I think our improvement in this area largely stemmed from our Death of a Salesman discussions. I think that that was the point in the year where we as a class became much better at being quicker in our discussions and zeroing in on what we need to accomplish. We took longer than other hours to get our theme set, but on the last day we had to get the theme done we just locked down and did it and I think that was the day where from then on we've been able to be much more efficient with our discussions in class, at least for my hour.
We also had to write an essay on The Century Quilt and it was terrible. I was only on my second body paragraph when the bell rang. But these essays are something I'm going to need to get good at for the AP exam. Doing the discussion on it later really helped increase my understanding of the poem, but unfortunately on the AP exam we won't be able to discuss the poem we're given together for an hour before being forced to write about it. So the "quick" analysis is something that I'll definitely need to improve on.
In conclusion:
Kevin,
ReplyDeleteMy entire class wholeheartedly agrees that the boat was coming into the cave, and not exciting as there was certain yonic imagery present in that image, and thus why we titled it “The Birthing Cave.” You seem to have completely forgoed mentioning our reading of Hamlet in class for this section, which would have been helpful because even though we took a long time trudging through this incredibly long play, we still spend an ample amount of time on it this month even if it was just our broad reading. You also might want to show a bit more evidence of thought and processing in this post as this is more of a regurgitation of our schedule and the conflicts of your class. And, in response to your Sharknado reference, I remind you that Black Sheep is a far superior horror flick that we watched the trailer of, and that I pass the MSU sheep everyday on my ride home and think about them attacking us and taking their self-proclaimed rightful place as rulers of the world.
Max,
ReplyDeleteIf memory serves correctly I don't think my hour had gotten that far into Hamlet when I wrote this. I didn't feel like our reading of Hamlet was relevant enough to include since we were still reading it at the time.
Kevin,
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, your picture of sharknado made me laugh for five minutes, I don't even know why but great job of your summary. I remember that our class wanted the perfect thesis paragraph that we spent the entire hour on it, but did you think that the mood/atmosphere activity has helped you in any way? Also for DOS, what did you think of the book? When you were done, did your opinion change or did it remain the same? For the century quilt, I completely understand how you feel, the first time we did the essay I barely finished because I was so focused on detail that I forgot about time. My only concern for your post is pretty minor but I would like to see your own personal opinion, you talked about class more than you.
Other than that, keep up the good work!
Hi Kevin,
ReplyDeleteI skimmed through your previous responses to the course material blog posts, and I have to say that I'm impressed with how much information you can pack into three paragraphs and a very solid Photoshop job. Especially in your course connections, how you tied your hour's mood and atmosphere improvement to Death of a Salesman discussion--great analyzing.
In response to the issues that basically everyone had with "The Century Quilt"--thinking about it, one idea I had was to try to limit myself in how much time I take to analyze the literature we're given. This probably will limit the quality of my analysis itself, but I figure that if I can find a position to defend, and then defend it, I'll have done my job. Ms. Holmes even gave us disclaimers, multiple times, saying after each identified nuance that the AP reader didn't expect the testers to get this far.
Now if you can get some outside connections you're golden!
Curtis