To study for your grammar

Check out Chomp Chomp's grammar exercises for PRONOUN CASE and PRONOUN REFERENCE for your test next Tuesday!  Lots of good stuff on there.

http://www.chompchomp.com/exercises.htm

Lessson plans FOR WEEKS 7, 8, 9

Week 7:

10/18/10

10/19/10

·         Definition Essay Packet

·         Make your own sparknotes

10/20/10

·         Emerson – On Education

10/21/10

·         Synthesis Essay – go through pieces in the AP packet for the “Conformity in Education” essay

·         Rough Draft of essay

10/22/10 

·         Writers groups with essay draft

·         Finish Synthesis Essay at home

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Week 8:

10/25/10

·         Synthesis essay due.  (COMMON ASSESMENT)

·         ACT Test practice – do 1-30 on pages 152-156 in Red ACT book.  Go over answers in groups; figure out what “kind” of question each is asking.  Then, read the “Social Science” passage on page 182 (individually) in 4 minutes.  Do questions 11-20 together in small groups.  (Assign groups).

10/26/10

·         AP test practice – copy the test questions given out at the AP conference.  Read the piece “I am a Woman” and analyze together in class.  Then, in assigned small groups, go over the answers.

           

10/27/10

·         Assigned writers groups

·         Assign the rhetorical devices (tropes and schemes) I want in the required writing.

·         Diction – start adding in vocabulary words, eliminate redundancy and “weak” words

·         Watch pronoun reference – generally don’t start sentences with “this” or “it”

·         Parallelism Worksheet (chomp chomp) – teach “not only, but also) parallelism lesson on pages 443, 444 in grammar book for reference

10/28/10

·         Writers groups – start analyzing the rhetorical strategies

10/29/10

·         Vocab test 4 (COMMON ASSESMENT)

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Week 9:

11/1/10

·         Portfolios due (COMMON ASSESMENT)

11/3/10

·         11/2/10 Grammar test 6,7 (COMMON ASSESMENT)

11/4/10

·         Standardized test taking (COMMON ASSESMENT)

update

Sorry about the lack of blogging last week.

Today I went to the AP conference and LEARNED A TON about what to do and what not to do - which is great, and I'll share it all with you tomorrow.  You will like some of the changes that I'll make, and probably not like others, but hey, that's the way it goes!  We had a great instructor and I really felt comfortable with all the text they were throwing at us.  Our instructor was actually the author of our book, fancy, that.  So I got the inside scoop.

Hopefully everything went well while I was gone.  See you tomorrow.

Working with the texts

I've just spent an hour with the Language of Composition text, and I feel much better about what I've been delivering to you in the past few weeks.  There are a few important sections I'd really like you to read, which I'll outline in tomorrow's post.  We will start right in, then, with the education chapter, which contains, at the end, a synthesis essay, of which we will discuss in class likely tomorrow (Wednesday).  Basically, everything I've taught you so far is covered in the book, and I just need to hit those lit terms a bit harder. 

I'll work on Everything's an argument once my kids hit the sack, if I can, indeed, get them to go to bed at a reasonable hour.

Thanks for all your support, guys!  You are all doing quite well.  Hope you're keeping your journals updated with the assigned writings!

Link to Everything's an Argument page

http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/everythingsanargument5e/#t_576377____

Lesson Plan 10/11/10

• Get new textbooks
• Discuss race and education - why are there disparities between race and education?  Consider the ACT, dropout rates, cultural values in ed, etc.
• Start Kozol's "Savage Inequalities"  - Read and do 2 journals at end

Ms. J's C/C essay

A Tale of Two Teachers

One of my favorite classes was literary theory with Lois Tyson.  Professor Tyson, who made us all call her Lois, showed up to class wearing tight, faded blue jeans and a black turtleneck.  She proceeded to wear the same outfit, or a variation of that outfit, every class thereafter.  Lois had silver-white hair that reached her shoulders in a bob, with bangs cut straight across, right above her eyebrows, which were still black.[MJB1]   The first day of class she brought out her guitar and proceeded to sing to us an old country-western song in her husky contralto.  “So,” she said when she was finished, “I just insulted every woman in the room.  How?”  Within five minutes, I was hooked.  I could listen to her for hours without complaint. 

Lois taught class from a book that she wrote, Critical Theory Today.  Reading her text was just like listening to her – the voice was the same and everything – and I remember sitting on my bed, curled up, “listening” to her deconstruct The Great Gastby from every possible angle.  It’s Lois’s fault that I see gay people in every piece of literature I read (and every movie I see.  Sorry, Frodo.  Truly I am). 

