Welcome to English 12

From literature to life...

A year of reading literature from

around the world, and writing about

the lessons we can learn from

it.

Please prepare for bell work by having your journal out and a pen or pencil ready.

Listening to announcements quietly and respectfully is part of our participation in this class.

Bell Work

Bell Work should begin at the bell and is done

quietly. You will be graded on this in your participation

grade.

Regular journals are worth 5 pts and are graded on

thoroughness of answer, and writing style

Journal #9 10-14-10

On the following slide is a picture. Please write down your feelings, impressions and observations of of what you see. Get as detailed as possible about what you see and the artist's use of color, shape, texture, brush stroke, etc.

Bell Work

Bell Work should begin at the bell and is done

quietly. You will be graded on this in your participation

grade.

Journals are worth 3 pts and are graded on

thoroughness of answer, and writing style

Journal #10 10-19-10

What, in your opinion is worthy of sacrifice? Have you ever sacrificed yourself for any of these things?

Can you think of ways in which you have sacrificed yourself in small ways (comfort, time, money, relationships, priorities)

Bell Work

Bell Work should begin at the bell and is done

quietly. You will be graded on this in your participation

grade.

Journals are worth 3 pts and are graded on

thoroughness of answer, and writing style

Journal #11 10-21-10What are your impressions of the movie so far? Style? Story?

What do you notice about the main characters?

What observance can you make about the symbols and motifs I’ve articulated.

Bell Work

Bell Work should begin at the bell and is done

quietly. You will be graded on this in your participation

grade.

Journals are worth 3 pts and are graded on

thoroughness of answer, and writing style

Journal #12 10-26-10Please choose a work and write about what you have learned from it as it relates to real life: a lesson, observation, issue, etc.

-Where do you get this from the text? -Do you agree or disagree? -Where have you seen this to be true or not true in your life or in the life of someone else? -Be specific and give examples.

You may choose from Hero, ‘Homespun’, Conduct, or ‘Girl’.

Bell Work

Bell Work should begin at the bell and is done

quietly. You will be graded on this in your participation

grade.

Journals are worth 3 pts and are graded on

thoroughness of answer, and writing style

Journal #13 10-28-10Please write a letter to a daughter you may have in the future.

Dear daughter,

-Teach her anything you might want her to know. -Share with her any lessons you have learned about life that you want her to know. -Tell her what kind of woman you want her to become. -Bless her as your conclusion. (This means to wish her good things.)

Bell Work

Bell Work should begin at the bell and is done

quietly. You will be graded on this in your participation

grade.

Journals are worth 3 pts and are graded on

thoroughness of answer, and writing style

Journal #14 11-02-10What are the things that make life worth living? Think of a couple and discuss how they affect your life?

How do you keep yourself remembering these things?

Bell Work

Bell Work should begin at the bell and is done

quietly. You will be graded on this in your participation

grade.

Journals are worth 3 pts and are graded on

thoroughness of answer, and writing style

Journal #15 11-09-10If you were to become any animal based on what you were like on the inside, what would it be? What does this say about you? Are you comfortable with this about yourself? Is this something you’d like to change?

Bell Work

Bell Work should begin at the bell and is done

quietly. You will be graded on this in your participation

grade.

Journals are worth 3 pts and are graded on

thoroughness of answer, and writing style

Journal #16 11-16-10When are you a writer? Why do you write? Think of posting, texting, emailing, and any other form of writing you may do in or out of school.

What, if anything, do you like about writing and why? What do find difficult about writing and why?

Bell Work

Bell Work should begin at the bell and is done

quietly. You will be graded on this in your participation

grade.

Journals are worth 3 pts and are graded on

thoroughness of answer, and writing style

Journal #17 11-30-10What are your family’s expectations for you and your future? Are these expectations helpful? Can they create problems for you? How bound/required do you feel to fulfill these expectations?

Are there any other expectations that influence your decisions? Culture? Religion? Tradition? Friends?

Bell Work

Bell Work should begin at the bell and is done

quietly. You will be graded on this in your participation

grade.

Journals are worth 3 pts and are graded on

thoroughness of answer, and writing style

Metamorphosis Prompt

11-04-10Choose one or two of the followng questions to answer.

What seems important to Gregor’s family as he lay in bed? What about when they view his metamorphosis? How does Gregor adapt to his new body.

Please use 2 specifics with page

numbers referenced.

Bell Work

Bell Work should begin at the bell and is done

quietly. You will be graded on this in your participation

grade.

