By next Monday (September 5th) complete two reading blogs. For each reading blog you should respond to 20-30 pages of text. We'll take out The Road in class together from the EVL.

In the meantime, continue to bring in Coming Through Slaughter for discussion.

Gatsby Miscellanies

Play a Gatsby game.

Watch Gatsby film from the 70s.

Find out about the new Gatsby film, due to come out in 2012.

Searching for Buddy Bolden

This week I'd like you to write two reading blog entries in which you perform a close reading on one passage. For each close reading I want to see the inferences you can make about Buddy Bolden.

On Friday and Monday we'll have our first timed writing together. I'll be speaking about that at greater length in class.

Welcome to AP English Literature

This week you need to begin a blog here and then, once signed in comment on this post.

In your blogger profile be sure to use your full name.

For our second class, we'll be assessing your understanding of The Great Gatsby and begin our first discussion of symbolism.

You'll notice that I change the images on my blog frequently. They are always related to class. Think about making connections - and even commenting on them on your blog.