For as casual as she appeared, Lois was HARD.  She poked holes in every one of my arguments and constantly challenged me to look deeper and write clearer.  She wrote notes on my essays and encouraged me to see her during office hours, wherein she patiently put up with my insecurities.  She refused to listen to me whine and kept me wanting to stay in her good graces.  I wanted to be just like her one day.  Out of all five of my years of undergraduate training at GVSU, Lois stood out as one of my best professors.  I’m pretty sure she was an angel.

If Lois was an angel, then the worse professor I had was one of Satan’s minions[MJB2] .  Janet Heller, who was appropriately named, taught Classical Literature, ENG205.  As a sophomore, I sat in her class a torturous three hours a week, hours that went on and on and on… and on[MJB3] . 

Janet Heller wore the same thing every day, just like Lois, but her style was, well, how can I say this politely…extreme.  She wore knee-length skirts that fastened at her waist, her real waist, with a blouse that was tucked in.  She always looked cinched in the middle, even though she was all of fifty pounds[MJB4] .  She wore knee-high nylons that she was always hiking up, and old-lady shoes, even though she was not old.  Fifty, I’d guess.  Her graying hair was pulled severely back from her face, making her beaky nose and beady eyes more prominent.  She looked like the Wicked Witch of the West.  She had other personal shortcomings, namely that she was obsessive compulsive and wouldn’t touch a thing, including student papers, without a Kleenex. 

I could forgive her appearance if she wasn’t such a horrible instructor.  On the first day of class, she made us take a grammar test, and she said anyone who failed it needed to go to remedial help with a writing tutor.  Guess who bombed that puppy.  Me.  I got a 34%.  She called me up to her desk during the next session and told me that I may as well abandon my pursuit to major in English, since obviously I hadn’t a clue as to how the language worked.  I decided then and there I hated her, and would go out of my way to annoy her.  (I ignored her during class, drawing and making snarky comments on whatever text we were supposed to be analyzing.  I’m sorry, God, for writing derisive statements and drawing disturbing pictures [MJB5] all over Genesis and Ecclesiastes).

My attempts to annoy The Hellion largely failed.  I came to see her on office hours on Halloween, dressed as a character from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, just to make her uncomfortable.  It didn’t.  She hadn’t a clue what it was; she just thought it was a Halloween costume.  Fail.

So I sat through her class doggedly trying to show her that I wasn’t stupid.  Every grammar error you made on your essay lowered your score one full grade, so I frequently ended up with Cs and Ds on my essays, which were otherwise very good analyses.  Lois Tyson would have circled those errors and told me to watch it next time, lady.

I ended up getting As in both classes.  Why Heller ever gave me an A, I’ll never know.  She was fired shortly thereafter. 

Lois is still teaching, breaking out her guitar and strumming away to the students who sit awed by her in ENG495.  Ironically, I’ve become a grammar queen, and I have to save most of Lois’ analysis skills for my own personal reading.  Thank you, Lois, for your gift, and thank you Janet, for giving me an opportunity to prove your scrawny, bony, nearly non-existent ass very, very wrong.

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 [MJB1]Objective detail

 [MJB2]Antecedent/consequence relationahip

 [MJB3]polysyndeton

 [MJB4]hyperbole

 [MJB5]isocolon

Lesson Plan 10/8/10

10/8/10

·         Compare and Contrast essay due

·         Write around

·         New packet and literary terms sheet - read Frederick Douglass' piece, and Malcolm X's piece

·         Do journal entries as indicated in the packet

Link to Mlive's Education website

Good resource for research on local education topics and arguments...

http://www.mlive.com/education/

Lesson Plan 10/7/10

10/7/10

·         Grammar review due (Go over correct answers)

·         Go through questions 1-14 on pages 42-43 of ACT book.  Figure out what type of questions they are (usage/mechanics or rhetorical skills).  Check answers.

·         Read Dave Barry’s essay “The Ugly Truth about Beauty”.  Analyze for pattern and purpose.

·         Read “And then I went to School”.

·         Homework:  Finish compare/contrast essay for tomorrow.

Lesson plan 10/6/10

10/6/10

·         Journal:  Are essays/arguments about race still relevant in today’s society? 

·         Read “A Slow Walk of Trees” (in compare/contrast chapter)

·         Analyze compare/contrast structure (outline on board)

·         Finish journal entry.  Does Morrison’s essay still mean something, or has it been totally outmoded?

·         Finish grammar review chapter 5, subject/verb and pronoun/antecedent agreement.