The Death of the/a Moth Essay

Woolf is sad you have a paper to write

The use of metaphor is important in literature, poetry, film, and other writing. It is no less important in The Death of the Moth by Virginia Woolf and The Death of a Moth by Annie Dillard. Choose one of the following prompts and answer it in a well-written analytic essay. In the prompts that ask for reflection, that reflection should encompass no more than 25% of your word count.

• Dillard explores the nature of solitude and introspection in her essay The Death of a Moth. Examine the way in which Dillard uses rhetorical strategies to develop and explore that theme. To conclude your essay, reflect on the role of solitude and introspection in your own life.
• Woolf explores the relationship between life and death in her essay The Death of the Moth. Examine the way in which Woolf uses rhetorical strategies to develop and explore her theme. To conclude your essay, reflect on the role of her theme in your own life.
• Why is the moth central to the essays of Dillard and Woolf? Contrast their respective central ideas and how each of them uses rhetorical strategies to develop those respective ideas. To conclude your essay, reflect on the way in which one of those central ideas resonates with you.
• How do Woolf and Dillard create a setting and evoke a specific mood in their essays? How do these strategies enrich and advance their respective theses?

Due Date: January 3, 2013
Word Count: 750 +/- 10%

Here is this essay assignment in printable form.

Dillard has some good advice for your essay

Hunk-a hunk-a burnin' moth!

The Hercules Moth: Bigger than a kid...

Annie Dillard's Death of a Moth is perhaps a bit more difficult to unravel than Woolf's moth musings, so we are going to try our hand at unraveling her meaning as well as how she crafted her essay.

From the packet, please blog your perspicacious answers to comprehension questions 1-3 and rhetoric questions 1-6.

...and your head!

As you do the questions above, you may find it useful to know the following: "A volatile and peripatetic poet, the prodigy Arthur Rimbaud wrote all of his poetry in a space of less than five years" (Poets.org). Hmmm, connections....

Woolf: The Death of the Moth

Virginia Woolf (sure looks sad about that moth)

Finish reading the essay The Death of the Moth by Virginia Woolf and blog thoughtful answers to the following questions: (Tyshauna, since you don't have a blog yet, it's okay to do them on paper or to email them to me.)

1. How would you describe the speakers attitude in paragraph 2?
2. In what ways is the third paragraph the center of the essay (apart from its being the third in a series of five)?
3. Why does the speaker lay down the pencil at the end of paragraph 4?
4. Woolf's style in this essay might be described as discursive, with longer, complex sentences predominating. Yet she uses a few brief, simple sentences. Identify two and discuss their impact.
5. Trace the emergence of combat imagery in the essay.
6. Woolf does not explicitly state a thesis, but she could be said to have an implicit one. How would you state it?
7. Describe the speaker's attitude toward death in this essay.

Visual Analysis

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Now, we’re not going to write a thousand words, but pick two of the pictures below and compare them. Compare their visual elements. Compare their argument. Compare their effect on the viewer and the way those effects are created. As we just read Richard Selzer’s The Surgeon as Priest, how do the images you chose to analyze relate to that essay?
Really analyze these images. Don’t stop with something like, “This picture shows a scary looking surgeon and reinforces people’s fears about going under the knife.” Continue on with how that effect is created. What specifically in the image makes the surgeon look “scary”? Don’t forget colors, lighting, angle, medium, and other effects. Please blog your analysis for Monday.
I'll be looking for your connection to The Surgeon as Priest and the depth of your analysis. This score will, uncharacteristically, go in the writing category rather than the skill building category.

Surgeon as Priest

Vesalius (1514-1565) by E.J.C. Hammon 1849

Your homework is twofold:

1. Blog answers to the eight Exploring the Text questions on page 204. Due Friday.
2. Separately, blog a reading response to The Surgeon as Priest. This is essentially a paragraph or two that shows your understanding of the meaning of a part of the text and its significance to the whole. Instructions are on the link. Please read these instructions; do not simply go off the description here or you'll write something that is disappointing. Due Monday.

Please note there will be another assignment showing up tomorrow on this same piece that is also due on Monday, though some class time Friday will be devoted to them . We'll talk about both of those assignments, including answering questions about a reading response, on Friday.Surgeon 

Sanctuary: For Harry Potter the Movie

I know some of you will be sad to leave the peaceful shores of our lake for Nikki Giovanni's fairly odd piece she classified as a "not quite poem" about the first Harry Potter movie on page 760 of TLC. Even so, please blog the answers to questions 1-4 and 6 by Wednesday.

