Friday

Performances will be on Wednesday for everyone.

 

Friday class, bring data file of your WLA 1 to revise in class and a thesis idea for WLA 2.

Thursday

For next class, be assured I will give at least 45 minutes from the beginning of class to the Prufrock preparations. If you can, begin reading or rereading your world lit material and cogitate over some good topics. Everyone may proceed with the first choice.

I have asked for the entire group for performance day so that everyone can see the work of the others.

Wednesday

All those who chose One Hundred Years of Solitude (4) or The House of the Spirits (1) as their first choice may proceed.

Tuesday/Wednesday

1. Make a list of your top three choices of world lit books for WLA 2.

2. Reread "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." You will need to be informed about your group's decisions about how the poem is divided up.

3. Write your three interpretive questions from your assigned section of "Tradition and the Individual Talent."

4. Think and work on revising your WLA 1 (no grade or checkup on this).

 

I will take your choices and try to get books into your hands as quickly as possible. Then we will discuss "Tradition." For the last 20 minutes, we will work in groups for "Prufrock."

Also, take note of the deadline. If there is a problem, speak to it NOW!

Wednesday

Complete feedback for WLA 1. Read "Tradition and the Individual Talent." Consider performance possibilities.

Tuesday

Have a happy late start day. Here is the link to the website for Andrew Allen.

I recommend Flight, The Thomas Beale Cipher, and The Emperor of Ice Cream. Most of the rest is commercial in nature.

Read "Tradition and the Individual Talent" for Thursday/Friday. Those who have not finished feedback, finish that up.

Friday

Oral commentaries are Monday and Tuesday, following a long IB tradition of moving back deadlines and running out of time. When I first moved the deadlines on the calendar (and I can hardly stand to look at a calendar), I did not consider election day. Sorry for the nerves.

Thursday

Tomorrow, Friday, both classes meet with Mr. Belk. On Monday, A-day finishes Macbeth and works on commentary prep. On Wednesday, A-day performs commentaries for a major grade. Be certain of partnerships. B-day does all on Tuesday and Thursday.

Thursday

Monday, all students meet with Mr. Belk. Tuesday is Career Day, so please find a great career. Friday, you will all take a test with Mr. Belk. I will see all of you on Wednesday and Thursday. We will finish the movie Macbeth and work on oral commentaries from the play. Be ready to perform the commentary on the first day that you return the following week. See calendar.

Donuts!

Saturday

This is a dark day. Carolina beat number one Alabama, and Clemson lost. I have lived too long.

Thursday

I have yielded to pleading and moved the group performance back one day. The individual performance due date remains unchanged.

Tuesday

See the rubrics and the calendar dates to the right.

Monday/Tuesday

Prepare your group adaptation for October 11-12; prepare your individual recitation for October 15 and 18. See calendar for affirmation.

Thursday/Friday

In addition to finishing the play, shuffle through the pages to find suitable passages of from 20-30 lines in length that express a complete idea that you will memorize and present in a dramatic monologue. Small passages by servants and others can be done by classmates. Choose three passages: one from the first third of the play, one from the second third, and one from the third third. Prioritize them. WE will lock down the passages during next class.

 

Also, with a group of two-four people, choose a crucial portion of the play (again, choose more than one so we don't all do the same portion) and thoroughly modernize the play. Consciously choose setting and thematic highlights.

 

For both performances, prepare a statement of intent with clear context and defined features that govern your dramatic choices.

Wednesday

Everybody: finish the play by Monday/Tuesday.

Monday

Tuesday's class will not be quizzed or tested in any way, but please read through Act III before the next class period.

Wednesday

Read Act II for Friday/Monday.

Thursday

For Wednesday/Thursday, read Act I of Macbeth. If possible, watch Scarface. Think of a good movie date.

Note slight changes to "Project"

See post "Project" of September 8 below. It has been fleshed out a little, and a time limit has been imposed.

