We have a very busy week ahead of us, peeps, with both the Honors Breakfast and the Senior Breakfast during the morning periods AND final deadlines for some colleges AND preparation for a Hamlet test AND a satire essay for the sophys. Much to do, much to do--and progress reports, supposedly, will go home Friday.
We are on a downhill train ride to Winter Break, and we have much to do in the interim.
APees: Today, we need to talk about the semester test; we are going to take it in two parts. The first part will be the day before Winter Break, and will be strictly content-based, multiple choice, on everything from The Awakening and Bovary to Hamlet. The second part, based on an actual AP exam, will be given during the normal testing window in January. I am doing this, like some other AP instructors, because when we resume instruction in January I need to move on quickly to new content in order to prepare you for the national exam in May, and also because I watched the scores plummet last year when we moved exams back those few weeks. Taking a content-specific exam after two weeks of inertia is deleterious to your studies, and I want you all to be successful. ALSO--today, we start really discussing Hamlet, using some guided questions on Act V as a starting point. Why did he fail to avenge his father, but instead ended up avenging his mother (one interpretation)? Why did he fail to act for so long? Is he, as Harold Bloom famously postulated, the first real human being in literature? Why or why not?
Sophys: Catch up, clean up--new content vocabulary is on the board (also from Candide) and the Candide check-reading test will be Thursday. The number of the counting to the day of the test shall therefore be three, not five, nor two, except that thou goest on to three. We need to reintegrate into our satire unit, and I have a creative way of doing that, and then we need to establish due dates and expectations for the Author of the Day presentations. Edusoft Benchmark testing is next week, peeps, but you will earn points for participation.
