This feels like the first substantial response since before winter break. We have accomplished quite a bit in this last month not only in lit but in all of my classes.
In this class we started off with Ms. Holmes pulling each of us aside to review our Century Quilt essays while working on multiple choice questions. Both activities helped me better understand what the AP graders are looking for. I now know that I need to practice shouting out my ideas in my essays and I need to practice my vocabulary. My lack of vocab was apparent when I was trying the multiple choice questions, I understood what the questions were asking but many times I gave the wrong answer because I did not know what the answers meant.
After a week of working through questions and essays we discussed Ros and Guil. This is my favorite play we have read so far, there is so much to it that even now I still want to talk about it. I felt slighted because we only had four days to discuss such an in depth book but I know that we are crunched for time, I have noticed this in many of my classes, in bio Ms. Palmer gave us so much homework after the long weekend break to catch us back up. To slow our progress even more (at least for my 6th hour class) was the band festival, apparently more than half our class is in band or just absent on the same day. This day was meant for a closed prompt Eleven but instead we created the worst t-shirt idea ever to make the skippers feel guilty. This was a great plan and we had so much fun devising a hideous shirt, and I mean hideous, so it was so funny when the band kids came back and some even liked the shirts! Ms. Holmes had to turn away to compose herself because of how ridiculous the shirts were and the only person who stood against the shirt was Max who was shut down by us plotters.
6th hour then started to catch up to the other hours, we read the same essay and watched the same power point until we were back in the classroom where we could work on Eleven. I thought this story was interesting and I loved how the world's issues were exposed through an eleven year old girl.
After we caught up with the class we started Ceremony, read and discussed the stiffs of Defending Walt Whitman. These are both about Indians although they are from different tribes. It is interesting to hear the differences between the tribes and Ms. Holmes is always willing to share her knowledge so it was a bit like a history class when we started these works.
Now we are working on critical lenses and the circle that encompasses all stories. I find this perplexing and have thought about fitting all shows and books into this in my spare time. It is entertaining when you have nothing to do.
Ana--You know that you get big ups for making it clear that it matters that Alexie is Coeur d'Alene and Marmon Silko is Laguna (and I hope that "it was a bit like a history class" was a good thing, not a bad thing!) but...this entry is a bit journal-y. You know, it feels like a diary entry telling about all the stuff we've been doing in class. But remember that the point of these entries is to process the material. So it's great that you recount the story of the hideous t-shirt idea (and my total failure to keep it together during the prank itself) but look how much of your blog entry this takes up compared to academic material. =) And "connecting" our being short of time (because of snow days) to your bio class also being short of time is not really connecting material in this class to material in other classes. I'd like to see you thinking more deeply and critically about the material we've been covering, here, and writing something about it that shows you've reflected on the material in new ways since we originally covered it.
ReplyDeleteGood job, Ana! It's tough to find that line between journal and processing post. I've definitely straddled it a few times myself. Maybe it might be helpful to deliberately stay away from recounting the happenings of 6th hour Lit in chronological order? Chronological order is a super useful organizational tool, but if you can get around that you don't need it at all. In fact, I may try that for my final Response post. That'll force me to associate the topics differently, which by default will process them much better than remembering based on when we did what.
ReplyDeleteThis really is a great insight to how you think though! It's nice to know you all were trying to make us feel guilty. So supportive :)