Wednesday

Both A and B day, bring STUFF to work on for your projects!

Project

The date for performance or presentation of your projects is Monday/Tuesday, September 20/21.
1. Identify work and author
2. Contextualize the passage and read aloud, or read select portions that will make sense.
3. Show what literary element, device, style choices, or other artistic methodology you notice in the extract.
4. Tell your intentions as specifically as possible, like a "statement of intent."
5. Perform or display your work.
6. Stand for questions.
7. Assessment: Columns A and B of the oral commentary rubric adjusted to 100-point scale. Detailed evidence and analysis must show.
8. Time limits: minimum five minutes; maximum ten minutes (-10 if outside limits)

For Friday/Monday

Reset: Find a passage you think is crucial in Heart of Darkness. Find something important about the methods, the ways by which Conrad communicates ideas and creates effects. Plan an alternative way to highlight these methods creatively. Have your passage and idea on Friday/Monday. Plan also to set the due date for the final work.

Wednesday

Remember to bring in your findings on the assigned passages: you are looking for images, image patterns (imagery), and making hypotheses about symbols.

Donuts are holey

Please remember to bring a buck if you want some dough.

 

Nuts, that is.

Monday

For Wednesday/Thursday, finish Heart of Darkness. Study the literary terms that are in the right hand column. You will need to use these terms next class.

Friday

OK, yall, look at the blog. You will find two versions of Heart of Darkness that are searchable. You can copy text from them too, so you do not have to write out anything as long as you have access to a printer. Commentary passages should be between 25-40 lines, so it will almost always print on a single page. Look on the right for a downloadable .pdf. Further down, under "Handy Dandy Links," you will find an internet link to an online version of the same novella. (Look up "novella" and use that word when referring to this little book).

Thursday

For Monday/Tuesday, read all of Part II, at least. Continue to note Marlow's attitude, the role of women and the imagery surrounding them, and the "impressionistic" method employed in the novella.

Thursday addendum

Donut notes: Those Krispy Kremes will be in NEXT Friday, not tomorrow! Sorry about that. However, Mr. Belk says ok for his room next Friday.

Tuesday

For Thursday/Friday, choose one extract from Part I of H of D. The extract should be between 25 and 40 lines in length. Annotate it independently as you did the first extract in class with a partner.

Annotate your extract in the following ways (at least):

1. Give a name to the point of view.
2. Identify, as clearly as possible, the speaker or speakers in your extract.
3. Note the structure of your extract as a whole, within paragraphs, and within selected sentences. Point out any movement or changes that occur (in anything!) through the course of your extract.
4. Using at least four different colors, mark things that you think, for some reason, can and perhaps should be grouped together. (Anything to do with darkness, for instance, or all complex similes, or the author's or the speaker's use of color -- like yellow).
5. After you have done this, provide a legend for your markup that shows what each color indicates: label or categorize the each color.
6. Star any striking or powerful phrase, sentence, or passage.
7. After all, note any changes you see in the speaker's or speakers' attitude.

Friday

Read pages 3-31 in H of D; paraphrase the designated passage about the "glow."

Consider WLA 2. You may see some descriptions of the variety of assignments available in the guide that is posted to your right on this web page as "IB Handbook." Check page 30 of the paper edition or page 33 of the .pdf for initial guidance. The rubric is the same as for WLA 1.

Wednesday

I'm so glad you're here. For your next class, print off one copy of the syllabus and present it in class. Also, be prepared to enter your email into my invitations list so that you can contribute to the blog from time to time. For Friday/Monday, bring in a notebook of the kind I showed you.

Read!

P.S. Third block ends for seniors, upstairs A-hall, at 1:27.

