Ketchup

This is awesome. I wish I either
owned this costume or that
my face was Photoshopped
in place of this guy.

I'm very behind. Hence, I need to CATCH UP. See? This is what an English degree gets you: a stranglehold on puns.

Frosh
Monday, September 12 - I assigned your newspaper project. This is a big deal assignment, done in groups, where the goal is to create a newspaper from the point of view of the animals from Animal Farm. The newspaper could either be an official publication under the watchful eye of Napoleon, or it could be an underground newspaper meant to subvert the reign of the pigs. Either way, it has four sections and each person in your group is responsible for at least two articles. However your groups decides to lay it out in terms of size and page length is up to you. This is a chance to be creative and make something that looks visually interesting and exciting, so here's hoping you all do that.

Tuesday, September 13 - While I was gone at a district conference, you used the day to work on the newspaper project.

Wednesday, September 14 - Lather, rinse, and repeat, since the conference was two days long.

Thursday, September 15 - We revised Jane Schaffer-style chunks in class, making sure that you had a concrete detail sentence followed by two commentary sentences. You took what we did in class and created two more chunks based on the characters about which you had already written.

Friday, September 16 - You received another in-class work day to further your progress on the newspaper project.

Monday, September 19 - We began looking at the elements of character in class. The first of our two big ideas was to understand direct and indirect characterization. Keep in mind that direct characterization is easy, as it's a stated fact the narrator states about the character, while indirect characterization requires analysis on the part of the reader based on the actions, words and descriptions of the characters. The other big idea is to focus on internal and external conflict. Emotionally struggling with an idea is internal, while physically struggling against an outside force is external.

Tuesday, September 20 - Yet another meeting prevented me from being present in class despite being present on campus. You read "The Interlopers," containing one of my favorite single word endings in a short story, and completed the characterization sheet to the best of your ability.

Wednesday, September 21 - You received yet another day to work on your newspaper project.

Thursday, September 22 - Read the description for September 21 because the same applies here.

Friday, September 23 - We finished going over the elements of character, exploring flat and round characters as well as static and dynamic characters. Remember that round characters can be static or dynamic, while flat characters are always going to be static. Also, we discovered how detrimental poor directions can be on assignments when I am not present, and I asked you to revise your characterization worksheets with more specific instructions.

Seniors
Monday, September 12 - We listened to Blues Traveler's "The Hook" and explored the idea of saying a whole lot while claiming to say nothing.

Tuesday, September 13 - I was gone, and you read the poem "Autumn Begins in Martin's Ferry, OH," answering questions that accompanied the poem.

Wednesday, September 14 - You received a reading/annotation day for the lit project.

Thursday, September 15 - After turning in the first Article Selection assignment, you took the lit terms test covering the second set of terms. Following the completion of the quiz, we reviewed the concept of ethos, pathos and logos. It was review for most of you, which is fine. No one ever hurt themselves by learning more about a concept.

Friday, September 16 - We furthered our foray into argumentation by covering different logical fallacies. The idea is to understand that while someone can have a strong or salient point, he or she can weaken their argument by committing these fallacies. So don't do that.

Monday, September 19 - We finished covering the logical fallacies. You received the op-ed assignment where you got the chance to see SO MANY logical fallacies in action.

Tuesday, September 20 - While I was at yet another meeting, you continued working on the assignment from the day before.

Wednesday, September 21 - The period was the final reading/annotation day prior to the first annotation check where you had to have the first 25% of your lit project book read and annotated. Hopefully, you used it well.

Thursday, September 22 - You used the class period to complete the first of four in-class timed writings. You received two prompts, one a little easier than the other but with a higher degree of difficulty, and wrote for the entire class period. After finishing the timed writing, you turned in your books for the first annotation check. The revision of the timed writing, which needs to be typed in MLA format, is due Tuesday, September 27.

Friday, September 23 - I returned your books and your first article selection. I utilized the comment key when grading the latter and gave you a copy of the same. We used the period to explain the different facets of the comment key, and I hope seeing a tangible usage of the comment key on your assignment emphasized its importance.