Last time to the lake

This little essay doesn't come out and make any clear claims (try and find the thesis...right), but it does contain several implied claims. Identify one of those claims and blog about it. Here is it is in more specific language:

• What is the claim and how is it supported?
• Defend, challenge, or qualify that claim noting the complexity of the issue and acknowledging any possible objections to your point of view 

So in sum, explain the assertion, provide support for your position, and address the counterargument. Responses should be 250-350 words (i.e. don't go crazy and write a paper, but you'll need a little bit of space to do the job well). And by the way, in the future as we get more into argument we will do similar assignments. When we do, I'll call it an assertion journal. This is more of an initial foray into that realm, though we aren't near ready to leave analysis yet. ;)

Once More to the Lake...or wherever it was you went

Please finish the in class style write we did today. If you were gone, we took a favorite place and are trying to put our audience there with us using the techniques White used in Once More to the Lake. This is a little bit different from what we normally do, but playing with style can be fun and it leads to being able to use anecdotes effectively when we get to you writing your own arguments. We'll look at a couple in class on either Friday or Monday depending on time. This blog write could range from just a paragraph modeling his style to something more extensive depending on what you have to say.

1st period. Remember to bring in food and cashola tomorrow and Monday. For those interested, we have Saturday from 9AM to noon at the Milton Safeway. Any and all are welcome to staff that.

Once More to the Lake

For many of us, E.B. White is in our imaginations through Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little. He excelled at creating worlds for his readers, and in this piece we begin to see why.

We're going to get to know this essay pretty well over the next few days. Reading it and briefly discussing it in class today was a first salvo into that knowledge. The second step is tonight. Blog your answers to questions 1, 3-10 from page 5 of the handout. Do not do the writing options. If you were absent of need the documents for any other reasons, here they are:

Once More to the Lake Google Docs (or PDF for the formatting like the handout in class)

Secondly, there is a wistful cadence to this piece that makes it rather endearing and a bit haunting. Exploring that a bit

• Note/Mark your favorite passage. This could be one you find especially well written, or it could be one that interests you for some reason (feature, subject, etc.). You don't have to put this on the blog, but be prepared to talk about it.
• Be prepared to explain your favorite passage to the class and to be asked to explain more if your comments stay on the surface.

Taking our time...

Reread In Praise of a Snail's Pace on page 221 of TLC and do the following:

• Blog questions 1, 5-6, and 8
• Examine on your blog: How is this a compare and contrast essay? What is Goodman comparing? Describe the technique the author uses to draw out this comparison.
• Reflect on her ideas on your blog. Engage with Goodman and explore what you think about this particular issue. 

Missing out?

Don't miss out on information! Check the calendar on the blog or Aspen from time to time. The timed write has been moved from Wednesday to Thursday.

Remember to keep working on your papers. Don't leave everything to the last minute. Think through his speech in terms of sections and what he's doing in each section. That might help. ;)

Getting Started and the Indomitable Thesis

One of the most difficult things to write is your thesis statement. This is due to the fact that we often attempt to write it first, yet the thesis guides the whole paper. How can we write it before we know where we're going? One answer is in stages. After thinking. A lot. Check out the following two excellent college level resources on writing your thesis.

University of North Carolina Writing Center
Dartmouth Writing Center

Cornobble: An example for a study break.

JFK Paper

Please do questions 1-4 and 1-9 on pages 55-6 of the TLC book. Due Wednesday October 31st.

If you feel like you've been cornobbled by this JFK assignment and are lost in a collieshangie with rhetorical devices, remember to step back, take a breath, and reacquaint yourself with the purpose you are dealing with in each paragraph/section. Focus on how he attempts to fulfill each purpose using rhetorical strategies. Remember that rhetorical strategies can include such things as diction & syntax, appeals (both classical and various, i.e. patriotism, pride, compassion, etc.), choice of detail, figurative language, imagery, organization, etc.

Remember the rhetorical situation: speaker, occasion, audience, purpose(s) as well.

Thesis work on Wednesday.

We will be in the Library Lab to work on this paper on Thursday and Friday this week. More specifics on the paper Wednesday. 

Please bring your books this week!

Here's the speech file if you need a clean copy.

Best of luck with this paper. Don't over-think it. Just identify a purpose and show how he tries to accomplish it in his speech.