The Graduation Blues with DADDY

Thursday, for Paper Two

Remember that the significant difference between Paper One and Paper Two is that the rubric for Paper Two has a "response to the question" section. The question you choose is not a prompt or suggestion but a question you do need to answer with evidence from two of the four poets: Marvell, Coleridge, Tennyson, and Neruda. Now, go do what you came for! (It's good to have a few key fragments of some poems to pull out when you might need them...things like "But at my back I always hear/ Time's winged chariot hurrying near" or "Water, water everywhere,/ And all the boards did shrink./ Water, water, everywhere,/ And not a drop to drink." You can then say lots about meter, rhyme, and line length just on that basis, at least with this particular poem.)

When the Paper Two instructions mention "works," you should regard that as the body of poems by a particular poet. Your knowledge of "works" should be informed by the part of your research we called "philosophical points applied to poems." Use a variety of poems to illustrate your answer, not just one.

Wednesday

See posts from below, reprinted here:
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Wednesday

Clearly this is a day late, but you should be doing your assignments on "Khubla Khan" and, after today, Tennyson's "Ulysses."

The nearly complete poetry pack is on Dropbox, and I will embed "Khubla Khan" and "Ulysses" right here by the end of the day.
Posted by Mr. Koon at 8:20 AM 0 comments
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Wednesday

SL students: bring in your projects for presentation on Friday/Monday. All others, listen to and score your oral.


Complete your follow-up to the structural awareness activity on "To His Coy Mistress."

The questions:
1. With two genii, arrange the poem you have received into what you think constitutes the best poem possible with the material.

2. Describe the rhyme scheme.

3. Describe the metrical pattern and write a scansion of two lines.

4. Describe, neatly and in logical order, your group's process for determining where each line goes. Who suggested what? What was the very first thing you did when you saw this cut up mess? Use paragraph form with appropriate transitions to link sentence to sentence (first, next, then, however -- that sort of thing).

5. Write your rationale for grouping the lines as you do. This part differs from process; it is not what you thought and in what order. It is a justification for the poem standing as you have arranged it.

Poem is to your right.

Tuesday

The calendar is to the right. It is to be trusted: A-day goes tomorrow.

Friday

Fine tune of assignment: You can have, as you present, ONLY copies of the poems, statements from your world-class critics, and the rubric. To compensate, your due date has been rolled back one week to Wednesday/Thursday, April 28-29. Early presentations are welcome and encouraged with a five-point bonus on the percentage score for the presentation.

Tuesday

An oral display of staggering erudition is due on Tuesday/Wednesday of next week.

 

Interested parties should look at the Voice of Democracy oral essay contest! More here soon.

Tuesday

Freud says the consciousness is a filter. It filters out the noise of omnipresent stimuli so that we can find meaning and sense. Consider in light of Coleridge.

Friday

I collected some art from the web that was inspired by Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott." See it to the right just below the calendar. The pictures are of random size, so it is a little weird. If you download the file and view it in Adobe Acrobat Reader, it looks much better.

Thursday

A-day students: I understand your concern about mock exam paper 2. The works posted on this page are eligible works. Apply the IB Poetry Prep sheet, embedded to the right, to each of these, or even to two of them. If you make exhaustive notes and study hard, you will do well by any standard on paper 2. You may also skim through the poetry pack, embedded just to the right on this blog, and choose any poems you like to apply the IB Poetry Prep questions to.

Just for this mock exam, you may also use the poetry of Eliot. You will NOT be able to use Eliot for the real exam in May, but I score these tests, so I know exactly what you have been prepared for. Study, worry as you would for any exam, but do not stress about having too little preparation because the preparer is the scorer.

Look here if you want a heads up on Paper 1. Apply the IB Poetry Prep to it and be prepared!

Wednesday

Clearly this is a day late, but you should be doing your assignments on "Khubla Khan" and, after today, Tennyson's "Ulysses."

 

The nearly complete poetry pack is on Dropbox, and I will embed "Khubla Khan" and "Ulysses" right here by the end of the day.

Wednesday

SL students: bring in your projects for presentation on Friday/Monday. All others, listen to and score your oral.

Complete your follow-up to the structural awareness activity on "To His Coy Mistress."