COMICS and Costumes

With DC's relaunch of their entire line of titles, I decided to pick a few of them up to test the waters of reading comics on a regular basis again since I'd given up the habit and switched to trade paperbacks for the last few years due to the cost of individual titles. Not surprisingly, comics are still expensive and for some unknown reason that I'm sure DC and Marvel will both regret given the hindsight of enough time, they charge the same price for issues digitally. But having a solid, new jumping-on point for an increasingly insular and serialized world helps, thus COMICS.

Action Comics - Grant Morrison is my favorite writer, and he's attempting to bring Superman back to his Golden Age roots where he fought for the poor and downtrodden against the wealthy and powerful. Unfortunately, this has also led to a costume downgrade where he merely wears a t-shirt and jeans with work boots and a cape...and that's strange. I'm not a huge fan of Rags Morales doing the art duties, but I'm intrigued enough in a somewhat depowered Superman that isn't Smallville that I'll stick around for as long as Morrison steers the ship.

Batwing - The dialogue is corny, but I enjoy that Batman is helping establish a global identity for his brand of justice, establishing that the Batman Inc. storyline from a few months ago isn't entirely dead.

Stormwatch - This felt like writer Paul Cornell was breaking the cardinal rule of writing of "show not tell." There was way too much expository dialogue that didn't really explain all that much. There's no problem with dropping the reader in on the middle of a story and allowing them to catch up, but this issue didn't present the opportunity for that catching up. There was a lot of standing around and talking, but without witty dialogue and then very little action.

Batgirl - This...this was awful. Batgirl is portrayed as weak and ineffectual, her roommate is right out of Stock Modern Hippie Characters 101, and the villain is stupid. Plus, the police are stupid, especially in the final scene. DC made a lot of waves in taking Barbara Gordon out of her wheelchair-bound persona of Oracle and placing her back in the cape and cowl of Batgirl, and even that was glossed over in a lazy fashion. However, in the comic's defense, it wasn't the WORST thing I read this week.

Detective Comics - This was the absolute worst thing I read this week. Jim Lee's redesign barely works when it's drawn by Jim Lee, and it completely misses every mark when drawn by anyone else. NOT EVERYONE IS GOOD AT DRAWING UNNECESSARY SEAMS, JIM LEE! However, the art is better than the nonsensical story, which is filled with an over-the-top climactic scene at the end that literally saw me say "Ew...!" A review I read described this as an issue of Spawn where someone went through the script and just did a Find and Replace on Microsoft Word to insert Batman and the Joker's names. On top of that, none of the characterization felt true to the core of the characters. The Joker has friends? What? Has writer Tony Daniel ever heard of the Joker? I'm glad I had to buy this digitally because that allows me to delete the issue and never have to read it again.

Justice League International - My big problem with the launch of Justice League last week was the fact that it had seven characters on the cover, three and a half of which show up in the actual issue. The whole thing amounted to a Green Lantern/Batman conversation with Superman showing up acting like a jerk on the last two pages while Cyborg isn't recognizable as his namesake. It takes time to introduce these characters, you say? Well, not according to Justice League International, which does a fine job of introducing each person, gives them distinct personality quirks and creates an intriguing arc of playing Booster Gold as the leader of the team because he's an easily manipulated patsy. This is not rocket science and it's been done before to great success in the past. Justice League, take a cue from your B-team, and get it together.

Animal Man - The art is appropriately keeping a foot in two worlds by presenting Animal Man as a down-to-Earth superhero who's been out of the game for a little while while also managing to up the creep factor when he enters a dream sequence. This felt like everything an Animal Man comic should be by making him a relatable family man, an animal rights activist, and a superhero greatly in tune with his power. Animal Man wins the week.

Frosh
Last Monday, August 29, you took the Animal Farm re-test. This is next on my list of things to grade as soon as I finish up the dialectical journals.

