A symbolic connection:

Today, after listening to Tim O'Brien read his story "Ambush," Marc asked, "Isn't the Vietnamese flag red with a yellow star? He keeps repeating the image of the soldier with the eye that was 'a star-shaped hole,'  yellow and red..."

First of all, great memory for flags. And, what a great connection, as that imagery adds yet another layer to an already complex and significant story. What is that layer? Don't worry, we'll discuss in class...

The Vietnamese flag.
"The star-shaped hole was red and yellow" (120).

A great interview with Tim O'Brien

In both Honors English 11 classes, we watched the beginning of this interview today. In the interview, Tim O'Brien and Nate Fick talk about the ideas of truth, fiction, experience and perspective that O'Brien write about throughout the story The Things They Carried. We stopped at right around 26 minutes in. We'll finish watching the interview on Monday, and we'll discuss the story "The Ghost Soldiers."

Homework: May 31

Honors English 11

• Today in class, we watched the beginning of an interview with Tim O'Brien and Nate Fick, in which O'Brien discusses that elusive topic: TRUTH. It seems from your reflections that the interview was helpful in putting the book The Things They Carried into context, at least a little bit. We'll watch more of the interview on Monday. The video is embedded above for those of you who missed it; please watch it, as it will provide useful context for the stories.
• This weekend, continue to read! Follow your reading schedule. Remember, your work is due on Tuesday. So, use this weekend to catch up, if you must!
• Please remember to show your parents the notification letter regarding the film Restrepo. Parents, if you have any questions or concerns regarding our intent to watch this film and discuss it in the context of The Things They Carried and the soldier experience, please contact me.
• Stay cool this weekend!
• Good luck, Kaylee!

Homework: May 30

Honors English 11

• I'm sorry I missed you folks today; hopefully you were able to accomplish a lot!
• Tonight, continue along with your reading schedule. Tomorrow we'll watch an interview with author Tim O'Brien that will help put some of the "truth" questions into perspective. 
• Make sure you bring your independent reading book with you!

Homework: May 29

Honors English 11

• Keep reading and working on your written responses...use the schedule provided in class. Make sure you're keeping an eye on that deadline of June 4...!

Homework: May 28

Honors English 11

• You're continuing to make your way through the book The Things They Carried, using the schedule provided in class to monitor your progress. 
• All written work will be due on Tuesday, June 4. You are encouraged to do this work according to the schedule provided in class, and you may pass in work to me at any point. If you need any help organizing yourself, please check in with me. These assignments include:
• Your reading notes for each chapter. That might be sticky notes in the book, a list of important ideas, questions, quotations, chapter maps, etc. Remember, I encourage you to develop a strategy that works for you, which might mean that you alter your strategy as you progress through the book. SparkNotes, and "mental notes" (meaning, they're all up there in your head!) don't count for this assignment...
• The activities and responses that have been provided along the way:
• "Rainy River" map
• "True War Story" response
• "Sweetheart" diagram
• "The Man I Killed"/"Speaking of Courage" response
• "In the Field"/"Good Form"/"Field Trip" activity
• "Ghost Soldiers" response 

A GREAT resource for The Things They Carried

Hey folks! As you make your way through The Things They Carried, taking careful notes and developing your own ideas, opinions, and connections, make sure you continue to monitor your own comprehension of the story. Don't despair if you start to struggle with the distinction between truth and fiction, or if you can't quite figure out what happened to Mary Ann...these questions are normal, and they will be studied in depth once we finish reading the whole book. If you have questions as you go, jot them down in your journal, notes , and/or on the daily exit tickets.

This website seems to be a great resource for those "as-you're-reading" kinds of questions...things like: Where is that place O'Brien refers to? What does a P-38 can opener, or an M-60, look like? If you're not sure what culottes look like, you can check this site, too. Or, ask Ms. Murphy...she'll draw them for you. Anyway, on that BookDrum site, use the Bookmarks tab to find specific references within your reading. You'll learn A LOT of interesting things...