Hmmm, wouldn't cornobbled and collieshangie be great words to add to a vocabulary test?

Extra Credit...whaaaa?

He said, he said

Alas, things took a bit longer than I'd hoped in first period this morning, so we did not get to the activities that would have led to your homework. I know you're all sad about that. Given that you likely now have nothing to do this evening, I suggest that you watch/listen to the final presidential election debate tonight at 6:00 PM. Various networks will likely carry it and it will be streamed live on Hulu and YouTube (more options are listed in this article).

If you watch the debate and evaluate the rhetorical techniques of the candidates on your blog, you will earn extra credit. Focus on how effective they were at making their points, not whether you happen to agree with one or the other more or less.

Here's the video we mentioned in first period as an interesting rhetorical move by Obama after the second debate. Echoes of Jeff Foxworthy, don't you think? The punchline comes toward the end of course.

Autumn of the Multitaskers

Take another look at the multitasking article and identify the overall claim/assertion (the glossary of The Language of Composition has a good definition if you need one). Then, identify the claim/assertion in each section of the article (handily, sections are indicated by a drop cap). Blog your results for tomorrow.

 By the way, here's a good NPR story on this subject. You can read it or listen to it here. Aside form looking at assertions, this topic goes well with our metacognition papers as we continue to learn how to use our brains most effectively.

Side note: Here is a really graphic blog on texting while driving that I found while looking for a picture of someone running off a road in Wyoming. ONLY for those with strong stomachs. It is the result of an accident. Seriously only for those with strong stomachs.

Oh, and I thought all of these cartoons were funny and I couldn't decide which one to use.

 

Oh, Sweet DGP...

Once again, sorry to those of you who love the predictability of the routine grammar problem, but this grammar is really  the next step. As a quick reminder, at the end of each thematic chapter of our beloved TLC book is a grammar section.
The fun part of these sections is that they provide some instruction (Yipee!), they give some basic practice (yay.), and then they provide some practice examining how using these grammatical forms create effects in text (Whoo hoo!!)
Now that you have mastered the appositive, please begin the exercises for short simple sentences and fragments in the Grammar and Rhetorical Style section beginning on page 252. (See the topics for all the grammar sections in the table of contents if you so desire). This second set of grammar exercises are due Monday.
As before, so we can review them in class, it is fine to do them on paper.

Modest Proposal Argument

Wasted opportunity for a sweet comb-over...

Revisit paragraph 29 on page 919 in its context (you've already thought about this in question #9).Using Questions for Rhetoric and Style on page 920-21 (maybe look at question 10 to help with this as well), write a short reflection (try to keep it between 150 and 200 words) on how Swift uses satire coupled with his true ideals, hinted at throughout the piece and especially in paragraph 29, to drive home his argument to his audience.
Post this to your blog.

A Modest Proposal

Though a disturbing piece, A Modest Proposal is a brilliant argument — in part because it is so disturbing. Let’s take a closer look at how Jonathan Swift crafts his argument.

To that end, blog your responses to the following questions found on pages 920-921 in TLC: Questions on Rhetoric and Style #s 1-5, 7-9.

Academic Competition: Best in Class

There can only be one!

After reading Best in Class, please blog your thoughts on questions 1-2 and 4-6 on page 122 in TLC.

Have a great weekend and enjoy the rain...it's been a long time. Those rhododendrons by the girls locker room I can see from my desk look like they're about to shrivel up and die, so the rain is just in time.

Education: The Ralph Waldo Emerson Way

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Finish reading Emerson's On Education on page 102 of The Language of Composition (TLC). In order to get a solid understanding of what he is on about, do Questions for Discussion on page 108 numbers 1, 3, and 5 on your blog. Once you're done with that, it'll be time for some analysis of how he does what he does. To that end, thoughtfully respond on your blog to Questions on Rhetoric and Style 1-3, 5-6, and 8-12 on pages 108-109.

And as you do this and your other homework, remember that:

"Not less delightful is the mutual pleasure of teaching and learning the secret of algebra, or of chemistry, or of good reading and good recitation of poetry or of prose, or of chosen facts in history or in biography." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Take delightful pleasure in this learning activity up through Wednesday evening (due Thursday October 11). We'll discuss this in class on Thursday.

For some all-important context, please see this transcendentalism article from the Stanford website, quoted in part below.

