Wow, it's Second Quarter already. The year seems to have gone by really fast. But anyway, what have we covered since last time?
The unit on The American Dream has been wrapped up. That was fun, and I enjoyed being able to analyze it with respect to the different samples of literature that we read from our textbooks. It allows us to make intertextual connections better, which I always find both enjoyable and informative. I like drawing connections between different works and doing so often helps me remember things as well. (It did strike me as amusing that I had to read Two Kinds by Amy Tan. Again. For probably the third of fourth time. In different language arts classes.) So yeah, that was fun.
What else...? I've been enjoying those exercises that we have in the beginning of class, both the ones where we have to come up with a sentence that exemplifies the tone word, and when we practice analyzing then writing our own passages from an example. The latter normally turns into a competition on what hour (normally 6th hour wins, just sayin') can come up with the most ridiculous example, but still... Again, making things funny makes them memorable.
The only other thing I really remember us doing is watch Death of a Salesman. From what I've heard, a lot of people have covered it before, in their American Literature classes. They would probably find that we're going to slowly through it. Though I took American Literature, in Mrs. Reed's class, we only ever talked about his The Crucible. I'd never discussed Death of a Salesman before. In fact, the only mentions I'd ever heard of it outside of this class was for QuizBowl. I enjoyed watching the movie. It was a good way of introducing the material to someone who had never read the play before. Unfortunately, the Stratford trip (which was really fun!) happened to fall over one of those days, so I missed part of the plot. The close reading should fix that problem, though the discussions that we've had during class have been a little bit annoying when scenes are brought up that I'm unfamiliar with. I'm definitely looking forward to analyzing it though; if The American Dream was anything to go by, there are going to be a lot of hidden messages to unravel in this play!
3 comments:
Hi Martina! You did a great job at addressing all of the material covered in class! However, I would just show that you fully understand the material. Maybe you could give some examples of the connections you have drawn between the American Dream and other texts. This way it helps you cement the ideas, themes, and symbols from The American Dream in your mind.
I definitely agree with your comment about 6th hour winning! It is true that while we have fun doing the exercises it helps us remember them which I'm sure will be beneficial throughout the year.
I also find relating different texts to each other is enjoyable and helpful in my understanding of both texts. Processing the information in different ways keeps it locked in my memory much better. However, I don't find the exersises to be helpful at the beginning of the hour, because 1st hour everyone is tired and no one ever participates. I can never think of anything to contribute, but I might feel more comfortable sharing if people shared more often. I don't know how it is sixth hour, but first hour doesn't have enough group participation for the exersizes to help.
I declare falsehoods! Sixth hour has vastly inferior writing examples compared to second hour's. We have vending machines! And vultures! Vultures IN vending machines!
Ahem. On topic. I agree that being able to draw connections is a valuable skill, and I always squee a little bit when I realize something that had been hidden to me before. And I also agree about the morning exercises- our hour is not exceedingly aware, but a few of us tend to band together to have fun with it. Exaggerating wildly, of course, but that only helps us remember.
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