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, August 30 through September 1, we discussed everything Animal Farm. While you were given a list of discussion questions, I focused more on the questions you had first and foremost. The answers you provided still wound up covering much of the information that I would have liked to have covered had we just focused on the given questions. This is one of those occasions where everyone wins. You also turned in your annotated Animal Farm books

Then on that same Thursday and the following Friday, September 2, we began covering the Jane Shaffer essay terms.

This past Tuesday, we completed those terms and I assigned the Animal Farm plot chart which you worked on for the rest of the period. By the way, the climax is when Boxer gets taken away to the slaughter house. It's at that point that everyone has their dreams crushed, and the animals are resigned to a life similar to or worse than the one that Jones provided previously. Soul crushing, right?

Wednesday and Thursday, you watched The Russian Revolution in Color, the content of which is self-explanatory to anyone paying attention to the title. You took notes on the aspects of history that you could connect to the plot of the book.

You're going to use those notes to complete two chunks (a concrete detail sentence followed by two commentary sentences) on two separate Animal Farm characters where you compare what happened in the book to the events of the Russian Revolution. Depending on your class period today, we created at least one chunk on Old Major and either started or completed one on Mr. Jones. The two chunks are due Monday, September 12.

Seniors
Our look at philosophy continued on Monday, August 29, when we discussed Plato and Aristotle in depth. The thing to remember about those two and Socrates is the following: Socrates asked why. Plato explained why. Aristotle explained how we got to why.

Tuesday, August 30, we read and (somewhat) discussed the Allegory of the Cave. It's amazing how relevant this remains almost two and a half millennia later. In fact, a recent story I first saw on Gizmodo discusses a very similar occurrence that happened recently. These lab chimps saw daylight for the very first time in over 30 years, and their reaction of joy and contentment is something to behold. Notice how they relish the moment and attempt to take everything in by looking around their new, natural surroundings. AND THEY HUG! I've probably watched that video five times just to see how happy the chimps are feeling the sun on their skin. It's amazing.

You took the first lit terms test on Wednesday, August 31. Retakes will be allowed on Monday, September 12, and Thursday, September 15.

We discussed the idea of the cave on Thursday, September 1, and you worked on the questions associated with Plato's dialogue.

Friday, September 2, you completed the first and easiest part of the lit project by having your book or order form for your book. We discussed annotation and how to be successful when attempting to annotate. Check out this list if you're ever confused.

• examples of lit terms in action (especially the proceeding three)
• motif
• theme
• symbol
• unfamiliar words (define them)
• commentary on what happens (explain your thoughts & opinions)
• important/notable passages (briefly explain why you think said passages are notable or important)
• character development (note new characters, character descriptions, or major changes to characters)
• ask questions (provide answers later, when possible)
• chapter summaries (describe three important things that happened)

This past Tuesday, you received the article selection guidelines and were asked to write an article selection-style precis on the Allegory of the Cave using MLA format. This serves as practice for the article selection assignments you'll be completing over the course of the lit project. The first of those is due Thursday, September 15.

Speaking of September 15, that's when you'll be taking your next lit terms test, the terms for which you received on Wednesday and Thursday. Once we finished going over those terms, you received time to read and annotate. Hopefully, you used that time productively. Here are the terms:

1. Symbol
2. External Conflict
3. Internal Conflict
4. Denotation
5. Antagonist
6. Protagonist
7. Point of View
8. Foreshadowing
9. 1^st person pov
10. 3^rd per. Limited
11. Dramatic Irony
12. Verbal Irony
13. Tone
14. Setting
15. Mood
16. Connotation
17. 3^rd per. Omniscient
18. Situational Irony
19. Irony
20. Simile

Today, the practice article selection assignment was due. After turning that in, we discussed advertising slogans, something to which no one is immune, myself included. As promised, here's a compilation of Mac Tonight commercials. Apparently, Mac has been revived in CGI form for a Singapore ad campaign that informs customers that McDonalds is now open 24 hours. Maybe he'll get a similar revival in the states sometime soon.