The questions:
1. With two genii, arrange the poem you have received into what you think constitutes the best poem possible with the material.

2. Describe the rhyme scheme.

3. Describe the metrical pattern and write a scansion of two lines.

4. Describe, neatly and in logical order, your group's process for determining where each line goes. Who suggested what? What was the very first thing you did when you saw this cut up mess? Use paragraph form with appropriate transitions to link sentence to sentence (first, next, then, however -- that sort of thing).

5. Write your rationale for grouping the lines as you do. This part differs from process; it is not what you thought and in what order. It is a justification for the poem standing as you have arranged it.

Poem is to your right.

Find format guide

on Dropbox. It is called "WLATitle.body.wc.format.doc"

 

Look at it carefully and format accordingly. Note the translators included in the works cited.

Tuesday

Be sure to read yesterday's posting first; bring in electronic copies to review in class Wednesday.

 

DO NOT EXPECT ANY EMAILED PAPERS to count toward your WLA 1 or WLA 2. You must have printed copies of both papers with you on Friday.

 

Good luck, but do it right!

Deadline

On my last handout I gave you a deadline of March 10 because of an IBO deadline of March 15. However, Mrs. Cox has clarified: that is not enough time to ensure their timely arrival. It is clear that these papers must be completely finished and in the mail by Monday. Thus, the DEADLINE is Friday, March 5, and that deadline is DEAD! Papers printed, formatted, proofread, and signed.

Bring in electronic copies of WLA 1 and WLA 2 for final packaging NEXT CLASS PERIOD!

Friday, Part Deux

The following people have no record of WLA 2 in the gradebook: SC, KD, JG, NL, AM, IS, DS, WT. From A-day: AB, AC, ME, JJ, CK, IM, BM, AM, DP, LY.

 

That's a lot.

Friday

I have WLA 2 papers that I cannot identify. Please check in if this could be you.

Thursday

SL students with Powerpoints or videos: I need some kind of evidence that you have drafted your project well. A printout of the slides or some equivalent would be good, perhaps with a statement outlining what you plan to say.

Monday

Post comments if you have questions in class and I will do my best to respond to them before day's end. Remember that your intermediate deadline is Thursday; for B-day, it is Friday. I changed this to equalize the number of classes for each block.

Be sure to sign up for orals!

Thursday

Bring materials to work on your WLA 2 assignment. A-day, have a working thesis and a plan to discuss with me tomorrow. B-day, you have the same things on Monday. On the 15th and 16th, have a draft of your paper completed for review in class.

Wednesday

Revisit, in your notes pertaining to oral commentaries, your section on THEME. Be sure you are exposing a statement the extract or work makes about a thematic idea. A theme is not "isolation" but "Urban accumulation creates an unresolvable isolation" or "Vast accumulations of knowledge in the modern world create a new kind of ignorance." See, it's universal (can fit several works of art, not just "Preludes") and makes a statement. Moreover, it allows a thesis to "move." You prove a point. A thesis then might read, "Eliot uses blah, blah, and blah to reveal that the city brings people together only to isolate them still further" or "...that all our knowledge of one another is partial and fragmented but is still bridgeable by strenuous exercise of imagination."

Tuesday

Both the WLA 2 assignment and the "Additional Ideas for SL" assignments are in Dropbox.

 

Orals the week of February 22 (SL focus on Conrad and Shakespeare).

WLA 2 or alternative week of March 1. Plan for intermediate deadline around the 15th. Bring materials and thesis idea to class tomorrow.

Tuesday

Yall: These oral commentary notes are not to be scratchy little scant things. You should have an EXHAUSTIVE ANALYSIS of your extracts written in a neat and orderly arrangement, preferably typed and well-formatted, with examples tied to ideas.

Tuesday

Have your notes neatly laid out when you come to class on Wednesday/Thursday. I will take up the notes you use.

Tuesday

See calendar: oral commentaries on selected texts next week.