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.