Lit Prompts are worth 10 pts and are graded on

thoroughness of answer, and writing style

Metamorphosis Prompt

11-18-10Please take out a piece of paper, and a lap top if you would prefer to write on the lap top.

You are going to write a short essay (3 paragraph) on a main idea in

Kafka’s Metamorphosis.

This is worth 25 points.

Bell Work

Bell Work should begin at the bell and is done

quietly. You will be graded on this in your participation

grade.

Lit Prompts are worth 10 pts and are graded on

thoroughness of answer, and writing style

Smells of Home Prompt

12-2-10Please take out a piece of paper. You are going to write a short essay (3 paragraph) on how Roy uses style (diction, sensory language, imagery, point of view) to do produce an effect.

This will include a short introductory paragraph, a middle support paragraph and a short conclusion paragraph. It should also include two quotes to support your ideas.

This is worth 25 points.

Bell Work

Bell Work should begin at the bell and is done

quietly. You will be graded on this in your participation

grade.

Lit Prompts are worth 10 pts and are graded on

thoroughness of answer, and writing style

May I become at all times, both now and forever

A protector for those without protectionA guide for those have lost their wayA ship for those with oceans to crossA bridge for those with rivers to cross

A sanctuary for those in dangerA lamp for those without light

A place of refuge for those who lack shelterAnd a servant to all in need.

–Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

Bell Work

Vocab Lesson 6

Please have your books out and be ready

to correct at the bell.

Bell Work

Vocab Lesson 6 Review

Please have your books out to prepare for Vocab Review

Some feel that largesse amongst privilege upper class people ends up being more condescending than helpful.

I saw the students asking questions but realized they were temporizing because the quiz was next.

He accosted me outside the supermarket to sign a petition for human rights in Tibet.

Her overt attempt to copy off my paper made me feel sorry for her and her future.

She tried to impress him with the verbiage she had learned from her new job at Jamba Juice.

He just thought the feckless girl should have have gone to college.

Distraught by his insulting attitude, the teacher thought it incumbent on her to give him the bad news about his grade.

He was not able to glean the meaning of the foreign film, so he quickly looked up a synopsis on his Iphone to impress his girlfriend.

Some think vocabulary is an esoteric discipline, but we are judged by the words we use more than we realize.

The teacher’s idiosyncratic manner of spitting when she spoke excitedly caused students to opt for the back row.

She was a neophyte to football, but she had studied up in order to impress the quarterback because she really wanted to be prom queen.

The elementary production of Rent was a travesty because they cut all of the naughty parts out to make it age appropriate.

Pedro de Valdivia

First Analytical Essay (25 pts.)

Choose either “Homespun Love”, Conduct, or Hero to write about.

Write a short thesis paper on what you believe the author’s argument is.

Prove this with three quotes from the text (or three specifics from the movie).

Write this in one full page.

Pedro de Valdivia

First Personal Essay (25 pts.)

Write about what makes life worth living.

Format includes…

Intro paragraph (attention getting first lines, background information, and thesis with preview or map for essay)

2 or 3 Support paragraphs (with two examples in each one)

Conclusion with restatement of thesis and major points and final thoughts that relate thesis to ideas outside the essay (world, life, other people).

Requirements 1 1/2 - 2 pages long.

First Personal Essay (50 pts.)

I am not by nature a sentimental person, but there is one very important picture displayed prominently on my fireplace mantel at home. The picture shows my husband and I sitting on a lumpy gray couch. Between us are two twin girls who have recently turned three. The girls are wearing matching pink tee-shirts with the word Princess emblazoned in glitter across them. One looks sleepy, with eyes half closed, as she leans against my husband’s chest. The little girl next to me has bright eyes and is captured with her mouth wide as she roars at the camera. This picture is of my husband and I first meeting our daughters: Aliah and Malia. We had become foster parents to provide children a safe home for as long as they needed it. On this day, however, we met Aliah and Maliah with the understanding that they would likely become a part of our family forever. This picture records the moment my husband and I committed ourselves to love and care for two girls we didn’t even know, but who would also change our lives with their love. When I look at this picture, I am reminded of the fact that the gift of giving and receiving love are the two things that make my life worth living.

