Lit Analysis Mindmap

Today, I led all three periods in a brainstorm of all the books we've read in all our English classes -- all the way back to freshman year. You know, those stories that are sitting in the back of your brain, on which you probably couldn't sit down and write an essay cold right this minute, but maybe if you read one or two literature analyses to refresh your memory, you just might be able to. As of now (Wednesday, 6:18 pm) this is still a work in progress, but if you see it now, that means you can see it updated in real time! You can find the list of books from previous classes if you scroll directly up from center. Click here to see the mindmap in all its fullscreen glory, or check out the preview below. Enjoy!

February 3

Since today was an early out, the only things we had time for were the journal and a quiz on lit terms list 4. Tonight, we need to read the Wikipedia article for Catch-22. That's all 'till next time, folks!

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.

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!

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!

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.

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!

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 2^nd 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!

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).

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."

December 9

Today, Dr. Preston started off class by talking to us about journals and homework. Dr. Preston recommends that everyone take their journals home over the break, in order to review them (personally, I've found that my journals are a good source of personal statement fodder) and/or write more on the prompts that you feel could be improved. The same goes for our blogs-- if you're missing assignments, or just wanna fix that one post that you totally BS'ed at 2:00 in the morning to get it done (we've all been there), you're more than welcome to improve them over the break and resubmit it to Dr. Preston. After all, the school calendar may be ending, but in Dr. Preston's words, "Your learning calendar never stops."

Then Dr. Preston passed back some graded papers. BTW, if you REALLY want his grading system converted to letter grades, here it is:

✓+ :)	A
✓+	A-
✓ (comment)	B
✓	B or C

After that, Dr. Preston asked for volunteers to bring food for our finals period/party, so if you were absent today and want to bring food, you should send Dr. Preston an email. Same goes if you have specific logistics requirements for your final (ex. fridge for food, room opened early for setup, space to store your baking soda volcano, large amounts of paper towels and/or Windex to clean up mess made by said volcano, etc.) and didn't get a chance to tell Dr. Preston today.

Also, if you're looking for a reason to come to school on Dummy Day, Dr. Preston will be available for individual conferences about grades/English/whatever with anyone who's interested.

Besides our final showcase, we have one more assignment this semester: write a time-capsule email to the future you at futureme.org. Then you'll write a blog post entitled "LIFE AFTER THIS BLOG POST," but don't copy-paste your email to publish on your blog (well, unless you really want to). Instead, write about the *experience* of writing the email to yourself.

December 6

Today Dr. Preston started off class by saying something cryptic about a group that walks among us that's about to shake things up. So be on the watch, folks!

After that, we did our journals, of course (and it happened to be the last journal topic of 2013! Can you believe that?).

Then we each filled out an evaluative introspection, and for the rest of the period we talked with our groups about our final presentations, which will be Wednesday for 3rd period and Thursday for 4th and 5th. If you'd like a tool for communication with your group, our shoutboxes are still up for grabs!

December 4 & 5

On Wednesday and Thursday, we busted our brains out on the vocab and essay finals, respectively. 'Nuff said.

Oh, except also you should follow Dr. Preston on Twitter. Now 'nuff said :)

December 2

This post is a little late but I figured later is better than never (:
On Monday, December 2nd, we started off with our journal as usual then Dr. Preston discussed what we would be doing for the rest of the semester. He said that on Wednesday we would be having our vocabulary final and on Thursday we would be having an in-class essay; also that we will be presenting our English presentations during finals week.

November 25

Today was mostly a group day to talk about No Exit, our literature groups, and vocab. Tomorrow we'll be having a vocab quiz, so be sure and study! No Exit is due tomorrow also.

BTW: have you noticed our pretty shoutbox in the sidebar? Everyone's welcome to use it for questions, announcements, suggestions/bug reports for RAM, etc. I was also thinking, wouldn't it be cool if there was a page here with a bunch of shoutboxes on it, and if you wanted a shoutbox for your literature circle group you could "claim" one for your own use? I used 5th period as a focus group to test this idea, and they said they thought it would be really helpful. So, taadaaa! The shoutboxes are there for the taking :)

November 22

Today, Dr. Preston started off class by reminding us to have fun during our senior year, and try not to get too caught up in homework/college/scholarship apps/etc. And, if you're having trouble keeping up in English, let him know.

Also, he pointed out this post on his blog, saying that if anyone's interested in becoming a professional writer, talk to him.

