5 May - Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

English 11

A good start to the week for us today as we worked through WEB DuBois and the end of our preparation for the Reading SOL on Thursday morning. Remember that on the SOL you'll have a lot of passages to read and then to answer questions about. The questions will range in type from vocabulary to literary devices to theme and topic type questions. Over the last few lessons, I've been trying to show you different types of texts and ask you the sorts of questions that you'll see on Thursday. Hopefully, you're well prepared.

On Wednesday, you'll finish your review and submit your two review assignments - The Game Plan and the Review Bank. I've gotten a great guest teacher who will go over strategies and sample items to help prepare you. On Friday, we'll take some time to reflect and review before finishing up our Drama Project work. 

As always, reach out with any questions or concerns. Remember that at the end of the year it is important to not miss any assignments. Make them up as soon as you can! Also, continue to revise assignments as you want to so that you get to the achievement level that you want in this class. See you soon!

Homework for the Weekend - A Day - 15 November

AP English III

Today in class we had our timed writing/reassessment on rhetorical analysis. I think that this one was a relatively straight forward one to flex our muscles and show that we all understand how to complete an analysis. I'll have them scored and grades posted/updated by the end of the weekend.

After that, we worked through a quick discussion of a few of our poets as a way to reflect on our understanding of the ideas of double consciousness and the veil from Dubois's From the Souls of Black Folk. These concepts are highly important as we move into Beloved since we'll be seeing these ideas (as well as others) being used by Morrison to communicate her arguments about slavery and racism as it pertains to women.

For tonight, you have another fantastic author - James Baldwin - who will explore his own experiences with the veil and double consciousness through his piece "Notes of a Native Son." The article is in our Google Classroom page. You're reading only the first section. As you read and annotate consider where you see the veil, double consciousness, and family. Consider how family is part of Baldwin's overall argument related to racism/the veil/double consciousness. This is a very angry text - I hope that you'll be able to appreciate why Baldwin feels the way he does. Here's a clip from a documentary about James Baldwin called I Am Not Your Negro which gives a bit more insight into him.

Be sure to bring Beloved with you next class as we will begin our study of the novel.

English IV

Today in class we worked through a bit more of Act III, focused on vocabulary work, and then we began developing our projects in class. Hopefully you were able to finish our planning and make one of your project choices. Next class we'll be focusing in on this project more!

Additionally, some of you are missing a major assignment. It's important that this assignment is completed on Monday or Tuesday. Please come during lunch if you are missing the Act I Quiz.

We'll be done with A Doll's House in the next few classes. You should review your notes for our final test on the book and you should be working on the three elements of your project. Remember that your project and your test will have the same amount of points, so a good project score is a way to outweigh a bad test grade.