Homework: May 24

Honors English 11

• To all of you who went to see Gatsby with us today: hope you enjoyed it! We'll talk Monday Tuesday. Thanks for being a very responsible and respectful group...the bus driver commented on how respectful you all were. To those of you who didn't go to the film: we missed you! Hope you had a good day.
• Continue working on your The Things They Carried reading and project work. You have the schedule!
• Have a great Memorial Day weekend!

Homework: May 23

Honors English 11

• You have your reading schedule, and your "On the Rainy River" map to complete.
• Many of us will venture to see The Great Gatsby tomorrow. The shirts will fly! Hooray! Listen up for a great announcement from Chelsey tomorrow morning. :)

Homework: May 22

Honors English 11

• Yikes! I almost forgot to post this--what a busy day sending the seniors off!
• You all have a handout that lists your reading responsibilities and your assignments for the next couple of weeks. So, you really don't need this post. But: Tonight, read through the story "Spin" in The Things They Carried. Be ready to study and discuss tomorrow!

Homework: May 21

Honors English 11

• Start reading The Things They Carried! You're reading to the break on page 19. Remember, you're going to need to establish a strategy for annotating, without writing in the book. Will it be sticky notes? Notes on a separate sheet of paper? What will that look like? Try out a strategy tonight, and we'll talk in class tomorrow.

English 12

• Wait. Yikes. Is this the LAST homework assignment I'll post for English 12? Is this the last night you'll have homework for high school? CRAZY.
• Make sure the following things are complete when you show up to class tomorrow at 9:
• Your Frankenstein essay and Works Cited list.
• Your Stranger in the Photo essay.
• Your online portfolio.

Homework: May 20

Honors English 11

• Complete the "Storytelling" handout that was provided in class today. We'll use it to guide our conversation in class tomorrow.

English 12

• Some of you presented your projects in class today. Well done! The rest of you will present tomorrow--make sure you're prepared.
• You should complete your Stranger in the Photo and your portfolio assignment by Wednesday. Remember, you should have at least started both assignments, so that you'll know if you have any questions. Both assignments (and, all assignments for the course) are due no later than 9:00 A.M. on Wednesday--remember that I need to get final grades in the next day!
• If you need to complete a Works Cited list for your essay, use this link to cite the films and the TED Talk: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/09/. If you scroll down, you'll find information for Speeches, Lectures, or Other Oral Presentations (including Conference Presentations)

Homework: May 17

Honors English 11

• Complete your personal essay, "The Things I Carry."
• Have fun at the prom!!!

English 12

• You have an essay and a presentation due on Monday. Make sure you're ready to present!
• Your portfolio and "Stranger in the Photo" essay are due on Wednesday. Spend some time working on those projects.

Mapping out "Hell-Heaven"

Here's a map of Jhumpa Lahiri's story "Hell-Heaven," created by Sasha and Maddie. After talking about ways this story is similar to The Great Gatsby (the students found more connections than you'd think!), we spent some time mapping out important points in the story. This map shows some thoughtful and nuanced reading of the story; they picked out some very important images and made some strong connections. Check it out!

I think it's my lurking shadow that makes this map look dark and mysterious...or maybe it's that turkey...

Homework: May 16

Honors English 11

• You folks did some good thinking today as you discussed, mapped out, and wrote about the story "Hell-Heaven" by Jhumpa Lahiri. There's a picture of one of the mind maps that was created today in the post above this one.
• Tonight: 
• If you're in block 1, work on the "The Things I Carry" writing assignment.
• If you're in block 3, wrap up that Gatsby essay! There are notes for citing your sources in yesterday's post.

English 12

• You know the drill! Work on those projects!

Gatsby essay resources

Here are some helpful links and resources for you Honors English 11 students as you finish up your Gatsby essays!

The online version of the text we used is linked here.

The Purdue Online Writing Lab is super helpful. Here's a link to a page that might help with your citations.