If you're interested in seeing a picture of me in that infamous costume, I posted one over at my Facebook page. You'll also find that my dad knew exactly where it was in the garage and fished it down. My mom is quite the craftswoman since that moon head has survived almost 24 years, which is pretty impressive for paper-mache and cardboard.

And mustard! Honey mustard, at that!

Dynamic Duo!

Yes, Brock Lesnar lost. I still had a great time at UFC 121, though. There are lots of fighters that I will always pay money to see, Brock Lesnar chief among them, but I'm really a huge fan of the sport. The show demonstrated the sport pretty well, both good and bad but more the former than the latter. Even though Jake Shields stunk up the joint and should write a thank you card to the two judges that gave him the win, the rest of the fights were entertaining enough that I still had a great time despite my guy losing.

The night also served as a welcome distraction from the previous two days as things with the dog we adopted did not work out. My wife and I were very disappointed and saddened by the turn of events but feel we made the right decision for us and, hopefully, for her.

Halloween was also pretty fun, and I enjoyed seeing the costumes of the folks who decided to dress up. I included a picture of my wife and I as Batman and Robin. And before I get any snarky remarks (he says as he laughs at the idea of actually getting any kind of comments on the blog), there was a female Robin at one point in the Batman mythos. Her name is Stephanie Brown who started her career under the alias of Spoiler and served as the fourth Robin (there have been five total) for a brief period of time before Batman fired her. She died, came back to life and now has taken on the mantle of Batgirl. Comics are awesome and confusing. A hearty high-five to the person who can name the other four Robins by their secret identities.

By the by, my Xbox came back from its repair trip today and I promptly fired up the Netflix to find that Batman: Under the Red Hood, a direct to DVD animated release from last August, is now available in their Watch Instantly section. If you're a fan of Batman or good (animated) action with an intriguing and at times heart-wrenching story, I'd definitely recommend checking it out. To my mind, it's the best DC animated release so far, even edging out Justice League: New Frontier.

Now it's time to play catch up.

Frosh
On Friday, October 22, I was gone and you moved forward.

Monday, October 25, you took the Elements of Lit test and turned in those notes, which took up most of the period. I've since added those tests to the gradebook. It's definitely a more difficult test than you may have anticipated because there were no multiple choice options and instead relies on your ability to remember your notes. But keep in mind, there was nothing on the test that wasn't also in your notes. That's how I like to operate for your tests so you know how best to prepare for them.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, October 26 and 27, you worked on the Root Words vocabulary worksheet. We went over why root words are important (what with them allowing folks to more easily define new words if able to correctly identify the root) and turned our focus to how many of the roots find their origins in Greek mythology (e.g. narcissist, herculean, titanic).

I collected the assignment on Thursday, October 28, which is when we began our mythology introduction. If you take away nothing else from this beginning portion of our unit, at the very least understand that myth does not automatically equate to something that is untrue. Keep in mind that myths merely explain that which is unexplainable in an attempt to get a better understanding of the world or universe at large.

After moving forward once again last Friday, we concluded the mythology introduction notes today by defining and discussing a few key terms:

• fairy tale
• parable
• legend
• myth (It's kind of redundant, I know...)
• epic
• folk tale

We will be reading some of these in class, and others may or may not show up on a test. (Hint: that usually means they WILL show up on a test.)

You need your student ID cards tomorrow and have an ORU due Friday with a section four that includes a theme statement.

Seniors
Last Friday, October 22, I was gone and you worked on completing the Anglo Saxon laws worksheet in anticipation of our Beowulf reading.

We shifted gears slightly on Monday and Tuesday (October 25 and 26) when we examined the hero journey and hero archetypes, respectively. However, the concept still applies to Beowulf because he's an epic hero. When we start reading the actual (translated) poem this week, it'll make some more sense, but understand that he's the manliest man up to that point in the history of storytelling. If there were a way for me to finagle a reference to The Rock as a manlier man right now, I'd do so, but every attempt I made sounded really weak. Also, neither of these guys stand a chance of losing to Cain Velasquez, so there's no way I would have to eat crow later. Additionally on Monday, you were assigned the theme worksheet which was due today, but I pushed it back one more day so that I could continue checking your theme statements. But more on that in a second.

