Richard Cory

Good morning,

Period 3: There is a poem shared with you in your writing group folder. It's called Richard Corey.
Find it and read it.  Then have a chat discussion about the poem with your group (without talking).

If We Must Die...Poetry analysis

Good Morning,

Yesterday you did some research about the life of Claude Mckay. Today I am asking you to look very closely at one of his poems.  Please use the Poetry Analysis From to enter your responses. Please remember that the usual expectations for short answer questions apply here as well.

I will be grading English Journals Tuesday and Wednesday next week. Please make sure yours is up to date and includes all the work listed on the chart in our room.

Update your status on Goodreads.

We will continue reading The Great Gatsby tomorrow. Bring your book.

What makes a poem?

Today we looked at a poem by Sylvia Plath without the title. I asked you what you thought it was about. You gave me many interesting answers, various animals, various groups of people, etc. None of them were the true subject of the poem though. (I knew they would not be right.) Then I asked you for the ideas in the poem. You told me conquering, rebellion, growing, nature, coming of age, revolution, etc. Your ideas about the ideas in the poem were all great. Even without knowing for sure what "things" the poem was about you could still figure out the ideas in it.

Poems have two component parts, a subject and an idea. Sometimes you can figure out the idea even if you cant figure out the subject.

Below is the presentation of the poem with LITTERAL images. Litteral is when something is exactly what it says. You told me this poem is really FIGURATIVE. The author is using metaphor and personification to describe her subject. The real subject of the poem is pictured on the very last slide.

Civil Disobedience- Looking at examples.

These four articles all deal with recent examples of Civil Disobedience.  In a way they have all been successful because they brought enough attention to their cause to make the news, but some are more likely to create real change than others.

Read through the articles. Think about what you know now about Civil Disobedience. Evaluate which of these cases is the most likely to result in real changes.

Write an entry in your English Journal to explain which case of Civil Disobedience is the most likely to result in change and why you think that.

UC Fee Hikes
Cindy Sheehan
Nuns Arrested
Blue Shield

Stride Toward Freedom -King

 We have seen how Thoreau's ideas on civil disobedience influenced Gandhi. Today we will see how those ideas were used during the American civil rights movement.

"Prior to reading Gandhi, I had about concluded that the ethics of Jesus were only effective in individual relationships. The "turn the other cheek" philosophy and the "love your enemies" philosophy were only valid, I felt, when individuals were in conflict with other individuals; when racial groups and nations were in conflict a more realistic approach seemed necessary. But after reading Gandhi, I saw how utterly mistaken I was."  -MLK

We will read an excerpt from Stride Toward Freedom by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. You will work with a partner to read the text and answer the questions on this form about what you read.

Discussing "Civil Disobedience"

Good morning,

You've been doing an excellent job discussing Emerson (Self Reliance) with your group in an on-line chat. Today I want to let you talk to each other face to face again.  We are going to look at the writing of one of Emerson's friends, Henry David Thoreau.

Thoreau wrote an essay called "Civil Disobedience"  We are going to read parts of it. This is what Gandhi said about "Civil Disobedience".

"Thoreau was a great writer, philosopher, poet, and withal a most practical man, that is, he taught nothing he was not prepared to practise in himself. ... He went to gaol for the sake of his principles and suffering humanity. His essay has, therefore, been sanctified by suffering. Moreover, it is written for all time. Its incisive logic is unanswerable." - Mohandas Gandhi

We are going to read excerpts of "Civil Disobedience". Between each paragraph I will give you a few minutes to discuss the text with your group. Remember what you have learned about discussing literature from your on-line discussions.

Finding Theme

Good morning,
 We are still working on figuring out what a story says about life. Just to recap we have looked at three short stories so far to help us with this task.
The Flowers
The Masque of the Red Death 
and On the Bridge (You read this one on paper while I was gone.)

You are now quite good at having an opinion about what the story says about life, but can you back it up?
Can you give me evidence from the story to prove your point?
View this page as we work on it together.

Analysis- Word choice in Of Plymouth Plantation

Good morning,
Over the past few days you have been reading a very challenging text, Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford, who came to North America on The Mayflower in 1620.
What strategies did you use for reading a hard text like that?

Of Plymouth Plantation is an example of a PRIMARY SOURCE. Even though it was written down years after the events, the person writing it was actually there and tells about what happened in his own words.

Now that you know what Bradford said, it's time to look more deeply at HOW his said it. His choice of words and tone affect the way his story is perceived.

(This is part of the next standard we are going to be working on: RL 3.3  Analysis: Analyze the ways in which irony, tone, mood, the author's style, and the "sound" of language achieve specific rhetorical or aesthetic purposes or both)

Your task:

1. Select ONE of the HIGHLIGHTED phrases in the text.
2. Copy that phrase (and perhaps the whole sentence) into your ENGLISH JOURNAL.
3. Explain in your own words WHY you think Bradford used the words he did or included that phrase in his writing. What was the effect on his audience? What was he trying to make people think?

And you HAVE HOMEWORK tonight. I'll explain it in class and it will be posted on the homework page later.

Extension: If you finished explaining Bradford's word choices go read this. It was written in 1641.  What does it tell you about Puritan values, justice, and lifestyle?