Local Theaters Putting On Any Good Plays?

Hey folks. I'm attempting to take my students to see a play this year. Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time finding an appropriate play to attend. Studio Arena doesn't have anything I'm interested in, nor does Kavinoky. Does anyone else know of any good theaters that I could look into? I've been bumping around UB, Buffalo State, etc. and can't find much, but I'm not averse to attending a play at a college within an hours drive. Let me know if you have any ideas.

iMovie Ideas for Oedipus Rex

Jackie and Frank...this started off as a comment in the last post, but I wanted to embed two videos so I made a new post...

We just got our network up and running, and I'm in the iMovie planning stages. I'm thinking one of two options:

1. Sock Puppet scenes - Using iMovie and voiceover narrative to do some sock puppet drama...maybe reader's theater or something but heavily utilizing the camera and close ups, etc.

2. Speech interpretations - Students would take a 10-15 line (or possibly lengthier) speech, record the voice-over and then visually interpret the lines. I'm just struggling with what they would film. I definitely want to avoid simply their face on camera while reading, and I don't want to go the imported still from the internet route. Maybe filming drawings? Not sure.

A few years ago I had students find important quotes from a Ray Chandler story (Cathedral, I believe), illustrate those quotes, and then film the illustrations. It worked out pretty well, although the film as a whole doesn't make much sense...hee hee.




The "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" Video we watched last week was kind of the same concept. Here's the video. It's on Youtube, so you'll have to check it out at home.




Frank...what kind of help do you need?

Frankenstein/Gothic

Hello everyone. This site seems to need a little content momentum, so I am going to start posting periodically about things I am doing in my AP Lit classroom. (The hyperlink links to my AP Lit blog.)

I've had some success this year. I spent the first few weeks having students workshop an explication paper, and I must say that, collectively, they were some of the strongest papers I've seen yet. Students chose one of five modern poems from the textbook The assignment sheet can be found here. (So, I'd like to thank Bruce and Frank for the Poetry Professor activity last year, as it has led to some pretty cool things.)

I've also implemented the annotation policy this year. On reading due dates (Mondays), students must bring in their texts annotated. I've liked it thus far, as kids seem to be able to easily reference important quotes and parts during discussion. I bought a Palm, so grading at the doorway is insanely easy. In order to help my students understand annotation we made a quick little iMovie in a day and a half.



Right now we're finishing up our first work, Frankenstein. We're studying the gothic/romantic angle in addition to the major theme (Prometheus and what not). We've read a couple of companion pieces, like Ozymandias and Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which have helped reinforce gothic characteristics. Right now we are reading "The Fall of the House of Usher" in class to further reinforce these ideas. Students will be using the next couple of days to read the story and turn it into a short comic.



Anyways, that's my report. I've got a LCD projector in my classroom now, courtesy of City Voices/City Visions, which allows me to use a great deal of tech stuff (Youtube, Google Docs, etc.).

I'd love to hear from anyone who wants to share materials, ideas, or experiences. I benefited greatly from the collaboration last year and would like to see communication continue.

Next Up: Tragedy - Oedipus Rex and Death of a Salesman

The Books are Here!

For those of you dying to get your hands on the review books for AP Lit. - they have arrived! Let me know when you want to pick them up and I'll have them counted and ready to go.
Julie

another book

Peoples Education just sent me an examination copy of Writing The Synthesis Essay. It's not great for AP, but would be wonderful for a research paper unit, and would go well with teaching MLA documentation.
The company seems very agreeable about mailing out free stuff. The website is www.PeoplesEducation.com. The back of the book contains a 20% coupon on the AP Language text called Analysis, Argument, and Synthesis. If you're going to teach AP Lang., you might want to take a look.

Hey, Anyone Get Their Review Books, etc., Yet?

If anyone receives their review books, let me know, so I can start poking around in the nooks and crannies looking for mine. I want my Voice Lessons!

