AP English Literature (3/17/14)

AP English Literature (3/17/14)

Teacher concerns:

·  Grading: too hard? Too easy?

·  Curriculum development

·  Summer reading/after the test

·  Help for struggling students; students who maybe aren’t ready for the class

·  Balance between test prep and literature

·  Test scores are dropping

·  Poetry; the free response essays (what are the students’ strengths/weaknesses)

Struggling Students (Suggestions/Ideas)

·  Help students embrace the diversity and “challenge” each other

Handling the Paperload/ Giving Effective Feedback:

·  Tips from the AP reading: Norming; use the ranges to divide the student work into categories; they aren’t bogged down with GSP, focus on thesis and using good evidence; sophisticated writing is rewarded in the 9 level. Have the students read their essays and place the work in a certain range.

·  Read fast and get a general sense of where a student is and what range they fall in

·  Use rubrics; shorter writing assignments versus longer pieces

·  Require students to work with paragraphs with strong thesis statements/topic sentences; use evidence

·  Examples of rubrics online: AP Central is great

·  Google drive: have a student post an assignment for peer feedback

·  WriterKey: a program that allows students to post their papers to the website and teachers can insert comments (audio too) and rubrics; limits the number of comments to six

·  Should we use FCAs (focus correction areas)?

·  App on my phone ColorNotes; other apps out there (Google?); Dragon

·  Turn it in. com: plagiarism checker; originality reports; peer editing; peer mark;

·  Weebly? Online discussion board; cite your evidence

·  Journals/blogs/writing online

·  Prezi; animoto

Summer Reading Ideas:

·  Read 2 non-fiction works; 3 page paper analyzing arguments

·  Various literature

·  Choose texts that connect thematically or in some way (cultural, for example)

End of the Year Ideas:

·  Projects with younger grades

·  Something fun

Poetry:

·  Poetry all year is the best;

·  Focus on word choice, author’s purpose

·  FORM=MEANING

Research in the AP English/IB English course:

·  Smaller research papers (2-3 pages long); thematic connections

·  Students create their own crash course literature videos using research

General Ideas/ Projects

·  Book Jacket Project

·  With Othello, students create their own “green-eyed monsters”; 3-D projects

·  Macbeth: take the 3 major scenes and rewrite them in any era and then reenact them for the class;

·  Boot Camps: prose and poetry; nightly reading and short writing pieces; do this early in the school year before moving into a longer work;

Where do “FUN” projects fit in?

·  Hmmm…

·  Make a project that will actually help with context and prior knowledge

·  End of the year: a capstone-type project; choose a career that they are interested in and apply this career in some way to the literature under study. They work on it all year and present after the AP exam over.

·  Crafting some kind of assessment that measures these creative projects; will it be a piece of writing? Presentations? Differentiating instruction;

·  Visualizing vocabulary; asking students to visually represent words; this sometimes help to assess what they know or don’t know

Vocabulary Ideas:

·  Wuthering Heights: students are assigned specific chapters as a group to gather a list of challenging vocabulary; avoid words that are archaic; the class then has a discussion of what the words might mean through context, then look up the definition in the dictionary

·  Work out a vocabulary book and try to pick words that connect with the specific unit; students are given journals where they must incorporate the vocabulary into their writing.

·  3 tiers of words? To Be announced…check out the wikispaces page

·  Quia website ($50/year?): online quizzes, games, and activities;

·  Multiple intelligence survey given to the students and then they must find 8 words from the text and research these words; trading the words with other students in a market; then they must use the words in a project which reflects their understanding of their top way of learning;

·  Word storming: content vocabulary versus historical vocabulary; works well

Film in the Classroom:

·  Pan’s Labyrinth: How to analyze film;

·  Clips versus entire film: director’s purpose;

·  Stranger Than Fiction

Favorite Works to Teach:

·  Streetcar Named Desire: social elements; abuse; mental health

·  Hedda Gabler

·  Othello

·  Beowulf

·  Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

·  Purple Hibiscus: Adichie

·  Fiela’s Child: Dalene Matthe

·  So Long a Letter: Mariama Ba

·  Paradise of the Blind:

·  House of the Spirits:

·  A Prayer for Owen Meaney:

How to organize my year? Curriculum:

·  Chronological

Drama: