Sunday, April 13, 2014

What's Going on in 205

It's hard to believe the we are really only a few weeks away from the end of the year.  It doesn't help matters that students already have missed multiple days (Close Up, Knowledge Bowl) and the spring sports season really isn't even in full swing yet!

Here is what's going on in my room currently.

College Comp 2 - We are about ready to finish our unit exploring Seth Godin's Linchpin.  Last time around, most of my College Comp 2 class disposed this book.  The others loved it.  I chalk this up to the fact that kids don't read much in English classes in the way of nonfiction.  Thus, they keep lamenting, "He keeps saying the same thing over and over again."  That simply isn't true but when someone is expecting rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution in everything they read, I can see where their frustrations come from.  I need to do a better job of addressing this on the front end.

Luckily, my spring semester class has been much more engaged in Linchpin.

Tomorrow we will wrap up our discussion of the text.  Then we will begin work on our final Linchpin presentation boards.  Here is a link to the assignment and presentations from last semester.

After this week, we will only have a few more things to do:

The multi-genre research paper
Read, discuss, and present lessons to the class in peer groups for Austin Kleon's Steal Like an Artist.
Read, discuss, and present lesson to the class in peer/faculty member groups for Steven Johnson's Where Good Ideas Come From.
Submit remarkable projects.
Final exit interview at Digi-Key.

College Comp - I'm currently trying to wrap up grading the braided essays.  Then I'll do the same for their novel #1 mini-research papers.

This week we will start our film review unit.  First, we will watch Jaws.

Jaws? You question.  Really?

Yes.  Why?  I start this unit with Jaws for a couple of reasons.

First, nearly everyone has seen it or at least they have heard of it.  Better yet, all of their parents and grandparents have seen it.  Some can even recall having seen it in the movie theater.  I use this because it helps illustrate the film's visceral impact on its original audience.  I hope students have actually seen it already, for I hope to show them a different side of the film than they ever thought about before.

Second, I talk about how Spielberg masterfully develops his characters (so you actually care about them, which makes the suspense even greater when they are placed in harm's way), how he deliberately uses the power of suggestion (knowing he is stuck with an incredibly fake looking shark, he wisely holds off showing it until the end when, again, here is where his excellent character development proves so vital, because we care so much about the characters, we are able to suspend our disbelief that no shark we have ever heard of has ever behaved this way, let along leaped onto an actual boat and began devouring the crew), how Spielberg has made a movie about a killer shark, but he has also made a movie about greed, about man's struggle to protect his community, about a scientist who is willing to kill that which he has spent so much time studying, and about a maniacal fisherman who is a modern version of Ahab.  Sound like the Jaws your familiar with?  Oh yeah, Spielberg expertly manipulates our fears of the unknown and of one of our most basic fears (that of being on the menu in the grand scheme of things).

Third, it is incredibly entertaining.  That's always a plus.

After watching this in class, we will dissect it for theme and film technique.

This will prepare them for analyzing the film they will write their theme on: Little Miss Sunshine.

Once their film review is done, we also begin to wind the year down pretty quickly. We will read "The Yellow Wallpaper" and discuss it as a warm up for our literary analysis paper.  Then we will read "Young Goodman Brown."  Then we will listen to it again and examine all that we missed on our initial reading as we examine the story in far greater detail.  Then we will write a literary analysis where students choose one theme from "Young Goodman Brown" and then analyze how the theme is shown through three of the four devices: plot, character, setting, and symbolism.

Then we will spend a week comparing "Young Goodman Brown" to Training Day.  We will write a comparison essay between the story and film.

Since students write so many other persuasive essays in other classes, I've decided not to have them write another one in College Comp.  So we will have some extra time to examine the previous three themes and not feel rushed to compose them.

Finally, students will take their test on their second novel and write a full-fledge research paper on it.

And that will bring year 16 to a close for me.


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