First, I'd like to thank all of you for the writing you've done over the past seven weeks. For me, one of the most rewarding aspects of teaching is the opportunity to read your words, to listen to your ideas, and to add my own voice to those that you bring to the classroom.
For this week's blog I'd like you reflect on how blogging has been going for you. I have many questions about what this kind of work has meant for you, and I've listed some of these below. Feel free to respond to as many or as few of these as you like and to express any other perspectives, concerns, or ideas you might have about this approach of reading, writing, and response.
My questions:
Has blogging been valuable to you as a student, thinker, reader, and writer?
What have you taken away from taking this approach to submitting writing for a class?
How do you feel about doing and continuing to do this kind of work?
Is this work different from other experiences that you have had in English classes?
What suggestions do you have for me as a teacher who uses blogging in his English classes?
Looking forward, do you have suggestions for how you want to be graded on this writing?
Has doing this work changed the community within your own class or between classes (11-1 and 11-2) in any way?
Friday, March 27, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
F. Scott Fitzgerald - A Selection of Quotes (Due: Monday, March 23, 2009)
For this week's blog I've provided you with a small sampling of F. Scott Fitzgerald's private writings. Below are several quotes taken from letters he wrote to his daughter and to Ernest Hemingway, among others. In these, he comments on his life, his work, his observations on society and humanity. You might use one or more of these as a way to reflect on your reading the novel.
I'm going to resist providing you with a question or prompt for this week's blog assignment. Write about what you want to write about with regard to The Great Gatsby.
______________________________________
“Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat...the redeeming things are not 'happiness and pleasure' but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.”
“Often I think writing is a sheer paring away of oneself leaving always something thinner, barer, more meager.”
“A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.”
“All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.”
“Sometimes I think that idlers seem to be a special class for whom nothing can be planned, plead as one will with them—their only contribution to the human family is to warm a seat at the common table.”
“In a few days I’ll have lived one score and three days in this vale of tears. On I plod—always bored, often drunk, doing no penance for my faults—rather do I become more tolerant of myself from day to day, hardening my crystal heart with blasphemous humor and shunning only toothpicks, pathos, and poverty as being the three unforgivable things in life.”
“The purpose of a work of fiction is to appeal to the lingering after-effects in the reader’s mind as differing from, say, the purpose of oratory or philosophy which respectively leave people in a fighting or thoughtful mood.”
“My idea is always to reach my generation. The wise writer...writes for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.”
"That was always my experience—a poor boy in a rich town; a poor boy in a rich boy's school; a poor boy in a rich man's club at Princeton…I have never been able to forgive the rich for being rich, and it has colored my entire life and works."
I'm going to resist providing you with a question or prompt for this week's blog assignment. Write about what you want to write about with regard to The Great Gatsby.
______________________________________
“Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat...the redeeming things are not 'happiness and pleasure' but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.”–Letter, October 5, 1940, to his daughter, Frances
“Often I think writing is a sheer paring away of oneself leaving always something thinner, barer, more meager.”
–Letter, April 27, 1940, to his daughter, Frances
“Riches have never fascinated me, unless combined with the greatest charm or distinction.”
–Letter, Aug. 1936, to Ernest Hemingway
“A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.”
–Letter (undated) to his daughter, Frances
“All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.”
–Letter (undated) to his daughter, Frances
“Sometimes I think that idlers seem to be a special class for whom nothing can be planned, plead as one will with them—their only contribution to the human family is to warm a seat at the common table.”
–Letter, July 7, 1938, to his daughter, Frances
“In a few days I’ll have lived one score and three days in this vale of tears. On I plod—always bored, often drunk, doing no penance for my faults—rather do I become more tolerant of myself from day to day, hardening my crystal heart with blasphemous humor and shunning only toothpicks, pathos, and poverty as being the three unforgivable things in life.”
–Letter, September 22, 1919
“The purpose of a work of fiction is to appeal to the lingering after-effects in the reader’s mind as differing from, say, the purpose of oratory or philosophy which respectively leave people in a fighting or thoughtful mood.”
–Letter, June 1, 1934, to Ernest Hemingway
“My idea is always to reach my generation. The wise writer...writes for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.”
“Self-interview,” New York Tribune (May 7, 1920).