To cite the critic's argument that you referenced, use the format for "A Work in an Anthology, Reference, or Collection"--you can find that if you click here and scroll down.

Homework: May 15

Honors English 11

• Finish reading the Jhumpa Lahiri story "Hell-Heaven"--be prepared for a discussion and writing assignment tomorrow!
• Your essays are due this week...make sure you complete them! With all the time we've put in over the past couple of weeks, I'm expecting GREAT things! Check out the post above for some resources that will help you cite your sources. Use the writing guide, too!

English 12

• Work on those projects! You might spend time tonight finishing your Frankenstein essay.

Homework: May 14

Honors English 11

• Block 1: Work on those essays! And, read that story! (See yesterday's post for clarification.)
• Block 3: Work on your essay, taking the feedback you received from your group into account. Also, read "Hell-Heaven" up to page 7. The story is linked here if you need it!

English 12

• Work on your projects!

Homework: May 13

Honors English 11

• Block 1: Work on your essays! They're due by Thursday. 
• Block 1: Read "Hell-Heaven" to the bottom of page 14.
• Block 3: Full essay drafts are due tomorrow for workshopping. Make sure you bring your completed draft with you to class!

English 12

Work on your end-of-the-year assignments! You have a calendar that lists all of the work you need to complete...make sure you're working hard towards your goals!

Homework: May 10

Honors English 11

• We've been working all week on developing our Gatsby essays. Over the weekend, put it all together, get all those body paragraphs finished and make sure your analytical argument is complete. On Monday (block 1), and Tuesday (block 3), we'll spend some time workshopping those essays. You should bring a printed copy of a full draft of your essay to class with you on Monday. Be prepared to share your writing with your writing group, and to get some feedback on your draft that will help you complete your essay.
• Jack asked for some guidance regarding how to integrate the critic's argument into your own essay. I planned to address the question, then promptly got distracted (probably by something shiny). Sorry! Here are some general thoughts, and we'll address the inclusion of the critic at the beginning of our workshop on Monday/Tuesday:
• Remember that the critical voice will help you build your own analytical argument. You will introduce, into at least one of your body paragraphs, a direct quotation or paraphrase from one of the critics we read in class that supports your argument. 
• Just as you would include evidence from the text of Gatsby, so will you include evidence from the critic. So, when the evidence will help you support an argument, include it!
• Use the critic's full name the first time (maybe the only time?) you introduce his ideas. You might say something like, "Thomas C. Foster argues that [paraphrase or quotation]" (#). (You put a page number in that parenthesis there...) THEN, you analyze how this piece of proof you've included from the critic fits in your argument.

English 12

• You have two major projects to be working on, and your job is to budget your time accordingly. You should spend time (an hour or so), working on one or both of these projects:
• Frankenstein theme triangle: prep work, essay and presentation, FINAL due on Monday, May 20.
• Stranger in the Photo personal essay, FINAL due on Wednesday, May 22

Homework: May 9

Honors English 11

• We're still working on building those essays! You should have some body paragraphs written at this point, and you should have some proof and analysis to help develop your ideas. Tomorrow our workshop focus will be introductions and conclusions, so bring something in to work with. Remember the discussion we had in class today about how to develop an effective introduction and conclusion!

English 12

• Work on your projects! Many of you have developed a strong "big idea" at this point, and have started to write essays that develop those big ideas. Work on those essays tonight!

Homework: May 8

Honors English 11

• We're continuing to work on our Gatsby essays (check yesterday's blog for a reminder of the schedule). For tomorrow, you should have at least a thesis statement and a couple of body paragraphs, with strong topic sentences, proof and analysis. Remember, you'll need to pass it around to your classmates, and I'll choose one lucky student's paper to demonstrate with the whole group, so make sure you're prepared!

English 12

• Your projects are well underway, and you should be working on pulling evidence from Frankenstein, a TED Talk, and a 3rd source that you've identified once you defined a theme. We have lab time tomorrow, so you'll want to be prepared to start writing!

