Saturday, February 28, 2009

STUDYPATH* March 2-6, 2009

In-class assignments and class updates trump published blogs.

*POTENTIAL. ACHIEVEMENT, THOUGHT, HONOR


Monday
1. Unit Eleven Vocabulary Workshop test rescheduled to Tuesday, March 10th
2. AP EXAM PREPARATION WEEK-Essay #1
3. Letter to the editor due today
4. Comparative Essay (Gould) due today (pages 349 Language of Composition and 615 in Bedford Reader: read both essays, write one and one-half pages about his style of writing, the specific audience for each essay and his purpose for each essay; this assignment may encompass a compare and contrast response)

Tuesday (Shortened Day)

1. AP EXAM PREPARATION WEEK-Multiple-choice practice
2. Invisible Man Chapters 21-25 and Epilogue talking points due Monday, March 9th for class discussion

Wednesday
1. AP EXAM PREPARATION WEEK-Essay #2

Thursday
1. AP EXAM PREPARATION WEEK-Multiple-choice practice

Friday
1. Weekend homework to be announced
2. AP EXAM PREPARATION WEEK-Essay #3
3. Invisible Man Chapters 21-25 and Epilogue talking points due Monday for class discussion

Sunday, February 22, 2009

STUDYPATH* February 23-27, 2009

In-class assignments and class updates trump published blogs.

*POTENTIAL. ACHIEVEMENT, THOUGHT, HONOR

Monday
1. Unit Ten Vocabulary test rescheduled to tomorrow
2. Unit Eleven Vocabulary answers due Friday; test Monday
3. Letter to the editor due today
4. Textbook Days: Bedford Reader and Language of Composition Wednesday-Thursday

Tuesday (Shortened Day)

1. Unit Ten Vocabulary test today
2. AP Preparation Week scheduled for next week
3. Multiple-choice practice for the AP Exam
4. Invisible Man Chapters 21-25 and Epilogue talking points due Friday

Wednesday

1. Bedford Reader and Language of Composition assignments
2. Multiple-choice practice for the AP Exam

Thursday

1. Bedford Reader and Language of Composition assignments
2. Letter to the editor scheduled; due Monday

Friday

1. Weekend homework to be announced
2. Multiple-choice practice for the AP Exam
3. Invisible Man Chapters 21-25 and Epilogue talking points due today for class discussion

Sunday, February 15, 2009

STUDYPATH* February 16-20, 2009

In-class assignments and class updates trump published blogs.

*POTENTIAL, ACHIEVEMENT, THOUGHT, HONOR

Monday

1. Presidents' Day Holiday
2. Unit Ten Vocabulary Workshop due Friday; test Monday

Tuesday (Shortened Day)
1. Letter to the Editor due today
2. Bedford Reader questions due today
3. Invisible Man Chapters Sixteen-Twenty talking points due Friday for class discussion
4. In-class essay Friday
5. Textbook Days: Bedford Reader and The Language of Composition Wednesday only

Wednesday

1. Assignments from Bedford Reader and The Language of Composition
2. In-class essay Friday
3. Multiple-choice practice for the AP Exam

Thursday

1. Letter to the Editor assigned
2. Class discussion: "Too Much Pressure" with School for Advanced Studies counselors

Friday

1. Invisible Man Chapters Sixteen-Twenty talking points due for class discussion on Monday
2. Weekend homework to be announced
3. Unit Ten Vocabulary Workshop answers due today; test Monday
4. In-class essay today

Sunday, February 08, 2009

AP Semester B Syllabus (Under Construction)

Semester B Syllabus (Under Construction)
Advanced Placement English Language and Composition Syllabus 2008-2009

Instructional Dates/Material To Be Covered/Semester "B"

Year Long Rigor Tools
Bloom's Taxonomy and Bloom's Affective Taxonomy

Consultative Language and Language Registers: Frozen, Formal, Consultative, Casual, Intimate

Levels of Questioning: Level One-Factual; Level Two-Interpretative; Level Three-Evaluative
The Rhetorical Square-Audience, Purpose, Persona, Argument and SOAPS: Subject, Occasion, Audience, Purpose, and Speaker

Cornell Note-Taking, Outlining, and Journaling

Sentence Mimicking and Pivoting TextGrammar of Irony and Grammar of Paradox

Classical, Rogerian, and Toulmin Argumentation Models

Rhetorical Modes of Discourse

Student-Teacher Conferencing: Rubrics, Revisions, and Rewrites
GLAAPSI, July 2005 Marcy Bowman AP Packet



The Advanced Placement English Language and Composition Examination is administered by the College Board during the latter part of this semester.

