Self-Evaluation Time

Today's 45 minute experience centered over what was on the final, and what you will need to know for your final exam in Advanced Composition. While we did not have time to work on your research essay, you now have a handout to use for self-evaluating your work PRIOR to the peer evaluation on Monday. Yes, there are a lot of questions. Yes, these are all the elements that I will be evaluating.

Field Trips for Research

Due to technological issues, we ended up taking 2 field trips to find working, suitable laptops for our research work. Fortunately, my neighbor supplied us with our most wanted desire: laptops that logged in and led us to those magical databases full of evidence, logos, and all the facts we need to construct strong argumentative essays.

Friday means sources and claim are due!

Presentation Prep Day

The official rhetorical presentation assignment has been announced, and you worked today in groups to prep the purpose, strategies, and presentation necessities. We will continue working on prep tomorrow for presentation day on Wednesday. If absent, you may want to contact your group to see what strategy you will be presenting.

Logos, ethos, pathos

After juxtaposing the four tone maps, there was an agreement that all of the tone maps (yes, have color) exhibit a rich fluctuation between Eponine's sincere dream-like state and her realistic morose perspective.

To review logos, ethos, and pathos, we read a short article to identify these strategies in an essay. As you have worked with the three musketeers before, this was a nice way to remind all of you that logos, ethos, and pathos act together and are not separate entities.

Finally, we read Bono's "Because We Can, We Must" speech, and you annotated for rhetorical devices. Give the speech one more read through this weekend, and identify any other strategies that may pop up.

Tone Mapping

Today's class focused on tone shifts via the vehicle of tone mapping. For each text, you identify the shifts, label each section a different tone (synonyms allowed), select two words to make a range, and then construct the tone map for analysis. For instance, "Siren Song's" fluctuating and seductive tones bespeak of the speaker's argument and her goal to "win" the man's attention, soul, and life. During the last portions of class, you began tone mapping "On My Own." At this point, you are your partner are identifying the tone words for each section. Bring back for Thursday's class -- and enjoy the zoo, you lucky seniors!

Dance Fever

In the most fascinating tone skit I have ever witnessed, we had competitive dancing courtesy of Alexis and Anthony. In a memorable turn, team positive brought in body language to add to their words and tones for the performance. Not to be forgotten, team negative -- and their poor pizza - gave us a range of tones showing a combative group.

Next week, we will work with tone maps -- looking at all the minute shifts in writing.

Emerson's Educational Diction

What a lovely little discussion on Emerson, his diction, and his perspective on education!

For homework, compose your assigned paragraph that will analyze diction and utilize quoted material from the source.

If absent, you will need to construct a thesis statement analyzing Emerson's diction; this thesis statement should be akin to what we worked on in class yesterday: author + verb + specific types of diction + purpose. Then, you will need to choose one example of diction from this thesis statement and write 1 body paragraph.

Diction

For now, we will shelve the syntax essay for when it is accessible. To pass the time, we focused on analyzing diction by looking at short and long quotes and how to create mature, sound thesis statements indicating an author's purpose.

• MM exploits exhausted, disappointing diction to humanize sex symbols.
• AC enlightens the reader with lugubrious and lively diction to express her views on life.
• BD implements inspiring, hunger-filled diction to encourage the audience to pursue dreams rather than money.
• TJ plants direct, bold diction to state how one has to sacrifice for freedom.

For homework, close read Emerson's "Education" and look for significant diction, patterns of diction, and any other strategies that may be utilized in the writing. 

Simply Sherman

The majority of our class focused on looking for syntactical patterns in Sherman Alexie's "Superman & Me," which commenced with more complex constructions and then ended with a plethora of simple, anaphoric sentences.

For tomorrow, you are writing a 3-4 paragraph essay on the following prompt: How does Sherman Alexie utilize syntax to reflect his purpose in "Superman & Me"?

