Week Seven!!
Wow!! Seven weeks has already passed us by! Amazing how time flies when you are enjoying your job! Thank you for making my job so enjoyable… A great homecoming game behind us- Yeah- Griffin football for putting another win to our name. The game was very exciting, the band was EXCELLENT, cheerleaders were AWESOME, but most of all the crowd was a great representation of students, parents, staff, and community pulling together to cheer on a common cause- being the best on and off the field. Shout outs to all that participated in the homecoming activities this week. Enjoy your dance, make good choices, and represent LAHS.
Seniors- You should at the least be comfortable, if not feel like an expert, with the literary movements: Romanticism, Realism, Naturalism, Modernism, and Post Modernism. Your group presentations, power point lectures, visual tours, selected readings, and a unit test pounded the theory into your understanding. In the upcoming week we will move on to the focus of our course-reading and comparing literature from various literary movements. We discussed briefly how philosophies change as the culture changes- this week we will delve into a close examination of our own philosophy of life, by first looking at a great American Modern poet, John Ashbery’s “Philosophy of Life”. Asbery’s poem has many elements of Modern Literature- such as staccato structure syntax, followed by long elaborate diatribes, interspersing line of stream of consciousness, and abstract meanderings. The poem is a tough piece of literature, but chewed slowly and thoroughly really captures a valid philosophy many actually live by today. You will have the opportunity to try your hand at a reflective piece that will essentially mold into your own philosophy of life. Stop rolling your eyes, and get excited about this, I assure you you will gain new insight into modernist techniques as well as take ownership in your philosophy of life.
Juniors- Our first set of quiz/test for The Scarlet Letter are tucked away into the grade book. If you did not do well, then turn it up a couple notches. Come see me for clarification, and possible study suggestions. You really should be working the study guide, the reading, and the vocabulary hand in hand. If you are completing them separately you are probably doing more work then necessary. Read, discover meaning of the words within the context of the novel and let the study guide questions help you focus your attention to specific details. Last week we continued to focus on multi tasking as you read. Remember first and foremost you are reading for understanding, then you are noticing the authors word choice, sentence structure, imagery, details, etc. all the components of the work that are clarifying the meaning of the text. Do not read for entertainment, read for appreciation of the written work. Like art- don’t notice all the pretty colors, rather notice how the colors evoke meaning. Yeah… Yeah… I know I sound like a broken record…pretty soon you’ll be hearing my mantras whispering in the back of your head as you are reading and it will CLICK!! Next week we are going to put our paragraph writing skills and move it into essay writing- EXCITING huh?!