Transcendentalism is an American literary, political, and philosophical movement of the early nineteenth century, centered around Ralph Waldo Emerson. Other important transcendentalists were Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Amos Bronson Alcott, Frederic Henry Hedge, and Theodore Parker. Stimulated by English and German Romanticism, the Biblical criticism of Herder and Schleiermacher, and the skepticism of Hume, the transcendentalists operated with the sense that a new era was at hand. They were critics of their contemporary society for its unthinking conformity, and urged that each person find, in Emerson's words, “an original relation to the universe” (O, 3). Emerson and Thoreau sought this relation in solitude amidst nature, and in their writing. By the 1840s they, along with other transcendentalists, were engaged in the social experiments of Brook Farm, Fruitlands, and Walden; and, by the 1850s in an increasingly urgent critique of American slavery. 

Goodman, Russell, "Transcendentalism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

Superman and Me

"I am breaking down the door."

Today in class we read  Superman and Me by Sherman Alexie. Reread this short piece paying special attention to the syntax and the rhythm of the language. Also pay attention to his use of metaphor. These are related and work together to convey his overall meaning. Please blog your analysis of this little essay in the terms discussed above. 

Follow-up Note: Some of you neglected to do the above half of your homework at all. Most of you that did do it only talked about syntax or rhythm, but not metaphors. No one dealt with the central metaphor of the piece at all. I was surprised.

In addition, please blog your answers to questions 1-4;7-8 in the same blog post as your thoughts above. Hint: questions 5 and 6 will help you answer the slightly more vague directions above -- you may want to do the questions first.

This is a short piece. Read it again. Remember as you analyze to focus first on the details and use them to reveal the big picture, then when you write, start with the big picture and explain it using the small details.

Toxophilus Unleashed

Read pages 38-48 in the TLC book and apply one of the techniques enumerated therein to the Toxophilus excerpt from this book written by Roger Ascham in 1545 and dedicated to King Henry VIII (the assignment is on page 48).

I've linked the Toxophilus excerpt in a Google Docs version so you can copy the text into your Google Docs or Word if you wish. Using tables, you can do the dialectical journal or graphic organizer on Google Docs and you can annotate using comments. You may wish to bring something in done by hand, though. Not sure if you can circle and draw arrows in the way you may wish to in a Google Doc. I do encourage you to try your hand at the dialectical journal or the graphic organizer.

Since a number of people will wish to turn this in as a physical document, please print out your electronic efforts if that's the direction you take so that I receive all of the assignments in the same medium. Thank you!

Enjoy your trip back into the scientific observations and practical concerns of the mid-Sixteenth Century England!

Due Thursday (10/4) in class.

I know why the caged bird cannot read...uh, it's a bird.

Over the next few days, we will be looking again at this essay. I urge you to read it again before Thursday. If you felt lost or like her argument was just that students don't get lame high school English books, you especially may want to read it again as it may take you some time to come to grips with her argument. On Thursday, we will be working in groups on questions 1-3, and 5-10 of the Questions on Rhetoric and Style on page 100 numbers .

Juggling this and your metacognition paper should be sufficient for this week when you factor in the vocab quiz and timed write. So we'll make the Graff template write-up of this due on Monday in the same post as the questions.

Congratulations on finishing your papers! It looks like only three people ignored the multiple instructions and demonstrations and dire warnings about naming their file. Per our previous discussions, those will be counted as late.

ASB/Cabbage Patch Week

Wheeling in the crazy!

Welcome to one of the craziest weeks at Fife High School, and perhaps anywhere else as well. You might ask if this is a good week to start your first major essay. The answer to that question of course is that there is no time like the present! So here is the rough schedule for the week:

Monday: Read Thinking as a Hobby and annotate in groups. Start looking at SAT Vocab Week 2 and get going on the grammar from Chapter 4 in the TLC if you haven't started it already. It takes a while (early reports are about 3 hours if you try and do it all at once). Buy your ASB card.

Tuesday: Go over Thinking as a Hobby together as a class and then introduce and explain the first paper. If you haven't already, Buy your ASB card.

Wednesday: Go over the grammar. Deal with any ongoing confusions about the essay and maybe look at an example from a previous year. Haven't you bought your ASB card yet? Do you want to lose Cabbage Patch/ASB Week?

Thursday: Writing Day in the Study Hall Lab! Focus! Focus! Focus!

Friday: SAT Vocab Quiz Week 2 and take the first step toward being the 2nd class in a row to win as juniors and then again as seniors!

