Tuesday, August 30, 2005

What a beautiful morning for us--and what a wretched morning for New Orleans. :-( Katrina did her damage, once again reminding us of the fragility of our roles on this planet.

On to the academic day. . .

AP Literature: Today we are going to look at Oedipus Rex through the lens of a supplemental text on oracles. I've prepared four thought questions to guide small-group discussion before we launch back into the whole-class environment. Your homework tonight is to read the essay on Aristotilean tragedy featured in your lit book, beginning on page 1252. You need to really understand the text from 1252-1258 before tomorrow's discussion.

Gifted English IV: Middle Ages study guide and introduction to Thomas a Becket. You can work in groups to finish the guide; pay particular attention to the mini-essay "A Worm in a Terrible Cocoon" to really understand how horrendous the lives of medieval knights were. (Chaucer is a hoot, though.)

Gifted English II: Our Author of the Day today is Anne Rice, vampiric novelist (well, at least in her mind.) Her writing is a throwback to the baroque era and is reminiscent of Gothic literature in many ways, as well. After that, we are going to do a syntactical analysis of "The Storyteller" and/or "The Pedestrian" before shifting gears into Heinrich Boll's "My Melancholy Face." Your homework tonight is to generate an informal personal response to ANY of the short selections we've done in the past two weeks.

The meeting after school today has been rescheduled for tomorrow immediately after sixth period. I'm sorry about any inconvenience, but Russ and I got our wires crossed. The world is an imperfect place, and I am an imperfect creature. Forgive! Forgive!!