Congratulations!
AP Language and Composition Wednesday, 9 December 2015 Time will pass; will you? 6 school days remain in the fall semester. Today’s Class: SSR: Jane Smiley’s “Say It Ain’t So, Huck” “The villain here is Mark Twain, who knew how to give Huck a voice but didn’t know how to give him a novel.”
Housekeeping Writing contests are now posted on the class website; optional credit is available for submissions—see me for details. Please keep your grades monitored in IC, and alert me immediately to any discrepancies. The Daily Course Calendar was last updated December 2 Making up work? Need to see me? Please make an appointment.
Coming Due—do not squander time— that’s the stuff life’s made of! Tomorrow/Friday: Part III: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapters 31-end: Ancillary Reading: Jane Smiley’s “Say It Ain’t So, Huck” —tii upload required for questions Monday: Vocabulary Log #8/Vocabulary Compilations Portfolio Updates —please have all assignments in green on the daily course calendar compiled and ready to archive. NO EARLY FINALS (we will take the HF test on finals day) Wednesday, 12/16: Day 1 Finals Thursday, 12/17: Day 2 Finals
Today’s Class: SSR: Jane Smiley’s “Say It Ain’t So, Huck” Groups 1 and 2: You will need to write 3 questions with answers.
Today’s Class Close Reading (35 minutes) Term logs out--definitions From Chapter 20 Group Effort: All members must have identical answers. 14 minutes About three quarters time in, I will give your group a number. For that question, you will be called upon to explain your answer to the class. Small Groups (5 minutes) Question? What is a “carpetbagger”? All #2s must come into the discussion circle with three broad topics for discussion—each of you will be expected to initiate a discussion—write down three topics from your small group discussion (to turn in—or -5 points)
Socratic Discussion: Chapters 19-30, Huck Finn Baseline Score: 30 Prep: +5 Initiate new topic: +4 Follow-up: +3 Analysis: +5 Until the end of the period… 2 open chairs—feel free to come into the circle
Today’s Class Close Reading: Defining an author’s purpose, and identifying and analyzing the techniques and strategies employed to achieve that purpose. Vocab Log #8 out? Term logs out? 15 minutes “It is the fate of actors…” 5 minute group discussion. Circle two questions to discuss with your group—these are the only two questions you can change, but only after discussion. Score and turn in
“Only a Nigger” by Mark Twain Discuss in your groups: Why does Twain use the words “negroes” and “negro” and consistently put the word “nigger” in quotation marks? One or two sentences. In this essay, written seven years before he began work on Huckleberry Finn, Twain clearly uses the word “nigger” to signify the racist dehumanization of African Americans by Southern whites. In “Only a Nigger,” he uses the words negroes and negro, and consistently puts “nigger” in quotes to indicate that it is the dehumanizing word used by the Southerners whose mob law he is criticizing in the essay.
Focus your questions around the big issues: What is Twain satirizing in these chapters? Think also about how and why he’s satirizing these issues. Romanticism and Romantic literature Ignorance and Stupidity Slavery Religion Politics Reconstruction Manners and “Southern Tradition” The “Wild West” Twain was known as a humorist. How does Twain use humor in these chapters?
What is rhetoric? The traditional definition of rhetoric, first proposed by Aristotle, and embellished over the centuries by scholars and teachers, is that rhetoric is the art of observing in any given case the “available means of persuasion.”
Rhetoric—Whose idea was it? Socrates: B.C.E. Socrates Father of Western philosophy and Mentor to Plato. Epistemology and logic. Plato: B.C.E. Plato: Student of Socrates and founder of “The Academy” Philosophy, logic, ethics, rhetoric and mathematics. Aristotle: B.C.E. Aristotle Student of Plato, and teacher to Alexander the Great.