Then we took some notes on No Exit. Here's the gist of mine:

• written by Jean Paul Sartre, a French writer, intellectual, and existentialist
• existentialism is concerned with the question, what is the purpose/meaning of our lives?
• what is important/meaningful and why?
• disorientation/confusion in absurd life
• "existence precedes essence"
• Descartes remix-- I am, therefore I think I am
• in No Exit, 3 people (btw, they don't like each other) are sitting in a room, trying to figure out meaning/nature of reality for themselves
• famous line, "Hell is other people."
• Sartre quote: "Men are condemned to be free."
• meaning, freedom requires work! independence isn't easy, we're usually dependent on instruction and characterized by limitation
• for homework, we need to read No Exit, take notes on the story, and answer the questions within the text.
• notes and questions/answers can be put in the same blog post, due Tuesday, 11/26
• as we're reading, we should be drawing parallels between No Exit and the Allegory of the Cave (hint hint essay hint)

November 20

Today we wrote an essay about Plato's "The Allegory of the Cave" and we took a vocabulary quiz (from vocab lists three, four, five, and seven). Because the vocabulary quiz and the essay took the whole class period, we did not have time to write in our journals (unless you wrote yours after the quiz and the essay). So if you didn't write your journal in class, make sure to do so for homework!

November 19

Today we journeyed to the library to check out Tale of Two Cities/Great Expectations with our groups. At the moment, Dr. Preston hasn't specifically told us to start reading, but that doesn't mean you can't!

After that, Dr. Preston gave us some background on Plato/"Allegory of the Cave." Here's the gist of my notes--

• dialectic: formal argument between two people (you can tell because it starts with "di" like "dialogue") about the nature of truth
• (btw, argument ≠ conflict; the modern connotation is sometimes misleading)
• Plato was the son of a wealthy family, and was destined for a life of politics
• he also became a student of Socrates
• when Socrates got in trouble with the government for "corrupting the youth," Plato became a teacher to carry on Socrates's legacy so his way of thinking wouldn't die with him
• Plato used the dialectic format because he believed it was the best way to write
• he used Socrates' name as a way of paying homage to him
• the other character, Glaucon, is Plato's brother; as the author, he didn't want to insert himself into the dialectic, but using his brother's name is a pretty close second
• Plato's philosophy states that real understanding only comes from intellectual pursuit
• humans are unable to understand truth through the senses only, because what we see ≠ reality (shadows on the cave wall)
• reality requires logic and study to see/understand (the prisoners couldn't understand the outside just by hearing about it; you actually have to SEE the sun and GO outside for yourself to get it)
• furthermore, you can't learn from experience, only from reflecting on experience
• Dr. Preston mentioned "extended metaphor," but didn't explain it-- from the Norton Anthology of Poetry website, extended metaphors are "[d]etailed and complex metaphors that extend over a long section of a poem." From changingminds.org, "An extended metaphor is one where there is a single main subject to which additional subjects and metaphors are applied." I also found a slideshow here which explains it very nicely.

November 15

Today Dr. Preston told us about this weekend's mindmap collaboration. The class voted on MindMeister as the preferred platform, so this weekend Dr. Preston will send an email invite to everyone so we can all collaborate (if you didn't get an invite, just send an email to Dr. Preston and he'll [re]send it). The text of the article is copied to an etherpad for students to claim their paragraphs, and the mindmap itself lives here.

As for next week, here's an outline:

• Monday: it's an early out, so we'll have a rather short in-class review of "Allegory of the Cave." (Also, at lunch is the meeting for the new collaborative working group, "The Game.")
• Tuedsay: in-class essay on "Allegory of the Cave." (At lunch is the meeting for the new collaborative working group, "Mentors and Educators.")
• Wednesday: the official start of the literature circles mentioned in today's agenda. The first time Dr. Preston did this, the only two choices were A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations: two novels by the same author, but on very different themes. However, that was before Class of 2013's Sarah Gutierrez stormed into the room and declared, "I'm not done with Shakespeare yet!" So, Dr. Preston added Henry V to the list (in Dr. Preston's words, "Open-source learning is like your friend who always says 'yes.'") So, make sure your group agrees on a book (or agrees to disagree-- yet another option is to read two different novels within your group) by our class library trip on Wednesday.
• UPDATE: loljk. switch Tuesday & Wednesday (except for the lunch meeting).

Dr. Preston also said he was impressed at how many great articles everyone suggested for the mindmap, so we might also be having additional "Article of the Week" mindmaps in the future for anyone who's interested.

November 14

Today in class, we started off by looking at the recent posts on Dr. Preston's blog. Dr. Preston also told us that we should vote in order to choose which mindmap platform we preferred (the poll is located at the right side of Dr. Preston's blog) Here's a picture for those of you who can't find it. The poll is boxed in red:

He also informed us that he will have another poll in order to vote for the article that we will read and discuss on the mindmap platform. After discussing the polls, we started reading and discussing "Allegory of the Cave."