Week of April 25th

Monday - the Romantics and The World is too Much With Us

Tuesday - guest speaker: Matt Rader Don't forget about the Poetry Cafe @ 7pm.

Wednesday - Free Verse Project Bring your cameras! Poem pararaph due.

Thursday - Rennaisance and Review of Terms - more TBA

Friday - Post Modernity and Parody - More TBA

NEXT WEEK: Poetry Test, Finishing Lit. Circles... and a really big essay

Friday, April 23rd

Word of the Day - Kaizen - a Japanese word for continuous improvement in business, manufacturing and all manner of industry and management. The term can be used in other contexts, as well.

1) Silent Reading

2) Hand-in Poetry Journal

3) Where is your poem paragraph at?

What makes for a powerful paragraph anyway?
Pairs: Write down three things

What are some common errors that you can look for?

Pairs: Write down three things.

4) Six Point Scale - Grading Examples

5) Delve In Model

6) Time to re-draft your paragraph with a partner.

HOMEWORK: Rough draft and paragraph due Monday.

Earth Day! Thursday, April 27th.

Quote of the Day:

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
there is a rapture on the lonely shore,
there is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, byt nature more."
~~Lord Byron, from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

In honour of Earth Day, 2010, I have pledged to go paperless. So, today everything you need to do is posted here and inside our elevens network.

Today is our Literature Circle Day in the library. Many of the groups have lit up with discussions. PARTICIPATE. SHARE YOUR THINKING.

Take a look at the Rubric and the Discussion Starters for ideas. Remember that we will only check into our Lit. Circles one more time online. Then, the groups will close and you will have a final assignment to complete. By next week, you need to have finished reading the entire novel.

Today's Tasks:

1. All
   Online discussion forums are more and more the way of the future of education. Colleges and universities, in particular, are heading towards more and more online work. Given this, take a look at your group participation so far. Think about how you could do more. Then, do it. Discuss more, say more, read more. If your group members are not participating, talk to them, email them...
2. Peruse your shared resources - find the best two quotes about the book or something related to the book. Put them in the Resources Discussion.
   
3. Roles

Discussion Director - Look at all of the discussions so far and post a discussion that will really shake your group up. You can be controversial, inflammatory... whatever works to spark some new ideas about the book you are reading.

Connection Maker - What are the connections we are missing? You should have thought about text-to-text connections, text-to-self connections and text-to-world connections. Add in a new layer of connections. One possible new connection, is to look at the author's life and make connections.

Passage Picker - for the 1/2 - 3/4 check in on the novel, decide what quotes/scenes are most important to note. Explain why they are important.

Summarizer - summarize the novel from the halfway point to 3/4 of the way through.

TOMORROW: Hand-in your journals and your paragraph about the poem you have selected to read.

Wednesday, April 21st

Word of the Day:

1) Silent Reading

2) Let's get the poetry journal organized. Here's the rubric.
Let's figure out all the work you should have in it so far... I'll take it in on Friday, for a first round of marking. Then, again, at the end of the month.

3) Understanding the poem you will read aloud. Mark up one copy to answer the questions to ask of the poem. The other copy as a "script" for how you will read.

4) Poem Paragraph - writing about poetry is not easy. Your task is to write a 8-12 sentence paragraph about the poem you have selected - you must organize your thesis around your understanding of the theme. /12 Let's do tell the truth but tell it slant on the over head together....

Example #1 Example #2

Library time to work today - bring it in on Friday...

Tomorrow: Lit Circle tasks.

Tuesday, April 20th

Silent Reading

The power of sounds...

Finding a poem to read aloud...

Wednesday, April 13th

Library Day - Literature Circle Tasks

Tuesday, April 13th

Quote of the Day: "Take away love and the Earth is a tomb." ~ Robert Browning

1) Silent Reading

2) Test Marks and Homework from Friday...

3) Victorian Generation

• This includes all literature produced during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837 - 1901).
  
• The link between the high antics of Romanticism and the more bleak poetry of the modernists.


• It was really the novel that was getting all the attention at the time - Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, the Bronte Sisters were producing some of the first mass printed and mass consumed novels ever.
  
• The Victorians liked the finer things - ornate decorations, ornate clothing, a life of imagination... party games like charades and group story-telling were invented in this time period.

One of the most famous love stories between two poets comes out of this era. The Brownings - Elizabeth Barret Browning and Robert Browning.

Elizabeth's most remembered poems are her love sonnets. Anyone ever written a love poem? (She wrote 44 for her husband and kept them in secret for years).
Let's take a look at one:
Before we do - Speed Dating Lines Activity.

How do I Love Thee? Use the Questions to ask a Poem handout. Class Discussion.

4) Sonnet types (on board). Look at your nonsense poem from yesterday... can you turn your 14 lines into a structured sonnet?

5) Sonnet Worksheet - I hate worksheets. Blah. But, the poem is good...

Tomorrow - Lit. Circles in Library
Thursday - Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" and dramatic monologues, in general.