Poetry Professor Concern...Sort Of

Okay, my poetry professor presentations are going fairly well. It is having many intended and many unintended positive consequences. Today we fared into end-stopped lines and stanzas vs. enjambment and the consequence of each. It's that kind of teachable moment that this project routinely creates.

One possible concern. My students seem to be doing considerable research to help along their analysis. I mean, this is great because it adds such depth to our discussions, but I worry that in some cases this research is replacing close reading.

So, what are your thoughts? How do you balance? Do you balance? Does the positive outweigh the negative?

money issues

At the April 18th mtg. Anne said all AP students should be able to take the exam, even if finances were a concern. She suggested I have our coordinator contact Tonja Williams to get info. I did. The coordinator has made no new info available to the kids and there are some kids still not taking the exam because they can't afford to. Is anyone else having trouble getting exams for the kids who don't have money? Does anyone have anything official looking that indicates exams should be ordered for these kids? I'd like to avoid a fight with the coordinator if possible, but time is short. Thamks.

Marginalia

This is one of the strategies I recieved from a recent training. I mentioned it briefly at the last networking meeting. It is simply a strategy that makes the students active readers by selecting different stylistic techniques that you want students to identify and assign a color to each.

For every reading, ask students to identify two different kinds of each and describe why they think the author used that technique to convey:
meaning
theme
tone
archetypes
fig lang
syntax
diction
pov
(other, motif)

The students actually mark up the book/reading with the different colors. It makes for good conversation/discussion in the class.

Resources from Ruth

Ruth brought some books to the networking meeting that might be helpful to all of you.

You can get a free sample copy of the titles below by contacting the company.

English Literature - Close Reading and Analytic Writing
Peoples Education (1-800-822-1080, PeoplesEducation.com)

Essential Literary Terms with Excercises by Sharon Hamilton
Peoples Education (1-800-822-1080, PeoplesEducation.com)

These are not free, but still good...

The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms
By Mark Strand and Evan Boland

A Norton Pocket Guide to Grammar and Punctuation
by Dawn Rodrigues and Myron Tuman

AP Networking Meeting

The next networking meeting will be on April 18th at WNED from 4-7 p.m. Please post some of the topics you would like to talk about so I can put it in our agenda. Also, we need some ideas for the curriculum for a Pre-AP course. Start thinking about the skills that can be front loaded so your job might be a little easier! Just some things to think about while you are on break! Have a good spring break ...

Anchor Papers for Wordsworth/Dunbar Essay

Hello everyone...here's the page with the AP questions & anchor papers for the past few years. The anchor paper for the essay we talked about "in class" is in the 2001 exam. You probably have to log in.

Tests, assessments, etc.

You know, I have a hard time creating tests. I sat at my dining room table for an hour tonight trying to dream up passage based multiple choice questions for my students, to work into a longer desk, before I finally said to Hades with it.

Anyway, what do your tests look like? I'm looking for as many ideas as possible, because I want to start my last larger work this week and start building for next year. Here are a few things I did for Invisible Man.

Project



















AP Style Essay (As we approached the end of the novel this was an in class writing assignment. (Google Doc)

AP Style Essay Accompanying Rubric (Google Doc)

My final Invisible Man test (Google Doc)

Signing Up

To sign up for blogger you have to create a Google account. The site will take you through the steps. Once you're comfortable with Blogger, you should check out Google Docs, an online word processor, and Google Notebook, which simply rules. Once we get going I think we should use this tool for collective AP research.

Anyway, nighty night.

BTW, nice job Julie.

Two Great Resources

Hello folks. This is our blog, post freely. This site, which I found yesterday, contains tons of good stuff. It has rubrics, a year long syllabus, syntax charts, response journal prompts, and much, much more. Check it out. A teacher named Carter Hammond created it.

Also, Anita asked me to repost the site for the AP/PreAp guidebook that I sent around. It can be found here.