In this semester, students continue to hone their responses to nonfiction pieces by accomplishing precise, thorough, insightful, and thoughtful responses through original drafts and various stages of rewrites. The second semester also includes weekly selections from the Bedford Reader, highlighted below, that address the meaning, writing strategy and language authors use to accomplish their purposes for writing; students may use these questioning tools (including levels of questioning) to analyze what they have read and determine, as the Bedford Reader states, how “good writers write.”

There is a fair amount of concentration in this semester on response to visual literacy. Of the seventeen visual works included in the Bedford Reader, students experience a sampling of these offerings to learn how to make meaning of images, advertising, and photographs, learning to use the sensory details of tactile images evoked by figurative language that appeals to one or more of the five senses. See examples and justifications in the matrix provided below.

Specific methods of achieving purposes in writing are used throughout the course scope and sequence as well since students are asked to read and write in various modes of discourse. A sampling of the Semester B sequence follows:

Literature Assignments and Methods for Achieving Your Purpose in Writing*

Week One
Narration: To tell a story about your subject, possibly to enlighten readers or to try to explain something to them
Visual Literacy: “How Joe’s Body Brought Him Fame Instead of Shame” (advertisement)
(analysis of a narrative cartoon to ascertain chronology and message used to lure customers)
“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson (122)
First appeared in The New Yorker in 1948
Theme: Manners and Morals

Week Two
Description: To help readers understand your subject through the evidence of their senses—sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste
“Silent Dancing" by Judith Ortiz Cofer
First appeared in The Georgia Review
Theme: Cultural Diversity

Week Three
Example: To explain your subject with instances that show readers its nature or character
Visual Literacy: “Cellular Phones of the Future” (cartoon)
(interpreting drawings with text to determine artist’s opinion)
Anna Quindlen from her collection Living Out Loud in Mother Jones Magazine
Theme: Homelessness

Week Four
Comparison and Contrast: Setting Things Side by Side
To explain or evaluate your subject by helping readers see the similarities between it and another subject
“Everyday Use” published in 1973 and appeared in Harper’s magazine
Alice Walker
Theme: Community

Week Five
Process Analysis: Explaining Step by Step
To inform readers how to do something or how something works—how a sequence of actions leads to a particular result
"Orientation" Daniel Orozco first published in Seattle Review in 1994 and appeared in the Best American Short Stories 1995
Visual Literacy: “Workers Making Dolls” (photograph) Photographer Wally McNamee
(single image used to portray several steps in the doll-making process) 324
Theme: Humor and Satire

Week Six
Division or Analysis: Slicing Into Parts (335)
To explain a conclusion about your subject by showing readers the subject’s parts of elements “Girl”
From the collection At the Bottom of the River Jamaica Kincaid
Theme: Other Peoples, Other Cultures

Week Seven
Classification: Sorting Into Kinds
To help readers see order in your subject by understanding the kinds or groups it can be sorted into
Visual Literacy: “What Everyone Should Know About the Movie Rating System” (chart)
Motion Picture Association of America mpaa.org
(graphic organizer sorting films into groups of appropriateness)
“The Crisis of National Identity” by Samuel P. Huntington
Opening pages from Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s Identity
Theme: Community

Week Eight
Cause and Effect: Asking Why
To tell readers the reasons for or consequences of one's subject, explaining why or what if “Safe-Sex Lies” by Meghan Daum
Essay published in The New York Times Magazine January 1996
Theme: Sexuality

Week Nine
Definition: Tracing a Boundary
To show readers the meaning of your subject—its boundaries and its distinctions from other subjects
“The Meanings of a Word” by Gloria Naylor
Essay published in The New York Times
Theme: Communication

Week Ten
Argument and Persuasion: Stating Opinions and Proposals
To have readers consider your opinion about a subject or a proposal for it
Visual Literacy: “Corporate America Flag” (media image) Adbusters Media Foundation
(image adaptation of a familiar symbol to achieve effect)
“Too Much Pressure” by Colleen Wenke published in Fresh Ink: Essays from Boston's College's First-Year Writing Seminar
Theme: Manners and Morals

Ongoing
Useful Terms Abstract/Concrete to Warrant
*The Bedford Reader Ninth Edition 2006

Juniors are encouraged to contact College Counselor Ms. Campbell regarding college entrance examination procedures, college financial assistance forms, and college application and admission information.

The Advanced Placement Examinations, California High School Exit Examinations, and California Achievement Test Examinations are scheduled this semester.

Students who feel essay rewrite scores should be higher must write a request, using the specific language of the generic or tailored rubric, to justify why the essay should be re-read and re-scored.

