Tuesday, September 16, 2008

APees: Several of you have requested supplemental material to ameliorate gaps in your reading history. Without engaging in any disrespectful rhetoric towards ANY of my colleagues, we do have to acknowledge that some courses require different reading than others, and some of you have expressed concerns that frequent in-class allusions are flying over your heads. To help, I spent a large part of my weekend compiling two documents for you: a recommended reading list that every AP student should have read by the end of high school in an ideal world, and a summary packet of the titles I teach in my tenth grade English class. Both are optional, and completely voluntary. The goal here is to level the playing field as much as possible before you take that test in May. Please don't think I am teaching to the test--the test is a separate product from the course, and I cannot take moral responsibility for whether you pass that test or not. HOWEVER--let's be realistic. You signed up for this class for a variety of reasons, but I'd assume that one of them was to avoid having to take freshman comp next year. So here is another tool in your arsenal to help you achieve that goal if you feel that you're missing some titles--or if you didn't read them when they were originally assigned. (I did not fall off of a turnip truck and I'm aware that some of my illustrious scholars don't read everything they are supposed to. This is why we have "grade distributions" and "bell curves" and "lousy third quarters.") That's a very long-winded way of saying that the copies are in, and you are welcome to one if you'd like. Once I master the art of imbedding pdf files, you can get it here, too.

Sophys: Field trip to the Media Center! Be sure to bring your ID or five dollars with which to procure another one. Author of the Day is Jane Austen; we will review SOME of the vocab words for our second-to-last literary terms list; fun and frolicsome-ness with new textbooks.

APees again: ORex test; if we finish early, two awesome poems in the literary anthology thematically related to ORex. We will be doing some transitional work with poetry before we launch into the next awesome, awesome unit: Shakespeare!!! Although I don't know if I have the energy to redo my huge chart thing about Henry VIII and the whole Tudor mess. I will say this, though--if you are watching The Tudors on Showmax or HBS or Cineshow or whatever those premium channels are (I'm a teacher, and poor, and therefore don't subscribe) then you are getting a very, very skewed idea of history. Or that wretched movie with Natalie and Scarlett. Pretty dresses; ugly adherence to accuracy. Entertainment rocks, though, eh?

Word of the Day: apotheosis (noun): elevation of an individual to a state of divinity