Happy Monday, Seniors!

I have posted a brief survey regarding the Prose Analysis Essay and Wuthering Heights on Google Classroom that I'd like you to complete by Wednesday  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.  

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

March 26 Updates!

Hello Seniors!

I miss you all and hope that you and your loved ones are doing okay!

This is still Spring Break, so for now you're just doing a little Wuthering Heights reading. 

Teachers begin working from home on Monday, March 30th.  There are still some questions about how that will look, but that's what I will consider our "return to learning" date.  So, I will be making available some learning opportunities for you starting then. 

AP Test Updates:

The current information seems to indicate that your AP test in Literature will consist of a 45 minute free response question.  More information is supposed to be coming at the beginning of April.  The College Board explains their current thinking and is providing links to online courses here.  However, remember this is still your Spring Break, so you should not feel obligated to do any of the online learning today or tomorrow.  Next week, however, we can use their lessons along with our own to help get us prepared for the AP test.

Obviously, there are still questions:  Will the 45 minute question be poetry?  prose?  open ended?   your choice of three options?  Stay tuned!

March 20 Updates

Hi, Seniors!

Thanks to those of you who responded to the audio test.  It seems like that format may be viable, so that's good to know.

Our district and our school are in discussions about how to best handle learning during our hiatus.  I do not want to accidentally overstep what may end up being a formal policy, so I am holding off on posting any "official" assignments during this time, because frankly, I don't know yet what can be an official assignment.

It would not hurt to continue to read Wuthering Heights, however.  I was going to assign a chunk of that over Spring Break regardless.

I will release some AP classroom practice materials.  These are not required, but they are available if you're bored and looking for something to do.

I miss you all!

Audio Test and information

So, the quest to post some audio Wuthering Heights information has proven difficult from a technology standpoint.  I've posted an audio test (pretty much just me saying "testing") to see if this format works.  I also have enabled comments below, so if you can hear me, post that you were able to.

Also, please make sure to keep all comments appropriate, and I apologize in advance if internet people get a hold of the comments and post random stuff.  That's why I normally have comments disabled, but these are strange times.

Also, no promises that I will actually end up using this format.  I'm just curious to see if it will work.


The AP people have said that they are looking into online testing options if necessary, so it looks like we are still operating as if AP testing is on.

Stay posted.

Audio Test

March 13th Update-Virus Hiatus

The AP people have released the following statement regarding testing.  You can read it here.

The good news is that it currently looks like AP testing will continue with the possibility of test dates pushed later as appropriate.

For us, this means we will continue to prep for our AP test. 

Check back in the next few days as you continue your work with Wuthering Heights. 

In the meantime, work on reading Chapters 10-12.  There will be a "discussion" after Chapter 12 to make sure we are understanding the significance of what's going on.

Victorian Prose Passage Assignment

Due Monday

We will be doing a study of four 19th century prose passages to get us ready for Victorian Era passages. Please  complete these through Google classroom. This packet what you will use for marking the text, but it should be accessible through the Google classroom assignment.


1.  Please write a "know ya boo" style fill in the blank statement for each prompt at the top of the document.


2. Read all passages and mark the text writing down insights into character, inferences, identifying quotations, or anything that would help you develop a complex response to the prompt.

3. Re-read the passage that you are to become an expert on. (Listed by alpha below). Expect that you will be asked to make a comment about your focus passage in class, so make sure you have extra fancy insights for this one. You will need to write down one turn-in-able insight about your passage. (Take me through your claim(s),the quotation(s) that support this, and, why this is interesting.

4. Be prepared to turn your all 4 marked texts in for points.

A-H: Passage 1
I-M: Passage 2
N-R: Passage 3
S-Z: Passage 4

Due Tuesday or Wednesday

Please read through this introduction slideshow on Wuthering Heights.

Then, read chapters 1-8 of Wuthering Heights.

Due Mon/Tues

Please finish your reading of Ros and Guil for Monday or Tuesday.

We are planning on our Drama test on Wed/Thurs of this week.  Approximate question breakdown is available below.

Works covered:  Hamlet, Tartuffe, A Doll’s House, Death of a Salesman, A Raisin in the Sun, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

 Authors of all of the plays

 All character names (correct spelling preferred—or at least close)

 Drama Terms
o aside, soliloquy, monologue, dramatic irony, stichomythia


 Shakespearean Drama Terms and general knowledge
o Groundlings, foil, blank verse, prose

Test format:

100 Questions (Multiple Choice! Can you believe it?)

 23 True/False Questions
 5 event timeline questions for each play
 Quotations identification
 Term identification
 Author Identification
 Character Identification

Practice Quotation ID's below:

1. Almost everyone who goes bad in early in life has a mother who’s a chronic liar.

2. My, my, what lovely lacework on your dress!
The workmanship’s miraculous, no less.
I’ve not seen anything to equal it.

3. Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know
When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows.