DGP is dead! Long live Grammar!

This year, we will not be doing DGP in AP. Instead, we will be working through the Grammar as Rhetoric and Style activities in our TLC book. If you browse through the table of contents, you'll notice that each thematic chapter contains a grammar section that focuses on a particular grammatical element. The first one appears at the end of Chapter 4 and explores the appositive.  For Wednesday of the coming week, please complete all of the exercises in the Chapter 4 grammar section beginning on page 167 (there are 5 exercises with 5-10 questions a piece).

As I told 6th period when they asked, this may be done on paper or the blog. Since we'll be going over it in class, it may be better to have it on paper. Students last year preferred paper for the grammar assignments.

If you want one of those grammar shirts, you can get one here. WARNING: they are overpriced. Really? $25 for a grey t-shirt?

FYI: Word has just come out that the parent/student online access to grades will go live on Monday.

First Timed Write

George having a cup of tea

Now that you've looked at your first timed write, read yours again and estimate where it may have been. This is not about what you got, but about practicing evaluating your own writing. Don't get hung up on whether it is a 2 or a 5 or a 6, but see if you can determine the approximate range it falls in. Use this generalized AP rubric to help you (you can find it on my blog under the Class Info and Docs tab).

Bring your TLC books tomorrow.

When rhetoric goes wrong

Remember we have a timed write tomorrow so come to class with paper & pen and get ready to write!

Oh, and read the section in the TLC book entitled When Rhetoric Goes Wrong beginning on page 26. No blog post, just read it. We'll talk about it after the timed write.

Give Parents a Break

The Classical Model

Read pages 13-25 in the book and do the assignment on page 26 (on the blog).

All right, I realize that we are skipping a bit. There is a reason for that; we'll talk about those sections in class.

Have a great weekend!

PS I mentioned to at least one of the classes that I was still hoping to do the activity I normally do on the first day. As I have the "equipment" for that activity and as it would be bad for me to eat all of it all by myself, I'll try and work it in next week. :)

PPS I keep forgetting and I need to mention this before cold season. I brought in a couple of boxes of tissue, but that isn't going to last. Therefore, I will offer 10 points EC per box up to 2 boxes (so 20 points) if you would like to bring in facial tissue. (Sidebar: Kleenex sounds so much better than facial tissue, but I was trying not to be brand specific. There's nothing wrong with Puffs and other brands that I don't know the names of...in fact I kind of think knowing two name brands of facial tissue might be a bit excessive. Anyway, so we aren't wiping our noses on our sleeves this autumn and winter and spring...)

Rhetorical Einstein

In the Language of Composition book (the  TLC book), read pages 1-10 and do the assignment on page 9-10. You should do that assignment on the blog. That means you create a new post titled with the assignment title and with your response in the blog body. If you have given me your blog address, I will get your assignment. If you haven't, I won't. Remember to hit "Publish" or it won't get to me.

Due Tomorrow

• Summer Assignment
• Rhetorical Vocabulary Test
• Syllabus

Setting up your blog, Part II

1. Go to: http://mail.fifeschools.com
2. login using your school username and "password" as your password
3. Go through the rigamarole to change it if you never set it up last year. If you are completely new to the school, you may not have a login yet if your didn't turn in an AUP form when you registered.
4. Check out your new email account. If you go into settings, you can change the theme, and labs allows you to customize your tools quite a bit. That's you school email account. Yea!

Now click the link in the upper left of the page that says Documents or Drive

1. Click create new and create a new document
2. Write something profound, but not too long. No pressure.
3. Name it. We'll use the following naming function:
• Per# Last First Assignment Title
• We'll call this assignment: Trial Doc
• for example: Per6 Giddings Andrew Trial Doc
4. Share it with me (agiddings) using the Share link in the upper right of the document window. Allow me to edit and I can leave comments for you.

Now go to More then Blogger

1. login using your FULL fifeschools email address if not already logged in
2. create a blog (you'll need your cell phone, or one of someone next to you)
3. email the link to your blog to agiddings@fifeschools.com .
4. play with it and learn how to use it. Make it pretty if you want to. :)

Some tips regarding the blog:

Pay Attention

Read each noodleblog post in its entirety.  I will do my best to give you clear instructions.  Do your part by reading them.

Hit Publish

When you publish your posts, hitting “save” only saves them.  You must hit Publish for your post to make it on your blog in such a way that others can read it (or give you credit for it).