Laura James' painting Maypole Mother uses symbolic imagery to explore the complex relationship between a mother and her children. The mother figure sits in a chair as the center, painted with soft colors and pronounced curves. On the edges of the room, three small figures exit via arched doorways. The dashing figures appear childlike with their long braids and maryjane shoes. As the children leave the room, the outside world also encroaches with the clouds moving in through the doorways, the ceiling removed for a visible sky, and grass-like plants visible along the edges of the walls. The painter shows the inevitability of the children's departure in this way. The mother's expression is pensive even as she sits still and can do nothing to stop the inevitability of this leaving. At the same time, however, strings extend from knitting held by the mother and connect her to her children in ways that may almost seem unconscious to the children. This symbolically depicts the continued ties to their mother these children have that are not severed even as they leave.

The Conduct of Life

byMaria Irene Fornes

Evaluating an Author's Argument and

Understanding Author's Work in Context

Big Idea: Humanity

The Conduct of Life By

Maria Irene Fornes

Setting: A Latin American Country

Time: Present (1985)

Other Context Indicators: Description of Scenery, Costuming, Language (Syntax and Diction of

Dialogue)

In Human Life

Big Idea: Humanity

hu·man·i·ty (n.)1. Humans considered as a

group; the human race.2. The condition or quality of

being human.3. The quality of being humane; benevolence.

4. A humane characteristic, attribute, or act.

Why is repetition (said) done a lot in this play? C

What happened to Orlando in his past that made him this way as an adult? C/D

What was the job of Orlando? Was Orlando a part of something or an anti-government group? F

Why did Orlando rape Nina? B/AWhy did Orlando take Nena from the streets? B

Why didn’t Olympia tell anybody about Nena’s story? B/A

Why did Leticia finally kill Orlando at the end of the play? Was it spontaneous? B/A

What makes Orlando violent and Nina quiet? B/A

Evaluating Questions The Conduct of Life

Why is repetition (said) done a lot in this play? C

What happened to Orlando in his past that made him this way as an adult? C/D

What was the job of Orlando? Was Orlando a part of something or an anti-government group? F

Why did Orlando rape Nina? B/AWhy did Orlando take Nena from the streets? B

Why didn’t Olympia tell anybody about Nena’s story? B/A

Why did Leticia finally kill Orlando at the end of the play? Was it spontaneous? B/A

What makes Orlando violent and Nina quiet? B/A

Evaluating Questions The Conduct of Life

Girl

By Jamaica Kincaid

-Evaluating Author’s Argument

-Literature in Context

Jamaica Kincaidwww.postcolonialweb.org/caribbean/kincaid/bio.html

Jamaica Kincaid's twisted quest for self began with her May 25, 1949 birth in Antigua. She was then christened Elaine Potter Richardson, but when she fled the island at the age of seventeen, she left her family as well as her name behind and entered North America as Jamaica Kincaid. Her life should seem familiar to those who know her heavily autobiographical work. She worked first in New York City as an au pair, for an upper class family much like the one pictured in Lucy.

Jamaica KincaidShe left this work to study photography at the New School for Social Research and then went on to Franconia College in New Hampshire (but did not take a degree) before returning to New York. There she became a regular contributor to the New Yorker magazine, writing for nearly twenty years (1976-1995) before the arrival of new management convinced her to leave. She now resides in Bennington Vermont with her husband and children.

Jamaica KincaidKincaid's status as an exile informs so much of her writing. It allows (or perhaps forces) her to maintain distance from both her past and her present, as she critically examines the suffocating smallness (and small-mindedness) of her native Antigua, then juxtaposes it against the ignorant opulence of North America. Her narrators too seem alienated from all those around them, seeking both control over and freedom from these human connections known as relationships. But no discussion, no matter how brief, can be complete without mention of the central relationship in Kincaid's life--that with her mother.

Jamaica KincaidKincaid's tight, lyrical prose guides the reader through her tortured recollections of her mother, as that relationship takes on the dual gravity of mother-daughter relationships that many readers can relate to as well as of the hegemonic interactions between mother country (here England) and daughter island (Antigua). Stacking these parallel visions on top of each other and infusing them with her own feelings of anger and suffocation, Kincaid draws the reader through the struggle for personal development not only of her narrators but of the writer herself.

The Metamorphosis

"A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to Die".

Franz Kafka Diaries

Franz Kafka (1883-1924) Czech-born German writer is best known for his short story Metamorphosis (1912) and the widespread familiarity of the literary term Kafkaesque, inspired by his nightmarishly complex and bizarre yet absurd and impersonal short stories.