Weeks Eleven-Sixteen

Research

In the spring semester students complete a fifteen-page research paper for the topic “Water Conservation tied to a U.S. Natural Disaster.” Students are required to use a works cited list and embedded citations using Modern Language Association protocol as a guide line for their finished product. This paper is coordinated with the social studies AP instructor. A “Junior Defense of Thesis” is prepared as students are required to orally defend their theses to the teacher, to their triad members, and finally to the entire class of students. Students are chosen to also defend their theses to the board members of the Metropolitan Water District in Los Angeles. An abstract of the “Junior Defense of Thesis” follows:

JUNIOR DEFENSE OF THESIS 2009

Students will develop a Personal Action Plan that will link the environment (water conservation) and citizenship (call for action) themes from 9th or 10th grade with a culminating research-based and oral defense project paper.

Sample Standards:
Writing 1.6 Research and Technology: develop presentations by using clear research questions and creative and critical research strategies (e.g., field studies, oral histories, interviews, experiments, electronic sources)

Writing 1.4 Organization and Focus: enhance meanings by employing rhetorical devices, including the extended use of parallelism, repetition, and analogy; the incorporation of visual aids (e.g., graphs, tables, pictures); and the issuance of a call for action

Multimedia presentation or print media presentation; judges use 10-point checklist and rubric to score students’ oral defense; teacher scores research papers, which require summaries, paraphrases, and direct quotations, attributive tags, and MLA formats for in-text citations and works cited list

Three projected outcomes:

These are proposed outcomes of the Junior Defense of Thesis and the objectives noted are not indicative that approval has been granted.

Thirty-second CBS Television Network broadcast quality storyboarded public service announcement (possibly produced by students on video)

Thirty-second KNX CBS owned and operation Radio public service announcement ad copy with agreement to run spot free of charge from educational institution (spot possibly produced by students on audio)

Eighth to quarter-page display print ad public service announcement to run in USA Today (purchase of ad space may be made with grant funds) (possibly produced camera-ready by students using multimedia resources)


Textbooks

Textbooks used in this course include The Bedford Reader, Cliffs AP Preparation Guide, Vocabulary Workshop Level “F”, and Glencoe Writer’s Choice. Various nonfiction pieces are used from composition rhetorics and readers, as are newspaper editorials, opinion-editorial pieces written by individual columnists, and storyboards, photographs, and newspaper editorial cartoons.

Kennedy, X.J., Dorothy Kennedy, and Jane E. Aaron, The
Bedford Reader. Boston: Bedford Books of St.
Martin’s Press, 1997.

Cliffs AP English Language and Composition (2nd Edition) Swovelin ©2001

Vocabulary Workshop Level “F” Shostak (Sadlier-Oxford Publishing) 2005

Anthology: Writer’s Choice Grammar and Composition; Glencoe ©2005

Anthology: Literature and Integrated Studies; Scott-Foresman Publishing ©1997


Useful Web Sites

Online Writing Labs http://owl.english.purdue.edu/
Composition formatting

Oxford English Dictionary http://www.oed.com/
Vocabulary for the AP student

Strunk and White http://www.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/strunk/
Rules of style for written prose

Teacher Web Log http://www.hollywoodhighschool.net
Weekly blog postings of assignments due

Apex Learning http://www.apexvs.com/
AP diagnostic tests; literary terms; study strategies

Go My Access/Vantage Learning http://www.gomyaccess.com
Intellimetric prompts and rubric-scored writing

Exercise Central http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/exercisecentral
Online quizzes for each reading selection

College Board Online http://www.collegeboard.org/ap


Grading System
Marks on individual assignments are based on the following scale:
A 92.5 % or better
B 82.5 % or better
C 72.5 % or better
D 62.5 % or better

Midterm and final examinations are administered; other quizzes are given throughout the course and include tests on meaning, language, and writing strategies from texts, tests on vocabulary, the connotative and denotative meanings of words, and tests on literary terms necessary for success on the multiple-choice and essays portions of the AP Language Exam.

STUDYPATH* February 9-13, 2009

In-class assignments and class updates trump published blogs.

*POTENTIAL, ACHIEVEMENT, THOUGHT, HONOR

Monday

1. Bedford Reader assignment due Tuesday
2. Invisible Man Chapters Eleven-Fifteen due Friday for class discussion
3. Units Seven-Nine Vocabulary Workshop due Wednesday; test Thursday
4. Research paper thesis work in class, including Water Politics cases

Tuesday (Shortened Day)

1. Bedford Reader assignment due today
2. Letter to the Editor due today
3. Textbook days: Bedford Reader and Language of Composition Wednesday and Thursday

Wednesday
1. Vocabulary Workshop Units Seven-Nine due today; test tomorrow
2. Bedford Reader and Language of Composition assignments; books due in class; Bedford Reader literary terms

Thursday
1. Bedford Reader and Language of Composition assignments continue
2. Bedford Reader literary terms
3. Letter to the Editor assigned

Friday
1. Invisible Man Chapters Eleven-Fifteen due today for class discussion
2. Bedford Reader literary terms test today
3. Weekend homework to be announced