Monday, January 27, 2014

January 27

As usual, we started of with a journal. After the journal, we took our literature terms test and graded the tests. After, we talked about the homework and the assignments due this week.
REMINDER: Literarure terms (List #4) is due this Friday (Jan 31st).
Literature analysis #1 is also due this Friday (Jan 31st).
Make sure to watch Dr. Tony William's lecture and take notes and post them to your blog.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

January 21

Today, we wrote an in-class essay on the St. Crispin's Day speech, which doubled as a lit terms quiz. It took the entire period, so that's about it for today!

Monday, January 20, 2014

January 15-17

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were filled mostly with St. Crispin's Day speeches. If you feel like you could do better on your recitation if you had a second chance, feel free to record yourself reciting it and post to your blog. Also, even if you never got the speech memorized totally, make sure you know it well enough to write an essay about it on Tuesday! To learn about the context of the speech, see here; to learn about how the essay (and more importantly the AP exam) will be graded, see here.

Reminder: the first Literature Analysis of the semester is due at the end of next week (1/31) — make sure you're working on it now so you don't have to mad dash Thursday night!

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

January 14

In order to prepare for our St. Crispin's Day Speech, we were given a free day to work on memorizing the speech, journals, literary terms, or whatever else we needed to work on.

Monday, January 13, 2014

January 13

Today, we did a lit terms test. Aaaaaaaaaand that's about it. Early outs for the win and/or lose (depending on your opinion, let's just make this as ambiguous as possible so everyone agrees with me)

BTdubs: as we're nearing the AP Exam in May, it would probably be smart for us (as individuals and as a class) to focus on literature analysis books that have been used often on the AP exam to ensure ourselves the best chance possible of having the perfect book to write about for any given prompt. Lucky for us, Maddi has a good idea of each period going over one of the top 3 books as a class. What do y'all think?

P.S. Wanna know who's read what? Check it out!

Friday, January 10, 2014

January 10

I'm guessing today turned into a smattering of different things for the different periods, so I'll just talk about third, and if someone from fourth and/or fifth wants to contribute in the comments, you're more than welcome!

After our journal, Becky told us about Calvin Terrell's presentation (if anyone who was filming that today uploaded it to youtube, could you comment with the link?).

Then, since only a few people actually looked for the lit terms in the Siddhartha passage, we spent some class time to search for them in groups. We'll have a quiz on the first lit terms list on Monday.

After that, we watched the St. Crispin's Day Speech from Henry V, which we need to have memorized by Wednesday, January 15 (which is also the date of the Financial Aid Workshop in the cafeteria during 2nd period — you can stop by the College & Career Center for a prearranged absence form).

In the last two-or-so minutes of class, we marvelled at Dr. Preston's mini me. If you missed that, check it out!

Thursday, January 9, 2014

January 9

Today in class, we did something special with our journals. After answering today's prompt, we each exchanged our journals with a classmate. We read our partners' journals, and wrote commentary answering four questions:
  1. What was your first impression?
  2. How was it organized?
  3. How was the style/tone/diction?
  4. How did the mechanics (spelling, punctuation, capitalization, etc.) work?
Then we read our commentary back to our partner so we could hear how others perceive our writing. I actually thought it was really interesting to hear the commentary — not just on mine, but also on the others that people around the room shared with the class.

The homework tonight is slightly different than what Dr. Preston originally wrote in today's post — first, we need to reread the Siddhartha passage and see if we can find any of the literary terms from this week's list. Next is items 2, 3, and 4 from the post (copy-pasted here for convenience): "Search for AP Literature/Composition questions on Siddhartha and find five multiple choice/essay questions worth asking. What do these questions tell you about the AP exam? What do you need to "see" when you read a passage? In a post titled "AP PREP POST 1: SIDDHARTHA,"
  • a) list the five questions you chose and the URLs where you found them;
  • b) answer the five questions to the best of your ability (if you listed an interesting question that you can't answer because it's not covered in the passage, explain what information you'd need to do a proper job);
  • c) explain what the questions tell you about the skills/content you need to master for the AP exam."
Those are the only two assignments for today (we don't need to worry about the SMART goals until later).

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

January 8

First day of the second semester! No, make that the LAST semester. Seriously. In only a few months we'll have graduated. Isn't that crazy?

Today, Dr. Preston introduced the second semester for us. This semester even more than the last one, we'll be immersing ourselves in Open Source Learning. Dr. Preston said that if he tried to tell us to completely do Open Source Learning from the start, it wouldn't have really meant anything to us, and would have just been another assignment for us to forget about. But by now, with a semester's introduction, we can actually commit to it (but only if you, as an individual, are motivated to!).

For all 12 years of our mandatory schooling, our teachers have provided us with structured learning which we've either gone along with, or not. However, as soon as we turn 18 and graduate, much of that structure is taken away, and we'll be left responsible for our own selves and our own minds. After 12 years of being motivated primarily for A's, NOT for learning itself, how are we supposed to make that transition? Luckily for us, we have this semester in AP English with our buddy Open Source Learning to help with that.

...Which brings us to our homework assignment, a blog post entitled "HACKING MY EDUCATION." This semester, we'll be pursuing many of our own individual learning goals, or as Dr. Preston put it, "making the course work for us instead of making ourselves work for the course." To that end, tonight's assignment is to determine what it is YOU want to learn.

In your blog post, please answer these three questions:
  1. What do I want to know?
  2. What experiences do I want to have under my belt?
  3. What skills do I want to demonstrate?
These could be in reference to a future college major, career, personal passion, or...?

If you change your mind during the semester, you're more than welcome to repost as "Hacking My Education Part II."