- Evaluating Author’s Argument

- Describing an Author’s Style

“The Smells of Home”

Sandip Roy - is an editor with New America Media and host of its radio show New America Now and co-host of the call-in program Your Call on KALW 91.7 FM. He is also a commentator for NPR's Morning Edition. His work has appeared in mainstream and ethnic media like the San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, India Abroad, India Currents, The Times of India and several anthologies including Contours of the Heart, Q&A, Story wallah!, Mobile Cultures, The Phobic and the Erotic, Transnational South Asians etc.

-Analyze Character

Development

-Describing an Author’s Style- Sensory Detail, Diction, Images, Tone, Point of View

2. What is the relationship between realism and fantasy in this story? What are some details that make the fantastic story credible?

3. What are Gregor's concerns in section I? To what degree do they differ from what would matter to him if he had not been transformed into an insect?

4. Why does Gregor dismiss the idea of calling for help when he tries to get out of bed?

5. What seems most important to members of his family as he lies in bed?

6. How do you view the reactions of Gregor's parents to their first view of his metamorphosis? What circumstances in ordinary life might elicit a similar response?

7. What is the significance of the view from Gregor's window?

8. Trace Gregor's adaptation to his new body. In what ways do the satisfactions of his life as an insect differ from the satisfactions of his life as a traveling salesman?

9. When Gregor's father pushes him back into his room at the end of section I, why does Kafka call it "literally a deliverance"?

A Homespun LoveAlicia Partnoy

Because this humble and homespun love-just as you see it, simple, unadorned-is what keeps our feet on the ground,is what engenders the fruit of our nonconformity,and throws us a lifeboard amidst the shipwreck.Every so often our love blazes like thousands of stars,gets dressed up to go out and uncorksbottles of effervescence, cases of laughter.You see, every so often, when the moment is right,our love recalls that is it, like we are, a survivor.

Maria Hathaway Spencer

RageAlicia Partnoy

I carry my rage like a dead fish,limp and stinking in my arms.I press it against my breast,whisper to it,people on the streets flee from me …I don't know: is it the smell of deaththat makes them fleeor is it the fearthat my body's warmthmight bring rage back to life?

Maria Hathaway Spencer

Alicia Partnoy (born 1955 in Bahía Blanca, Argentina) is a human rights activist, poet, and translator.

After Argentinian President Juan Perón died, the students from the left of the Peronist political party organized with fervor within the country's universities and with workers, were persecuted and imprisoned. There was a military coup in 1976 and people began to disappear.Partnoy was one of those who suffered through the ordeals of becoming a political prisoner. Partnoy became an activist of the Peronist Youth Movement while attending Southern National University.

Maria Hathaway Spencer

Alicia Partnoy (born 1955 in Bahía Blanca, Argentina) is a human rights activist, poet, and translator. (cont.)]

She was taken from her home and her two-year old daughter on January 12, 1977, by the Army and imprisoned at a concentration camp named The Little School (La Escuelita).[2][3] For three and a half months, Partnoy was blindfolded. She was brutally beaten, starved, molested, and forced to live in inhuman conditions. She spent a total of two and a half years as a prisoner of conscience, with no charges.

In 1979, she was forced to leave the country and moved to the U.S. where she was reunited with her daughter and her husband. In 1985, she told her story of what had happened to her at The Little School, in an eponymous book.[4] The world began to open its eyes to the treatment of women in reference to the disappearances of Latin America.

Maria Hathaway Spencer

Nguyen Minh Son

behind methe autumn wind blowsme home-issa

A Blessing – John O'DonahueOn the day whenthe weight deadenson your shouldersand you stumble,may the clay danceto balance you.And when your eyesfreeze behindthe grey windowand the ghost of lossgets in to you,may a flock of colours,indigo, red, green,and azure bluecome to awaken in youa meadow of delight.

When the canvas fraysin the currach of thoughtand a stain of oceanblackens beneath you,may there come across the watersa path of yellow moonlightto bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,may the clarity of light be yours,may the fluency of the ocean be yours,may the protection of the ancestors be yours.And so may a slowwind work these wordsof love around you,an invisible cloakto mind your life.

Confession

To say I'm without fear--It wouldn't be true.I'm afraid of sickness, humiliation.Like anyone, I have my dreams.But I've learned to hide them,To protect myselfFrom fulfillment: all happinessAttracts the Fates' anger.They are sisters, savages--In the end they haveNo emotion but envy.

Louis Gluck

dmitry guskov

Semester Exam

1. Vocabulary 2. Writing/Grammar

Lessons 3. Hamlet Review

4. Anthology Literature

Chiura Obata