Homework: May 7

Honors English 11

• As I shared with you on our weekly agenda, this week is Gatsby essay writing week! Each day, we'll hold a writing workshop, in which we'll discuss an aspect of your papers that you'll then examine in your writing groups. Here's the break-down:
• Tuesday: Thesis statements
• Wednesday: Topic statements, argument organization
• Thursday: Proof and analysis
• Friday: Introductions and conclusions
• For each day, make sure that you come prepared for class having completed the sections of the essay that we'll be workshopping.
• Next week (Monday for Block 1, Tuesday for Block 3) is full draft workshop day. On that day, you'll bring in your draft, which will be read and commented on by your classmates in your writing group. Your final drafts will be due later that week...by Thursday for Block 1, by Friday for Block 3.

English 12

• We finished reading Frankenstein! Quite a story, eh?
• (If you didn't finish Frankenstein, you're going to want to go ahead and do that.)
• We started your Theme Triangle projects. Tonight, your job is to identify a topic, and pull evidence from one of the texts (either Frankenstein or the TED Talk).
• A reminder: You can choose to work with one of these three TED Talks (look back at your Cornell Notes for each talk to help you decide):
• "It's Time to Question Bio-Engineering" by Paul Root Wolpe
• "To This Day" by Shane Koyczan
• "Following Instinct" by Amaryllis Fox
• Here's the photo of the triangle organizer that you're using to develop your essay and presentation. Remember, the steps are listed in order down the left-hand side:
  
  
  

More Gatsby thesis statement discussions

Today in Honors English 11, we spent some more time developing and fine-tuning our ideas. We examined one working thesis statement as a class, and then broke into writing groups to continue the work. Below are the pictures of our conversations from 1st and 3rd block:

Gatsby thesis statements--what are you going to say?

Today in class, we spent some time discussing thesis statements for our Gatsby essays. We worked with one statement from each class, and did some structured discussion to pose questions, consider evidence, and provide feedback to the original writer. Here's the evidence of our thinking:

Homework: May 6

Hope those AP Environmental and AP Psych tests were AWESOME! Hopefully you now feel like this:

Here's the link to the original drawing:
 http://explodingdog.com/title/awesome2.html

Honors English 11

• Today in class, we examined a couple of working thesis statements. Check the next post for photos of our conversation.
• Your homework tonight is to keep working on your essay. Tomorrow in class, we examine thesis statements/essay ideas. The more you have done, the more you'll get out of class tomorrow!

English 12

• In class today, we started reading Chapter 24--the LAST chapter of Frankenstein! Hooray! The race is on, as they say, across all of Europe, and the Arctic--heading toward the final take-down. Or, at least, that's what Victor hopes for, right? 
• Tonight, your job is to read Chapter 24 until the point on page 267 that we marked in class today. Make sure you annotate carefully!

For all of you Gatsby-obsessed juniors out there...

...and I know there are a lot of you.

Here's a story about the soundtrack of the upcoming film, including the tracks that are included in the movie. You can listen to them all! There's stuff from Jay-Z, Beyonce, Bryan Ferry, Jack White...it's an eclectic soundtrack for sure!

Homework: May 3

GOOD LUCK ON SATs, and on AP Tests, everyone!!!

Honors English 11

• You're working on developing ideas for your Gatsby synthesis essay. So far, you've created a mind map of the story, and you've done some informal writing to explore interesting topics. You've started developing a "working thesis," and now you need to collect specific proof to fully define your thesis so you can write the best essay of your life. This weekend, look through the book to find the proof that will help you refine your thesis and make your argument strong. You can do this in whatever way is most effective for you:
• a map (you could add a section to your mind map, or on the back, or on a new sheet of paper)
• a list 
• an outline
• a freewrite
• On Monday (or Tuesday, for those of you taking AP tests on Monday), you'll bring in A PROPOSAL--a written version of your WORKING THESIS, your proof, and the literary critic that you'll likely use to help build your argument/analysis. Next week, we'll keep building on your arguments, and we'll start writing the essays, and we'll refine our ideas, and we'll write some more...
• A resource: For those of you looking for specific language, you can find the text of Gatsby here, and you can use the Ctrl-F feature that I showed you in class to search for words. So, if you're going to write about Daisy's voice in the story, you can search "voice" and find each time the word comes up in the whole story. Makes finding your proof a whole lot easier!
• Since so many of you like TED Talks...if you're interested in bio-engineering, check the post below this one for the TED Talk I watched with my senior English class. It's pretty crazy...

