With one week left until winter break, we were greeted on Monday (technically Sunday night) with our first snow day so we were not at school on Monday, leaving us with a 4-day week. When we returned to school on Tuesday, we started back up on our critical theory projects. Since the play we chose to do our project on was King Lear, we began to actually watch the play. I am not going to lie, the play is kind of hard to follow and understand considering I knew nothing about it before beginning to watch it. I think the main reason for this is because since it is written in Shakesperean language, it is hard to understand what they are saying or what they are trying to get at when they speak. The theory we chose to focus on is Philisophical/Existential. I believe that having this main topic picked out makes it easier to focus on the rest of the movie. Having a specific thing to pay attention to and watch out for, makes me feel like I need to pay more attention to what is going on so I understand how it plays a part in the play. Personally, I like that we are choosing to watch the play instead of read it because, being a visual person, it is easier for me to see where this theory is taking place and how it affects the other characters and their actions. Overall, by using our Cornell notes, I think we are getting a really good idea about how King Lear contains Philisophical/Existential elements. This link contains a summary of King Lear and what it is about https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/k/king-lear/play-summary
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This week we were informed about how we would choose a Shakespearean play, either King Lear or Macbeth. We would then dive deep into analysing different theories that it is consisted of. My group chose King Lear and we are analyzing the critical theory of philisophical/existential. We thought this would be a good idea because in the play, King Lear's daughters are trying to convince him to give them part of his land. We would be able to analyze their behavior and how their morals play into it. Although we have not read the play yet, we thought we would be able to write a qualified essay about the people's character and how they act. The information on this link gave me a better understanding of what philosophy really is http://www.qcc.cuny.edu/SocialSciences/ppecorino/INTRO_TEXT/Chapter%2012Conclusion/What_is_Philosophy.htm A second thing we did was analyze to poems of the week this week. They were both sonnets. This gave me a good understanding of how to connect poems together and recognize the similarities that they can have. We talked about how the tile of the poem Ozymandias and how the repetitive sounds add meaning to the poem and give it a certain effect. In the sonnet by Shakespeare, we talked about how differentiating different feelings can show different purposes and how paradox was evident in the poem. I think working with these poems has made me better understand peotry because I do not really understand it but after working with it more, I have been able to better understand how to interpret it. This week first of all, we learned about a new project we will be working on throughout the trimester. We had to think of a general topic to learn more about and be able to think thoroughly about by reading two books that incorporate that topic. The thing I chose to look closer into is self image and self esteem. The books I will be reading are A Prayer for Owen Meany and The Color Purple. We will then be doing a pecha kucha style presentation at the end of the trimester about our topic and what we learned. I think doing this will help me be able to analyze books to find a common theme and how different characters are affected by the same type of things. The second thing we did this week was take a practice AP multiple choice test to show us what the real thing is going to be like. I personally did not do too well on it. My score was a 29/50. For me, it is hard to read a piece and interpret it the way that the prompt wants me to because I believe everybody thinks about things differently so what they think the answer is, might not be one of the choices. I also learned there might be a lot of words on the test in the text or even as one of the answers that I might not know. It is important to study up on things you do not know too well and narrow answers down to what you know it for sure could or might not be. This link includes numerous tips to consider before taking the AP Literature test https://www.albert.io/blog/ap-english-literature-tips/ I was able to delve more into the illustrating, authorizing and extending that we learned last week, this week. We watched a TED talk at the beginning of the week that was about success and how everyone else around us views us and our success. It was very eye opening to hear that we live in a world "full of snobs" and that when we are at, or doing, our best, we tend to look down on people that are not doing as well or that are not as successful. We went on to write a blog post about this similar to how last week we wrote blog posts about tragedy and what we think it is. We also learned a new way of note taking, Cornell notes. This is a really helpful way to take notes because it helps you organize your thoughts and sets an outline of your writing for you because of the summarization you do and the quotes that you insert. Here is a guide about how to use Cornell notes: http://www.wikihow.com/Take-Cornell-Notes . We put this new way of note taking to the test when we started reading the play "Oedipus". I think it really helped me throughout the reading because I was able to take notes and insert quotes as I was reading, therefore I didn't forget anything I read after we finished reading the play. It also set up a great outline and basis for the blog post we wrote after. The final thing we did this week that really put a new perspective of tragedy into me was the reading of the article "The Tragic Fallacy" by Joseph Krutch. It was about how not all tragedy is about something bad, sad or upsetting. It is simply a feeling that can also come from glory, honor, and love. Tragedy is more about the conquering of the task and the confident feeling after, than being sad or upset. This week I learned a lot about new ways of analyzing essays, how to read them and what makes an essay a good one. I learned about how illustrating uses specific examples from the text to support the claim, authorizing refers to an "expert" to support the claim, and extending is a spin on terms and ideas from the text. We used this by analyzing a good example of an essay about a poem and then turned to look at our own essays to see what we did right and what we might have needed to work on. I think this was very helpful to learn because now I know what to include in my writing and what could make my essay better. The second thing we began to learn about this week was tragedy. We began by reflecting on what we think tragedy is and what we already now about it. The way I use the word tragedy is by describing something really sad or something really bad that happened. While doing research, I learned that that is something that tragedy can be described as but it also has other meanings that can be deeper. It is a way to get emotion out of the audience and connect to them. I was able to learn about different types of tragedy that are caused by different things in story. Also about how a character acts of what they do that produces different types of tragedy. This link includes descriptions of some of the different types of tragedy: http://www.thedramateacher.com/types-of-tragedy-for-drama-class/ This week we began by working on our presentations, notes and connecting evidence to claims. While working on our prezi, we remembered that last week we learned to add pictures in our prezi instead of