Wednesday and Thursday, October 27 and 28, we explored evil and all that entails. See, Grendel is the living embodiment of evil and an all around jerk. We're looking at both sides here, but, spoiler alert, the good guy is going to win in the end. At the same time, too often we (in the big picture, humanity sense of we) tend to define things by what they aren't when it comes to difficult concepts like evil. You are all to be commended for attempting to define it on your own, and I look forward to reading the varied definitions you wrote.

Friday, October 29, I began checking your theme statements and continued to do so today. This took a lot longer than I thought and will continue into tomorrow when I plan to really finish checking them. The important idea to keep in mind is that a theme statement needs to be universal and not tied to the text in any way. Remember that just because we framed theme statements as the main idea (or lesson, as some put it) of a story doesn't mean that it needs to be positive. Too many of the theme statements I'm seeing refer to what characters should do or labeling actions as evil. Some of your books are dark and have pessimistic views of the world. The theme needs to reflect that.

I'll collect the theme worksheet tomorrow. On Thursday, November 4, you have your fourth annotation check and Article Selection 4 both due. Don't forget that next Wednesday, November 10, is the due date for your CD Creation project. Finally, your annotations need to be complete by Tuesday, November 16. This is a lot of work, but if you've paced yourself out well, it should be manageable.

ITEM! Old timey news radio voices are my favorite kind of radio voices.

ITEM! Rhys Ifans, he of Notting Hill, The Replacements and constantly getting mistaken for Paul Bettany fame, has been cast as the villain in the latest Marc Webb directed Spider-Man reboot picture leading to speculation as to which of the webbed wall-crawler's rogue's gallery he will play. Smart money is on the Lizard.

ITEM! The air conditioning malfunctioned for most of the day in the B building resulting in hotter than normal temperatures and a teacher in a sour mood in room 37 who didn't expect to sweat through his shirt in such a short amount of time.

ITEM! Brett Favre is allegedly a dirty, dirty old man.

ITEM! In developing news, above-mentioned sourpussed teacher has experienced a strange clicking pain and swelling in his jaw which has made the rest of the day hard to bear, leaving his presence at the school tomorrow in question.

ITEM! Noted British graffiti artist Banksy directed a decidedly dark and pointed opening couch gag for noted television show The Simpsons this past Sunday. Banksy, known for being elusive and notoriously difficult to track down, directed the opening which features an Asian sweatshop manufacturing Simpsons merchandise to the detriment of cats, dolphins and unicorns everywhere.

Frosh

On Thursday, you turned in your third ORU, and then we listened to Alanis Morissette's song, "Ironic." Hopefully, you used the time wisely and finished the assignment by the end of the period.

Today, we started going over the Elements of Fiction, which is my catch-all name for everything that I think you need to know but didn't warrant its own "element" title. Sure, I could spend an entire day discussing symbolism, and it's worth knowing. However, there are broader topics we need to cover that are more vital to the rest of the year, so we're going to focus on those things first. If you're interested in symbolism, though, ask me sometime and we can discuss it. I like those kinds of talks.

Seniors

Thursday, you had your second writing day. Since there was no school on Friday, thus you didn't get your books back in time because of the second annotation check, that means the revision will not be due until Wednesday, October 13. You also turned in the second article selection assignment. There were far fewer for me to grade this time around; that's great for the fact that it didn't take me that long to get them back to you, however, everyone should take note that the more free time I have due to a lack of grading usually means that your grade will conversely suffer. Those of you that turned the assignment in, kudos! Those of you that didn't, boo!

You received the Lit Project Problems assignment today, and I hope everyone takes the time to take into account these errors, which, while not as prominent as prior years, are rearing their ugly heads more often than I would like considering how many times I've explained them so far. Everyone worked on that for the period, and, health permitting tomorrow, we'll discuss the answers.