English 12

• Today we did some independent reading, and then we watched a talk on bioethics and bio-engineering. We'll continue our conversation about the benefits and challenges presented in the Talk.
• Over the weekend, read and carefully annotate Chapter 23. Look out, Elizabeth!!!

Frankenstein, and bioethics...

Today in English 12, we watched a TED Talk by Paul Root Wolpe. He discusses some of the crazy advances that have been made in the field of bio-engineering: glow-in-the-dark kittens! Remote-controlled moths! Zorses and ligers and camas, oh my!

In the context of reading Frankenstein, we wondered about some of the questions Wolpe raises in his talk.
With the advent of technologies like the DNA synthesizer (which Wolpe relates as "Dr. Frankenstein's modern laboratory"), humans are able to, as Wolpe states, "directly design organisms." Wolpe wonders about responsibility, and questions the limits to scientific discovery, if any. He asks, "Is it ok to manipulate and create whatever creature we want?" If only Victor Frankenstein had considered these questions, right?

Homework: May 2

Honors English 11

• Hooray for being back on schedule! This post applies to both Block 1 and Block 3, because your homework is the same.
• Your homework for tonight is to read essays number 2 and 3 in the packet of Gatsby critical essays. Annotate each one carefully, or complete Cornell notes for each essay.
• Tomorrow in class, we'll work on developing your essay topics and arguments. You'll figure out what you want to write about, and what you'll say about your topic. Remember, this type of idea-development is going to take a while--don't worry if it's all a bit nebulous in your mind right now. Ideas that are super-obvious aren't really worth writing about; you want something new, something interesting, and something focused.

English 12

• Read Chapter 22 in Frankenstein. Big things happen here! Be ready to talk about it tomorrow.

lllustrated grammar!

Today, we used this website to look at some grammatical errors, and to talk about how to fix them. One of the sentences from that site was this one:

Underestimating its value, breakfast is a meal many people skip.

We talked about how this sentence includes a misplaced modifier--though we jump to an assumption that it's the people who underestimate the value of breakfast, the sentence actually provides us an image of breakfast cereal having a sad, existential crisis. We fixed the sentence to clarify that it's the people who underestimate the value of breakfast, not the breakfast itself. I pointed out that one of the best ways to find misplaced modifiers is to create a picture, mental or literal--misplaced modifiers often create hilarious images.

Then, Amanda became our grammatical cartoonist...here's what she created to illustrate the point:

Homework: May 1

Welcome to May, everyone!

Honors English 11 BLOCK 1

• Today in class, we started reading the Miller essay (essay #1) called "The Jazz Age" from the packet you received. Tonight, you'll finish that essay, and read the essay #4 in the packet as well. You'll choose to either annotate each essay, or you'll take Cornell notes (take one set of notes for each essay). 

Honors English 11 BLOCK 3

• Check yesterday's post for a reminder about what's due tomorrow. NOTE: You're going to read the essay called "The Jazz Age"--it's NOT the whole packet! :) Just the first essay. Also, the copies are a little messed up--you'll notice that the first page is the same front and back, so cross out the back of the first page.

English 12

• In order to clarify our understanding of the story, you're re-reading chapter 20, making sure that you are taking notes in the margins. Notes should identify questions that you have about the text, and they should provide reference for you so that when we discuss the story, you can recall details and important plot and character events. 
• In addition to re-reading chapter 20, you're also reading the first few pages of chapter 21, continuing to annotate and make notes.