"That was always my experience—a poor boy in a rich town; a poor boy in a rich boy's school; a poor boy in a rich man's club at Princeton…I have never been able to forgive the rich for being rich, and it has colored my entire life and works."
–F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters
Source: The Columbia World of Quotations. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. www.bartleby.com/66/. [Accessed March 20, 2009].
Source: The Columbia World of Quotations. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. www.bartleby.com/66/. [Accessed March 20, 2009].
Friday, March 13, 2009
Gatsby Journal Page: Chapters 1-3 (Due: Monday, March 16, 2009)
This week I'd like you to post a page from The Great Gatsby reader's journal I've asked you to keep. How you organize this journal entry is up to you. (See the handout I provided earlier this week if you want some suggestions for how to approach this assignment.)
In addition to your journal posting, I'd like you to create a Wordle "word cloud" from the text that you post to your blog. This can only be done once you have completed your blog post. Once you have done so, visit the Wordle site, cut and paste the text from your blog into the Wordle engine, and play around with the various layout, font, and color choices in order to customize the look of your word cloud.
In order to insert your Wordle creation into your blog you will first have to take a screen shot of your "word cloud". Visit the following screen shot instruction webpage to view directions on how to take and save a picture of what you create. Once you have done so, you should then click on the 'Add Image' icon located on the top menu of your blog's create post window to insert the image into your blog.
Your finished product should look something like this:
In addition to your journal posting, I'd like you to create a Wordle "word cloud" from the text that you post to your blog. This can only be done once you have completed your blog post. Once you have done so, visit the Wordle site, cut and paste the text from your blog into the Wordle engine, and play around with the various layout, font, and color choices in order to customize the look of your word cloud.
In order to insert your Wordle creation into your blog you will first have to take a screen shot of your "word cloud". Visit the following screen shot instruction webpage to view directions on how to take and save a picture of what you create. Once you have done so, you should then click on the 'Add Image' icon located on the top menu of your blog's create post window to insert the image into your blog.
Your finished product should look something like this:
Friday, March 6, 2009
American Poetry Supermarket (Due: Monday, March 9, 2009)
Once you have your poem, perform a web search and find an online version of the poem. Publish a link to that poem somewhere towards the beginning of your post. (I will review how to do this during our lab period.) Then respond to the following:
1) Research some biographical information about the poet and some historical background about the period in which he/she wrote. How does this information connect to the work you have read by this poet? (You might also incorporate words that either the poet has said or others have said about their motivation for writing this and other poems.)
2) Perform a close reading of the poem you have chosen and write a bit about rhetorical aspects (such as figurative language, structure, theme, tone, meter, etc.) that you feel have contributed in some way to your experience of reading it.
3) Perform a web search and find at least one other work by the poet you have chosen. (You will have no problem locating these works online, as each of these poet's works have been widely disseminated.) Provide a link to the poem(s) so that your readers can access it/them. Write briefly about your experience as a reader of one or more of these.
4) Finally, respond to the question, “Is there anything about the works of this poet that makes them distinctly American?” (Other than the fact that they were composed by an American poet.)
How you arrange this information is up to you, but your post should be approximately a page in length when typed. You may include a small image of the poet if you are able to find one. . Remember, if you quote a source from the Internet to cite it!
1) Research some biographical information about the poet and some historical background about the period in which he/she wrote. How does this information connect to the work you have read by this poet? (You might also incorporate words that either the poet has said or others have said about their motivation for writing this and other poems.)2) Perform a close reading of the poem you have chosen and write a bit about rhetorical aspects (such as figurative language, structure, theme, tone, meter, etc.) that you feel have contributed in some way to your experience of reading it.
3) Perform a web search and find at least one other work by the poet you have chosen. (You will have no problem locating these works online, as each of these poet's works have been widely disseminated.) Provide a link to the poem(s) so that your readers can access it/them. Write briefly about your experience as a reader of one or more of these.
4) Finally, respond to the question, “Is there anything about the works of this poet that makes them distinctly American?” (Other than the fact that they were composed by an American poet.)
How you arrange this information is up to you, but your post should be approximately a page in length when typed. You may include a small image of the poet if you are able to find one. . Remember, if you quote a source from the Internet to cite it!
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