a lot of text because all the text could distract the audience. We also made sure to add a lot of quotes from the stories in order to really connect our main points and arguments to the actual short stories that we read. This article state many distractions that presentations commonly have http://www.speakingaboutpresenting.com/audience/6-major-distractions-to-eliminate-in-your-presentations/ . The second thing we did this week was give and listen to the presentations. It was really interesting to hear how everyone else interpreted their elements of fiction. Even the presentations of the same elements that I had were different and some of our opinions differed. After our presentation slot, we were taken in the hall to talk about how we did and what things we needed to work on. One of the things we had to work on was that we really knew what we were talking about in terms of our stories and elements, but it did not come across that way completely. He said we were talking as if everyone in the class had read the same stories we did but in fact they had not. When presenting, I felt that I was strong at not just reading straight off of the presentation and letting the class know what I learned based off what I have read instead of just what we wrote down on the slide. This week I learned a lot of new and interesting things about presentations and how to make them entertaining for the audience and not boring. For our presentation, we are using Prezi as our platform. We were informed that is better to not use a template because people can definitely tell when a template is being used and it would not make it seem as special. Also, a lot of the templates might not make sense to the topic you are presenting about. Another thing I learned, which I knew before but was re-pointed out to me and I was reminded about is not filling the screen with text. The audience does not want to take the time to read it and it would become boring if all you are doing is reading text off a slide. Instead, you should make notes about what you are going to talk about beforehand, and then put things on the slides that would remind you about what it is that you are wanting to say. More things that I learned this week were more content related and were the elements of fiction that I am working on, which are point of view and structure. So, for structure, I learned about commercial and literary fiction. Commercial fiction is something that usually has a twist ending, attracts a broad audience, and might fall into sub genres including romance, mystery, etc. Literary fiction is something that is more deep and hold literary merit. You can read more about the differences between these two types of fiction on this website https://thewritingplace.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/what-do-they-mean-commercial-fiction-and-literary-fiction/ . This week we really started to get into working on our What is Literature? project and I have started to understand what we are doing for it. My group is working on structure and point of view. I think we chose good topics to work on because they are easy to follow and I understand them well. Also, the short stories we chose to read are very interesting and easy to get into. I enjoy them. I believe doing the close read on the short stories and the element of fiction packets are really useful because it makes me pay more attention to what I'm reading so I can take notes and helps me to understand what I am reading. Consciously trying to recognize the element of fiction in the short story that I am reading help me get more into the story and really pay attention to what is going on. My group has just finished reading our elements of fiction and short stories so hopefully in the next week we are able to begin working on our presentation and work on making it the best we can. We will be using prezi, which is not something that I am used to using so I have been looking over this http://www.computerworld.com/article/2472129/web-apps/82161-10-tips-for-giving-killer-presentations-with-prezi.html to make our presentation better. Last week, I really did not know what I was doing or what this project really was due to the delays we had. This week, when the project was explained more in depth to the whole class, I was able to really understand what we are doing. So know, I am better informed and I feel better about going into the presentations. We didn't really do much this week because of some of the obstacles we had. There was a 2 hour fog delay on Wednesday, so that shortened our class period, we had the school day cancelled on Thursday because of fog and then we had a substitute teacher on Friday. This week something we did do was learn about the What Is Literature? project that we would begin working on. We got into groups and decided on the topics we would be doing our presentations on. I am still very confused about what we are doing with those. I'm hoping to figure out exactly and ask for help because I would like to have a really put together presentation. My group decided to work on Point of View and Structure for our presentation and those are things that I personally find easy to point out in works of writing which I think will be helpful when it comes to writing the paper and giving the presentation. The poem of the week that we worked on this week was also harder for me. I did not really get to think as hard about this one compared the ones in the weeks past. It might be because of the delays we had, or maybe I just did not connect as well to it, which I think could be part of the problem. I tried to do the best timed writing about it that I could, but I do not think it really compares to the past two that I have done. I realize that I will not connect to every poem that we work on, so I think this week was one that was harder for me to relate to. This article explains why poetry is sometimes hard to understand: http://www.slate.com/blogs/quora/2015/02/25/why_is_poetry_difficult_to_understand.html This week I learned a lot about literature and was is considered literature and where it can stem from. I also was able to think about how a story was different from literature. Literature is the part that cannot be captured in a film or a movie and it is the art form behind a piece of writing. I was able to look into literature as art when we reviewed different pieces of art and uncovered what we thought the story behind them was and how the piece of art came to be. An article we read in class made a few things really stand out to me such as, "The tone and the word choice is what makes a story more than a story; it gives it life and substance, creating the form of art known as literature." and “We can take the plot, the events, the story part of a novel and make them into a play or a film. What we have to leave behind is the "literature", just as poetry, according to Robert Frost, is what gets lost in translation.”. The article we read that these quotes came from was https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zj5O06Bt73qW-jdOYLlbf7cvMAf1SSOi_qA4FEbYD7k/edit#heading=h.tf54u0zf1rbg. A second thing we did was watch a TED talk called "Finding a story inside a Painting" ( http://www.ted.com/talks/tracy_chevalier_finding_the_story_inside_the_painting?language=en ). This pointed out to me that similarly to an art gallery, where you might not connect with every painting, you don't have to connect to every poem that you read. Also, it is helpful to tell a story with art so you can understand it in your own way, and everyone else will interpret it in their own way. This blog post: https://writerlyderv.wordpress.com/2010/08/06/literary-fiction-vs-popular-fiction/ is helpful in finding the differences between Literature and Popular Fiction. |
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April 2017
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