I can hardly believe November is nearly half over. Most of these last few weeks were filled with discussion of Death of a Salesman. I enjoy that we discuss the book for a few days because I, unfortunately, am prone to missing minor details. At the end of the week, we practiced multiple choice questions. The vocabulary has been quite intimidating, and I am hoping I will be better at it by the time the real questions roll around. On another day, we took the class period to work on a mood and atmosphere activity. It was welcomed to mix it up from our typical tone and syntax activities. The most valuable thing I have learned these last few weeks has been the intro/essay practice. We learned that thesis answers the prompt. Everything in our introduction paragraph should answer the prompt completely. The essay then explains the key points used in the introduction. We used our new tools on a practice essay. Practice essays are still proving to be a challenge for me. Hopefully, with diligence, I will get better at them. This past week we began the play, Hamlet. I am challenged by the language, but it is very helpful that we discuss the content after we read each scene.
Hey Hunter,
ReplyDeleteFirst off, you may want to add in some level of analysis or reaction. It seems more like a summary than anything else to me. That said, I think you did a good job with the introduction, and breaking that down, you were very thorough with that. With Hamlet, you seem to gloss over it-- a week out of four might merit more than a sentence or two if you are looking for something to expand. A little comfort in terms of the multiple choice thing is that Ms. Holmes did say that a fifty percent is a good score on the AP exam. That said, it is good that you are aware and working on that challenge. Best of luck with it!
Erik
Hunter, you did a really nice job touching on everything we did in class over the past few weeks. I too appreciate the class discussions on all the worlds we read. I think they are beneficial to the whole class understanding the books which is obviously important. As for the intro writing practice I could not agree more. Not only was it nice to change up the usual flow of class, but I found the information to be crucial to writing a decent essay on the AP. Hopefully by the end of the year we will be pros at it. It might be helpful to better organize your post for future reference by breaking into sections or at least paragraphs but nicely done!
ReplyDeleteThis is ALL SUMMARY! It's a good, concise, thorough summary that seems to cover everything, including personal reactions, but I couldn't find anything that scream analysis to me. What are your thoughts on Death of a Salesman in general? Or on Hamlet? Do you like them? Were you wondering about certain things? What has the class specifically taught you about language or minor details or the AP Exam?! You spend the most time talking about the essay and introduction practice, when that was only a day of class.. I would absolutely write more about Hamlet and Death of a Salesman to balance out the post, since those topics were more a focus this past blog cycle overall.
ReplyDeleteThis post is really personal, which is refreshing, but I think it definitely needs some more analysis mixed in. Maybe break the post into paragraphs as well... it's a bit muddled when it's all together as one right now :)