This week we spent most of our time on writing out our comparison essays. Having finished most of the pre-writing from last week, we started actually writing out the essay this week. We faced a few struggles as we started to write. The first was actually finding specific examples from the book to back up our argument. The next problem was who was going to write what parts of the essay. Through our pre-write discussions, we discovered that Lauryn remembered Caramelo well, Drew remembered The Waves well, and I was good at leading discussion about what to write. This meant that both Lauryn and Drew could write easily about their parts of the book, while I helped form the ideas the connect throughout the piece. It was really a good example of teamwork. We also had a lesson from our student teacher on peer editing. The basic idea was to focus on the main ideas of the essay, while asking about parts that you did not understand. This is a link to a website that covers many of the ideas that we learned, while providing a few more. I would open this website before I started any peer edit. This was very different from peer editing in previous English classes because they were more focused on grammar corrections. I like the ideas editing much more, as it really improves the core of the essay instead of the “frosting” of it. Beyond the essay, we did not do too much. We had two assemblies, so we had much shorter class periods on both of those days. The class decision was to put the time that we had towards writing. We did however, have time to analyze our poem essays from last Friday. This was very nice, as I felt very uncertain while I was writing the essay. Seeing a well-written essay is a very good way to learn how to write one yourself, so the next poem essay we write should be much easier.
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This week of AP Literature and Composition was dominated by two main activities. Those were analyzing a poem called "The Eagle" and working on a group essay. "The Eagle" has been a wonderful way to start analyzing poetry. It's short, and only contains two stanzas of three sentences. When I first saw this poem, I thought that we would spend five minutes briefly discussing the small amount of material. However, we had a decently long conversation on what we noticed about the poem. We then continued to have more conversations about "The Eagle" for the next few days. It was very interesting to talk with others about what they noticed in the poem. There were three students at my table, and each of us took a very different interpretation of what the poem was about. This is really amazing to me, as there is only six lines of writing! The concept of looking at one part of the poem and seeing three separate interpretations of it is what How to Read Literature Like a Professor is about. It was very nice to actually experience it, instead of just reading about it. One thing we didn't discuss much was the historical context of this piece. This video does a good job of explain that, which gives addition insight to why the writer wrote the way he did. The second thing that we did this week was planning a group essay. It is a comparison essay between the two books that we read over the summer. This scared me some, as I switched into this class and did not have the opportunity to read the books. However, I was able to make myself useful. Instead of thinking of details to write about, I focused on setting up the structure of the essay. In the small amount that I have learned about the book, I have begun to see connection between them. I imagine that we will continue to do essays such as these, as connections between writings seems to be a theme for this class.
We started AP Lit the same way that most other classes start: by preparing yourself for the class. This took on a few different forms. The first form was the standard preparing of materials. We spent some class time setting up Weebly sites for submitting projects and writing this blog. We also picked out our required book for the marking period. I chose Catch 22 to read, as it interested me because I have heard the expression before. I’ve only read the first 20 pages, but the novel’s weird sense of humor is already drawing me in. According to this plot summary, I'm only in the first part of the book. To think that it's only get better from here makes me very excited to continue to read it. Along with setting up our materials, we focused on getting the right mindset for the class. We started by writing a piece about ourselves as readers and writers. This activity allowed us to analyze our own abilities and look to where we can improve ourselves. We then connected that to the future by watching The Freshman Experience. This short film was a compilation of students talking about their experiences as writers in college. This, combined with the aforementioned self-analysis, helped us to get the grand scheme of what this class is looking to teach us and show us where we need to go as writers. Besides looking to the past and future, we focused on the present too. We spent some time writing whatever we felt like writing about. Before we started, we looked at a few strategies to help ourselves keep writing. This activity is the first step in moving our writing forward within this class. Overall, this class promises to be an amazing learning experience that will turn our writing from simple thoughts to profound insights.
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April 2017
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