Happy Spring

AP English Language
Spring Break

You must pay for the AP exam today, or see me immediately.
Q: Should people who opt out of the AP Exam be entitled to the weighted grade of an AP class? What do you think?

Over the break, you have three responsibilities for this class:

• Your main focus is your book review. Your book needs to be read, and your review needs to be drafted by April 1. That is not an April Fools Day joke. You must come to class on Tuesday with a good, working draft, typed and correctly formatted, about 80% complete.

• I am grading the vocabulary worksheet this weekend. The words I see when I print the spreadsheet tonight are the words I will evaluate.

• Please create a “poster” 5.5’ X 8.5” for your vocab word that has the word (largest thing on the page), the definition, the source, and an example. Use your skills with pen/ink or the computer to make your “poster” attractive. Landscape or portrait OK; that’s up to you. The word itself is what must dominate the space. These “posters” are tiny, though, so don’t go crazy. Both of your words will fit on one sheet of paper, but do cut the page in half so each word has it's own space. I will distribute colored paper today.

When you return, the WASC committee will be here, and I will be busy with some responsibilities related to Mayfair’s accreditation process. You: please look alert and ready to talk to adults.

➢ Monday, March 31: SSR – The Awakening – receive MC packet
➢ Tuesday, April 1: Drafts of Book Review due in class, Peer review and discussion.
➢ Wednesday, April 2: Revision techniques. Sentence patterns I want you to master and incorporate into your paper.
➢ Thursday, April 3: First discussion day for The Awakening. Lecture, background. Whole class discussion of the book through Robert’s sudden departure. MC packet corrected and turned in.
➢ Friday, April 4: Paper due. Vocabulary words and examples on a Powerpoint presentation. Discussion and study guide for first in a series of vocab quizzes.
➢ After school Friday, April 4, 3:00 to 6:15 pm: first practice AP Exam.

Today's Sample (a little yucky)

Scratch outline for The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

Author background – Maxine Hong Kingston
Chinese-american
Professor writer
Bay area
China Men
The Fifth Book of Peace (twice)

Woman Warrior
Organizational structure
Chapter organization – loosely linked
Myth, fact, dream, storytelling “talk story”

Voice – weaving of the narrative

Sample narrative to analyze

I. Context of book
a. Woman Warrior one of several books
b. It’s place in her “life work”
c. Discuss as untraditional memoir

II. Weaving of Myth with traditional storytelling
a. Ghosts
b. “women warriors”
c. Technique to demonstrate difficulty of being a “good Chinese-american girl”

III. difficulty of assimiliation
a. what it means to be an American
b. Fa Mu Lan versus high school student
c. Living up to parental expectations

IV. How writers “create” their lives

Literary Terms Dictionary Links

Look at hard these college students work on THEIR dictionary. Geez. Check them out here.

Did you know there were this many rhetorical terms? Yes, the field is vast.

Gale is always a good source. I like their stuff.

Virtual salt? Yes indeed.

Book Review Help

I found this website which I found helpful; maybe you will too. Please note the links at the bottom of the page.

Vocabulary Assignment

Here is the link to the Google document that we will all edit and work on together. You have to receive your invitation; I will have TAs work on this all day on Monday, so you should have the invitation in your email by Monday night.

Book Review Assignment

Hi Kids!

It's time to crack open a book -- we have a book review project that will take you 6 weeks to complete. First step: choose a nonfiction book of LITERARY MERIT, and start reading! During the month of March, we'll enjoy SSR Mondays -- that's FIVE Mondays in a row where your only responsibility is to read your book, to annotate and take notes, and to discover what it is to write a book review (it will be an argument; describe your book; make your case for/against or negotiate a border; support it with textual evidence; use appeals [logos, ethos, pathos]; use rhetorical moves to convince your reader to read the book or to fling it into the deep blue sea).

To get full credit for SSR Monday, you must read THE SAME BOOK, and make progress, week after week.

This Shelfari page has 63 titles that would be appropriate; Shannon Manquero, our sharp-as-a-tack Library Lady, will help me add to this list as we go along...plus, you have input! If you find a book that you think would be appropriate (AP level), bring it to my attention and I'll give you a thumbs up or down.

Have fun choosing a book to read...there's quite a diverse collection on this Shelfari page. You must have a book selected by the first SSR Monday, which is March 3rd.

Finally: get ready for The Awakening. That is a quick but important little novel that we will whip through in about 3 weeks; we'll check that out the week of February 25.