P.S. You may or may not have noticed that I've been providing links to PDF versions of assignments I've handed out in class using Google Docs. I'm hoping that this is helpful to those of you who may have missed class. If successful, it may provide me the excuse to finally delete my Teacherweb site that I find to be a pain to update and allow me to focus everything here instead. Streamlining my Internet presence may be the way to go in order to make it easier for students and parents to keep up with the events in class.

Brocktober Beards

BROCKBEARD

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of beards despite the fact that I can't grow one myself. My dad, who has always been a hero of mine, has had a beard for my whole life and the entire length of his marriage to my mom. There was a brief respite in the mid-90's where he went from a full beard to a van dyke goatee when that was the in-thing to do. Otherwise, though, beard all the way! Unfortunately, my beard gets patchy on the sides, which is the most important part of a full beard. Since many people always want most what they can't have, my lack of beard-growing ability only fuels my appreciation for beards more. Heck, that's at least 20% of the reason why I'm friends with McBride.

Imagine my surprise when I watched UFC Primetime: Lesnar vs. Velasquez tonight and saw that Brock Lesnar, my favorite fighter and UFC Heavyweight champion went and grew himself a mountain-man beard. As if the guy didn't look enough like a viking already, he decides to go and seal the deal with the manliest facial hair around. He really does seem poised to take over The Rock's position as my number one man-crush.

Frosh
Today you turned in your setting questions, and we went over the elements of irony. Keep in mind that you need to be able to differentiate the three kinds of irony. Tomorrow, we look at Alanis Morissette's version of irony.

Seniors
Everyone used the period to catch up on reading and annotation. Tomorrow is our second writing day. This one won't have an easier prompt, and I will be looking at the revisions closer this time around. Make sure to avoid first and second person and to keep the summary to a minimum. The revision for tomorrow's timed writing will be due Wednesday, October 13.

And, if you're reading this in time, don't forget that your second annotation check will take place tomorrow and to turn in your latest Article Selection.

...in which I vent.

Make no mistake, I enjoy writing this blog. It's a cathartic attempt at tracking what I do in a way that will be helpful to me in the future. At the same time, I wouldn't do this if I didn't think it was helpful to students. This is a two-way street, though, folks. In attempting to create a dialogue, I feel like I'm shouting at nothing, screaming into a void where sound is never returned my way.

If someone feels uncomfortable speaking in class, this should be the avenue to make your voice heard. A few people have made some jokes in class that I'm desperate for blog attention, but that's only partially true; ideally, I would like to see some activity on here that hasn't come as a result of bonus point bribes from yours truly. And then...THEN! I didn't even get one person making a single attempt at tackling a 15 point bonus opportunity despite having the window open for almost a week.

The blog will continue so ignore my existential online crisis. Getting more than the four people who have already made their voices heard to speak up would be ideal, though.

Frosh
Wednesday, you took a quiz on The Most Dangerous Game, worked on your map for the story of the same name and then took some notes on the Elements of Character.

Thursday, we continued taking notes on the Elements of Character. I need to revisit some of these notes and streamline them because some of the slides are very redundant. Your focus should be on knowing the difference between three pairs of ideas: direct and indirect characterization; static and dynamic characters; and flat and round characters. If you can demonstrate the difference between those three pairs of ideas, then we'll be cool.

Friday, we moved forward.

Today, we're going to finish the character notes and begin reading the Cask of Amontillado. You'll be using an inference chart that you'll create on a sheet of paper to characterize Montresor. The chart has five categories: Appearance, What Fortunato says, What Montresor says, Montresor's actions, and Montresor's thoughts. You'll find a quote for each of these categories and then make an inference about the character based on the quote. Finally, you'll state whether the quote qualifies as direct or indirect characterization in parenthesis after your inference.

Seniors
Discussing the fallacies seems to have gone well, and many people seemed to have a grasp on them by the time we finished our lesson on Wednesday. We read one of the letters to the editor together as a class, at which point you then began working on finding the fallacies in their reasoning, as well as ethos, pathos and logos arguments.