Learn how to use the site

Poke around and see what there is to see. Play with it a bit.

Make Sure You’re Up To Date

Go back and make sure you've done all the assignments and all the parts of the assignments on this blog.

In the future, check this blog every day for announcements and assignments.  You are responsible for doing the work posted here.

Set up your blog!

This year, you will turn in your daily type home work assignments on your blog and your larger process papers on Google Docs. In order to get going, you need to set up a blog. We will set these up in class on Wednesday. If you are technically adept or adventurous and like being a tad ahead of the curve, you can try and set your blog up early.

To do so, log into your Fife Schools account and from the top bar, choose More and then Blogger. Follow the prompts to set up your blog from there. It can be called whatever you want and you can play with the design to your heart's content, but remember that this is a school class blog you will use for AP English Lang this year and AP English Lit next year. 

Setting your blog up early is not required. We will take time as a class to do this. Please do take some time to familiarize yourself with my blog. It has a lot of resources available for you in the links on the left and in Class Documents.

Also, please do not be alarmed or feel disoriented if my blog design changes. That will happen every so often. 

Old and New AP Students

For those of you moving on to AP Lit with Mr. Porter, here is his summer assignment: https://sites.google.com/a/fifeschools.com/porter/home/ap-lit-12

Your scores averaged higher than any other class since we began teaching AP Eng Lang at FHS. You should be very proud. I am quite proud of your hard work and dedication last year! Great job!!!! 

4th period picture is here and slightly blurry. :(

For you new AP students, here is your summer assignment. Based on the wisdom of the departing AP Lang class, I made some adjustments to the assignment this year that streamlines it a bit.

NOTE: The summer assignment link sends you to a folder with pdf files hosted by Google Drive. You can view them in your browser, but I strongly suggest downloading the Huck Finn articles to your computer and either printing them or opening them from your computer. The browser interface won't allow you to rotate the articles (they are scanned from a book and are flipped on their side). One student last year told me she had a hard time reading them as it was uncomfortable to turn her head. ;) You have other options!

Gatsby Videos

A few general and then specific notes.

First, I was really impressed with what you were able to put together. Obviously a lot of thought went into these and they show a lot of creativity as well. Really well done!

Saisha, your video played fine on my computer.
Libby, I couldn't get yours to work.

The rest of you that had technical difficulties, try uploading the movie file to Google docs and sharing it with me. That worked pretty well for those who tried it.

In PowerPoint, remember to save as a "show".
In Windows Live Movie Maker, remember to save as a movie file for viewing on a computer.

In no other option works, you could probably upload it to YouTube and send me the link.

Have a great weekend and don't stress about the final too much. It really isn't all that bad as long as you know the stuff.

Grade Checker has been updated.

Final Study Guide

If you would like a study guide for the final, here it is. There are a lot of questions, but is doable in an hour. Some sections are hard-ish, some medium-ish, and some are downright easy.

Gatsby Visual Project

Boss Flapper

So, here is the assignment sheet for the Gatsby Visual Project we discussed in class today in case you lost your copy or happened to be in 4th period where I handed out a version rife with incorrect information. It is due June 14th, meaning it needs to be on the Apps drive in the correct period's folder by the time class begins (I'll show you where that is).

Bookblogs for Gatsby

If you don't have the paper schedule for our Gatsby readings and bookblogs, here it is!

For those of you looking for a little procrastination fodder before doing your blogs, here is 6:32 worth of procrastination.  Then get your blogs done so you can do something fun...or sleep. So Ailyn has amazingly never heard this song. Wow. No longer. Speaking of weird 80s videos, this one takes the cake as far as I know.

Procrastination over.

Gatsby Bookblog

Oh, those silly flappers...

This post is for clarification on the bookblogs and readings. After chapter 1, the bookblogs will be due by class time. That way, you are better prepared to discuss the book. The quality of our discussions will rest largely on the quality of your preparation. Tonight though, don't worry about the bookblog until later as you have papers to worry about.

Some in 4th period were interested in a study guide. Don't worry, it won't be required, but some of you may find it helps direct your reading. Here it is. (I think the page numbers are off from the versions we have at the moment; I got this from an AP Lit teacher I know. Once you find the first couple pages, just extrapolate out from there. If someone figures it out, I'll update the file for next year.)

The essay post has been pushed down pretty far. If you want faster access, this link is at your service.