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.

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.

Banner Day, Banner Weekend, and a New Banner

Banner courtesy of Samir's Photoshop skillz (with a z!)

Take the time to check out the new banner of the blog. The previous one was made with my woefully inadequate Photoshop skills where I did a poor job of using the clone tool. Now, however, thanks to Samir, we have a banner worthy of a high school English class blog. Seriously, Samir took time out of his schedule to create this awesome banner, and for that, everyone should give him a hearty pat on the back.

My wife and I finally moved into a home that we "own." The bank actually owns most of it for the next 15 years or so, at which point, she and I become the majority owners. We won't own it outright until 2040, but all the problems that come with owning property are now mine, so it gives me the appearance of ownership. After all of the hassles of getting to last Saturday (of which there were many), I'm going to give into the illusion and say that I am a homeowner. Amazingly enough, I will be 60 years old when 2040 rolls around, and it's hard to believe that between now and that year is the same amount of time between the year of my birth and today. Our concept of time is astounding sometimes.

Frosh
You received the personal narrative essay guidelines and prompts on Thursday. Through writing the essay, you'll showcase the skill of demonstrating the difference between concrete detail (CD) and commentary (CM) by writing a four paragraph essay with a total of four chunks. Remember that a chunk consists of three sentences, a concrete detail followed by two commentary sentences.

Friday was our first Forward Friday where you took a pre-test to provide a baseline for where you currently stand in your test-taking abilities. The idea here will be to provide you with tips, tricks and knowledge to do well on the CSTs in the spring and the CAHSEE next year. The effort you put into this will directly correlate into how well you ultimately do, so make sure to be here and take it seriously.

Tuesday, you finished the pre-test and we briefly covered MLA format. Formatting your essay in the MLA stye will not be a major priority for this essay, but the sooner you get the hang of doing so, the easier the rest of your high school English classes will be. The final draft of the personal narrative essay will be due on Thursday, September 9.

Seniors
On Thursday, we really got the chance to discuss Plato's Allegory of the Cave in depth. Much like DFW's This is Water, Plato's Allegory provides a way of looking at life from a different point of view than many aren't used to taking. Part of why I really enjoy discussing this text is its relevance. Nearly 2400 years later, we can find connections between the prisoners in the cave, the puppeteers and the enlightened to any number of institutions. In a media-fueled world on a 24/7 news cycle, it's probably more relevant today than it has ever been.

Corporations that own the few media outlets available to a majority of the populace decide what those people are able to see; they determine what qualifies as news. Oftentimes if a piece of news doesn't fit the narrative that they wish to be the driving force of a story, it doesn't make air. Those in charge -- the puppeteers -- will attempt to make it more difficult to achieve enlightenment. There are avenues that you are able to explore, though. And that leads us to our bonus time down at the bottom of the entry.

Friday, you took the first lit terms test. A second test will be coming up on Friday, September 17.

Meanwhile, just about everyone had a lit project book on Tuesday. We discussed some of the best methods to be successful when annotating said books. Here are the things we decided:

• 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)

Keep in mind that I'm a big fan of making sure you have equal parts highlighting and writing in your annotations. The first annotation check will be on Thursday, September 23.

Bonus Time (10 points) - In a modern world, what is the best practical way to achieve enlightenment? Notice the word practical is emphasized here. Keeping an open mind and allowing yourself to accept new ideas are ways to achieve enlightenment, but what is a specific action that an individual can take? What is something that an individual can do in today's world to achieve enlightenment? Respond in the comments in a minimum of five sentences with your name and period. This is geared toward seniors, but it's an opportunity that is open to everyone. Freshpeeps that wish to take a stab at answering will seem extra cool and probably earn a few more points if the answers are impressive.  Answers must be submitted by 11:59pm on Friday.

P.S. I won't have Internet access at home until at least Friday, but I do receive email during that time, which means that I will have the ability to read your comments. Blog updates (for the five people that actually follow) will probably be light until then.

Exhaustion

Today was a long day. Tomorrow doesn't look to be any shorter.

Frosh
You took the essay terms quiz and then we worked on improving the commentary corrections you completed last week. Tomorrow, you will receive the narrative essay prompt possibilities where you'll finally get the opportunity to demonstrate how well you know the difference between concrete details and commentary. We'll also go over the purpose of Follow Friday.

Seniors
I'm enjoying the conversations coming out of our reading of Plato's Allegory of the Cave. You'll get more of my impressions about this in the next blog post because we've only just finished reading it as opposed to having discussed or analyzed it together as a class. And don't forget to study for the first lit terms test.