Thursday was your first writing day for the lit project. You'll take that Timed Writing home and revise it into the most perfect piece of writing you possibly can and turn it in Tuesday, September 28. You also turned in your books for the first annotation check and gave me your first Article Selection assignment.

Friday, you received more time to work on the Op-Ed piece assignment and received a copy of my comment key. Sixth period had a few more questions about the comment key, so they received the weekend to finish off the Op-Ed assignment. Fifth period turned it in at the end of the class.

Today, we'll be watching a documentary presentation of Naomi Klein's book, No Logo. You will be finding one example each of Naomi Klein using a(n) ethos, pathos, and logos argument in attempting to make her point. You'll also find one use of a corporation using a logical fallacy to further its agenda. Explain the fallacy, who uses it and how it's used.

McDonald's ain't got nothin' on me.

There's a whole lot to cover, so let's just get into it and skip the preamble, okay?

Frosh
Last Wednesday, some of you brought in second drafts for revision. Everyone who had a second draft traded papers with someone else and participated in some peer editing. My hope is that you found this practice valuable on two ends: one, by having someone read your work and giving you constructive criticism, and two, by reading someone else's paper and gaining some insight on how you can better improve your draft. I have to admit that I was disappointed in how many chose not to complete their second drafts, and it doesn't bode well for the final drafts.

It's a plot! (Admiral Ackbar would
be proud.)

Everyone who had one turned in a final draft of the personal narrative essay on Thursday. We then switched gears and started our Elements of Literature unit, dealing first with plot. We'll be covering several different aspects of literature and reading a variety of short stories to illustrate them.

Then we had our second Forward Friday. Things did not go as planned, as is often the case when teachers implement new lessons that they haven't tried before. I'm hoping for more success and more focus next time. As we get further along, the plan is to focus on just the task at hand (whether those be released questions or our workbooks) instead of trying to tackle too many things at once.

Monday, we finished our notes on plot and discussed some of the reading strategies that we'll employ as a class.

Today, you received a plot diagram graphic organizer. You'll need to keep track of this as we read Richard Connell's The Most Dangerous Game, which we began today in class and will continue to do through Thursday. Anything left to read will be your homework that night.

Seniors
Wednesday, we started our second set of lit terms, which are as follows:

1. Symbol
2. External Conflict
3. Internal Conflict
4. Denotation
5. Antagonist
6. Protagonist
7. Point of View
8. Foreshadowing
9. 1^st person pov
10. 3^rd per. Limited
11. Dramatic Irony
12. Verbal Irony
13. Tone
14. Setting
15. Mood
16. Connotation
17. 3^rd per. Omniscient
18. Situational Irony
19. Irony
20. Simile

Again, keep these terms at the forefront of your mind while reading your lit project books because knowing how to find and identify them will be the key to doing well on the annotation.

On Thursday, you received the guidelines for the Article Selection assignment. Last year was the first year that I ever gave this assignment to students and it required a lot more explanation on my part because I had no experience with it. Students had more questions, probably because I didn't have as clear an idea as I do now about what I expect. This year, I planned for the same amount of time to explain it but found that I didn't need it. This is a half-period explanation now, at most. I'll have to take that into account next year if I choose to keep using the idea. Your first Article Selection will be due on September 23.

On Friday, we finished covering the lit terms.

After revisiting the guidelines for MLA format, we read the article Which High School Students Are Most Likely to Graduate From College? from last year's US News & World Report on Monday. Besides some interesting statistics, this article (or Allegory of the Cave) will serve as the basis for a practice precis  that is due Wednesday, September 15. This will also give you a chance for you to demonstrate that you know MLA format inside and out. 

Today, we took a look at advertising slogans. This is a continuation of our philosophy and media literacy unit that we'll tie back to Aristotle. I'm very much looking forward to having a discussion on this concept with you tomorrow. In the meantime, here's a compilation from the Mac Tonight advertising campaign of which my willful participation is now well-known.