Superman Syntax

After finishing the identification of syntax on the handout, we read "Superman and Me" by Sherman Alexie for its purposes per paragraph. In groups and for homework, you have been assigned 1-2 syntax types to highlight throughout the essay. We will be reconvening in groups tomorrow, and you will be able to share your findings and analyze patterns in syntax. Absentees, you will have to wait until tomorrow for a hard copy of the essay.

Syntax, Syntax, Syntax

To start the hour, you shared your Senioritis rhetorical analyzes with the class and then turned in the work to me. Then, it was time to learn about the six main forms of syntax that you may use in our future work: simple, compound, complex, compound-complex, cumulative, and periodic. Yes, you can still bring in forms of parallelism, hypophora, and the rest of the terms you now have on your chart. To end class, you were highlighting sentences and identifying types of syntax. We will finish that handout on Monday. Then, we will be reading a text and identifying purposes and syntactical styles.

More Than Just the Persuasive Appeals

After chatting about purpose in texts, you were given a list of rhetorical strategies to define and exemplify. After reviewing these in class, you selected a brief essay and will compose a rhetorical analysis - via question and answer on a handout - for your essay. If absent, you should stop by tomorrow to pick up an essay and be prepared for Friday's class.

The Triangle

Vocab is completed! For some of you, this is a glorious day of ceasing to improve your vocabulary. By the way, your vocabulary will keep growing whether you try to or not. For others, this is a lugubrious day signifying our transition into more upper-level writing types of rhetorical analysis and argumentation. I hope you still manage to vocab-drop words into your essays and have a thesaurus with you to improve your diction.

Tomorrow, we will review/learn (depending on your own ethos) other rhetorical strategies that create logos, ethos, and pathos.

Compare & Contrast Prompt

The whole hour was dedicated to composing the compare and contrast essay in class. Any absentees will need to sign up for a make-up time.

Tuesday will start with your Vocab Quest -- all 72 words will be involved in some way, shape, or form. Afterwards, we will start our next unit: rhetorical analysis. For those of you in the know, the three persuasive appeals will be in play and additional rhetorical terms will be introduced to help you further analyze a text.

Prepping for Assessments

1. We had our final round of vocab review for your Vocab Quest on Tuesday. Yes, all the words will be on there in some fashion.
2. You were given 25 minutes to construct an outline for you in-class writing prompt on Monday.

Still Comparing and Contrasting

During today's class, you completed a partner essay on your compare and contrast topics to practice the skills and writing necessary for your eventual place comparison & contrast essay. Absentees, you will need to write out an essay on your two topics. In class, our essays were 4 paragraphs, so do not feel the need to write more and consider this to be a first draft to practice the skill.

Partner Basis

For today's compare and contrast work, you worked with a partner (or two in one instance) to construct a basis, a thesis, an organizational pattern for your examples, and a concluding statement. Then, we moved onto vocab and reading a Mark Twain sample of how comparison and contrast works - and how the author manipulated the writing to get his point across. Tomorrow will bring more compare and contrast work - we will utilize your list and look at another sample reading.

Quest Review

Although I was not planning on reviewing the Grammar Quest for the majority of the hour, I think it helped going over all the little intricacies of grammar, punctuation, and mechanical concerns. For our little remaining time, you received your exemplification essays back, and we commenced our last round of vocabulary.

Don't forget to have your notes for your two places tomorrow. I will be making copies for your group, and you will definitely need these notes for your eventual essay.

Sadie & Maud

Using "Sadie and Maud," we looked at the five stages of compare and contrast writing: basis, thesis, organization (block or point by point), transitions, and conclusion.

For homework, make sure to research and take notes on your 2 locations. Notes are due the Tuesday we return.

Enjoy your break -- whether you will be in Colorado, Florida, or somewhere else!

Questing

1. You received the compare and contrast group research essay assignment today, which means by Tuesday, March 21, you will need to have your assigned notes completed on your locations. You will be sharing this with a group, so be thorough and do not forget to cite your sources.

2. We completed the Mechanics Quest, which means our grammar instruction has ceased.