Remember, you won’t see everything.  You don’t have to.  Pick a line of reasoning and work on that for your paper.  Focus. Eat turkey. Eat pumpkin pie. Eat more pumpkin pie. Watch some football. Enjoy your weekend. Work some on this. Have some leftover pumpkin pie. With whipped cream.  Lots of whipped cream.

Then, read the Pico Iyer article on implications. That’s all you have to do with it. Read it. Well, make an attempt to understand it, I suppose. We’ll discuss it on Monday.

Have a good weekend!

A maid and her wight...

Good work today on some difficult texts. Tomorrow we’ll pull the whole thing together in an evaluative discussion of the three texts together.

A special thanks to Jesse who filmed during 2nd period. We figured out what went wrong with the microphone so that shouldn’t be a problem tomorrow.

Let’s move the vocab test to Monday so we can finish our discussion. Spreading it over 2 days is enough; I don’t want it to span the weekend as well.

No homework tonight, though check back tomorrow for some homework to tide you over for the weekend. Don’t worry, it is not at all onerous.

There be can only one!

Tonight read Best in Class by Margaret Talbot on page 113 in TLC  or at the AP Text site. Make at least one new comment on the AP text site and one substantive comment responding to someone else.

For your planning pleasure, tomorrow night you will elucidate your position on this issue and choose one of the following options (or create your own) and justify that position. In other words, clearly lay out your position on the issue of academic recognition and competition and provide support for that position in a clear, reasoned argument. Convince us you’re right!

Option 1: How we do things here at Fife. Top 10. Top 10 give speeches to the faculty and the faculty votes on the top 2. Renaissance recognizes two levels of performance as well as a semester to semester improvement.

Option 2: Traditional. Valedictorian gives a speech. Salutatorian may also speak. there can only be one valedictorian. Usually recognize a top 10%.

Option 3: Modified traditional. Multiple valedictorians (ie no tiebreakers if there are say five 4.0 students). Either all valedictorians speak or they compete before a faculty and/or student panel.

Option 4: Latin honors. Cum Laude (with honor); Magna Cum Laude (with great honor); Summa Cum Laude (with highest honor). At my alma mater, these awards were reserved for minimum GPAs of 3.70, 3.80, and 3.90 respectively, though I’ve seen Cum Laude designations as low as 3.25 or even 3.0 at some Southern universities (Alabama State, University of North Carolina,  Kentucky State, and Vanderbilt).

Option 5: Some wise option of your own creation/choosing.

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 November 12).

Of interest…transcendentalism. If that article proves too heady for you, Wikipedia’s is okay.

So cruel it is outside and can see the trees...

Take the article  I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read by Francine Prose and summarize and then respond to her position by using the Graff template in Class Info & Docs.

DO NOT print this out and attempt to fill in the blanks on that page. Doing so will produce inferior thinking as it was not designed to accommodate complex thoughts in such a small space.

Instead, type this out on the blog with your thoughts positioned in the paragraph where the blanks appear in the template. This template has proven useful to me and many others to drill down in comprehension and then in the thinking required for a nuanced response. We’ll read a few of these in class tomorrow to help fuel our discussion.

One of the more ridiculous scenes from the original Star Trek.

Helen found a helpful site on transition words organized by function.  It is linked to the left as “Transitions.”

Requirements and Reminders:

• Respond to the prompt on page 57 of our textbook. You may use the sample thesis above the prompt if you wish.
• 900-1200 words
• Final draft due Wednesday November 4, 2009
• Use MLA format with the following caveats: 1) Single-space your heading 2) Leave the page number and last name off the first page. Format examples are here and examples of the above-noted modifications are here.
• I WILL NOT accept papers that are written in pencil, single-spaced, or with the heading on the right. Papers that are not in MLA format will be returned ungraded for corrections and will be counted as late.

Suggested method:

1. Identify the purpose (JFK’s purpose) that you wish to write about.
2. Using a different colored highlighter or pen, mark everything in the speech that supports or helps enact that purpose.
3. Look for patterns/groupings in what you’ve highlighted.
4. Using those patterns, develop an argument concerning how JFK uses rhetorical strategies to accomplish the purpose you identified.

Caution: Do not start writing without identifying the purpose. Without that, you cannot write a thesis. Without a thesis, your argument will meander through whatever you’ve noticed in the speech, creating a paper without clear direction that is confusing and frustrating both to write and to read/grade.