5. Tomorrow I’m going home—I mean, home where I came from. It’ll be easier up there to find something to do.

6. It’s hard to be a faithful wife, in short,
To certain husbands of a certain sort,
And he who gives his daughter to a man she hates
Must answer for her sins at Heaven’s gates.

7. If he doesn’t buckle down, he’ll flunk math!

8. Set your mind at rest.
If it is a question of soothsayers, I tell you
That you will find no man whose craft gives knowledge
Of the unknowable.

9. If only we two shipwrecked people could reach across to each other.

10. There’s a vast difference, so it seems to me,
Between true piety and hypocrisy:
How do you fail to see it, may I ask?
Is not a face quite different from a mask?


12. …I oughta be makin’ my future. That’s when I come running home. And now, I get here, and I don’t know what to do with myself.

Reading due Thurs/Friday

Please read Act I of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.  You can pick up a copy from the library, or use an online version if you choose.

Reading due Tuesday/Wednesday

Please finish the play Death of a Salesman for Tuesday/Wednesday.

You will also need to complete the practice questions that have been assigned to you on AP classroom.

Open Ended Essay Analysis Cycle

Link available here.

Reading due Tues/Wed

Please read Act I of a Death of a Salesman for Tuesday/Wednesday.

Reading due Monday

Please read Act I of a Doll's House for Monday.

Tartuffe MOWAAW

Here

Shakespeare Practice Passage

Here is a passage to practice analyzing.  (The passage you want begins on the 2nd page and is about Wolsey)

Here are sample student essays and commentary to help give you a sense of what scores these essays have received.

Time Period Information

There are a few questions on the final about literary time periods.  Much of this we mentioned in passing in class, but you probably want more specifics to study from, so here it is!

Marking the text due Monday and Semester 1 Finals Information

Please complete a marking the text activity (due 1/13) for the passage below.

Hamlet, Act IV, Scene IV

How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
A thought which, quarter’d, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward, I do not know
Why yet I live to say ‘This thing’s to do;'
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do’t. Examples gross as earth exhort me:
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff’d
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour’s at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill’d, a mother stain’d,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!


Final Exam Information

Your final will consist of a fill-in-the-blank objective test and an essay on a Shakespearean passage. More specifics are below.

Objective Component--fill in the blank (70 Questions)

 Poetry Terms
 Poetry Time Periods (basic characteristics of; no identifying quotations)
 Names of Poets of major poems studied in this course (Think papers and discussions)
 Drama Terms
o aside, soliloquy, monologue, dramatic irony

 Shakespearean Drama Terms and general knowledge
o monologue, soliloquy, aside, foil, irony, blank verse, prose.
 Literary Criticism
o New Criticism
o Psychoanalytic Criticism
 Freud’s theories of development
 Short Story Titles
o Quotation Identification: Identify the title
 Short Story Authors
 Short Story and Drama Characters
o Quotation Identification: Identify the speaker
 Short Story Terms
o Point of View, (1st, 3rd limited, 3rd omniscient.) Direct/Indirect Characterization, Internal/External Conflict, foreshadowing
 Existentialism
o Basic Principles and important Writers of…
 Sentence Structures
o periodic, cumulative, etc. (not the fancy ones like anaphora, etc)


Semester 1 Reading List

Poetry(lots)

Living Like Weasels

Yellow Wallpaper
Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
Recitatif
Metamorphosis
Good Country People
Araby
Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

Hamlet

Marking the Text due Thurs/Fri

Here is the sheet that has marking the text strategies for Shakespearean passages.  These are now back from print, so you will get your very own copy in class next time!

Below you will find the text of the speech you need to mark along with a prompt.  Please mark the text with the prompt and the strategies in mind.  For your convenience, you may want to copy and paste into another document and create some usable borders.  Please make sure that as you write things on your text that you are actually writing your analytical thoughts, not just words like "diction" or "pathos".  Your text markings should convey actual ideas in response to the prompt.

Prompt:  In the following speech, King Claudius ponders the consequences of murdering his brother.  Read the speech carefully and consider how Shakespeare uses devices like tone, diction, imagery, syntax, and structure to reveal the king's conflicted state of mind.

(Act III, scene iii, line 39-)

KING CLAUDIUS

Thanks, dear my lord.
Exit POLONIUS
O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon't,
A brother's murder. Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will:
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
And, like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother's blood,
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy
But to confront the visage of offence?
And what's in prayer but this two-fold force,
To be forestalled ere we come to fall,
Or pardon'd being down? Then I'll look up;
My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? 'Forgive me my foul murder'?
That cannot be; since I am still possess'd
Of those effects for which I did the murder,
My crown, mine own ambition and my queen.
May one be pardon'd and retain the offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law: but 'tis not so above;
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In his true nature; and we ourselves compell'd,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence. What then? what rests?
Try what repentance can: what can it not?
Yet what can it when one can not repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay!
Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe!
All may be well.
Retires and kneels