1. Paz de Christo Food Kitchen I slept and dreamed that life was joy. I awoke and found that life was but service. I served and discovered that service was joy.  Rabindranath Tagore  Can you give three hours of your time to prepare and serve a meal to approximately 150 needy and homeless people ?  Let me know if you want to work during spring break, March 11. I will be out of town.  Thank you for your kind hearts and altruism.

2. Congratulations!  Happy Birthday!  Ritika!

3. AP Language and Composition Tuesday, 23 February 2016  Time will pass; will you? 52 school days remain in the spring semester.  This Week:  Research paper workshops. Today: Word Choice and Syntax.

4. Housekeeping  Is your grade correct? Please keep your grades monitored in IC, and alert me immediately to any discrepancies.  Archiving your work for the portfolio— it’s in green on the course calendar.  The Daily Course Calendar is regularly updated, and posted on the class website  Writing contests are now posted on the class website; optional credit is available for submissions—see me for details.  Making up work? Need to see me? Please make an appointment.

5. Coming Due—do not squander time— that’s the stuff life’s made of!  Monday:  Vocab Log #12; sentence set #5— tii upload required  Tuesday:  Grammar Lesson #8: Concise Diction  Sign-ups are now available for research paper advice and tutoring  DO NOT make an appointment, and not keep it  YOU MUST come prepared with specific questions

6. Research Arguments: Workshops Today’s Class: Organization and Transitions  Word Choice—  Rubric Review  You must read aloud  “worn” language  Syntax–  Rubric Review  Vary lengths and structures  Passive voice  Start with “there is” and “there are”

7. Close Reading:  Close Reading: Defining an author’s purpose, and identifying and analyzing the techniques and strategies employed to achieve and support that purpose.  NO talking—and, do you really need to go to the bathroom that badly?  Vocab Log #12 out?  Term logs out?  30 minutes, questions 29-54: passages “Oddly enough…” and “In the English language”  7 minute group discussion. Circle two questions from each set to discuss with your group—these are the only four questions you can change, but only after discussion.  Score and turn in

8. You’re killing us… so says the college board…  Goals:  Create strong writers who will have the necessary skills to write effectively in their college courses and in their personal and professional lives  Foster reading “between the lines”—extracting the connotative meanings of words and the cultural, political, or historical contexts of various texts.  Encourage students to be informed citizens and consumers who understand the manipulation of a variety of media by advertisers, politicians, and institutions to impact them in their daily lives.  Course Outcomes:  To evaluate, practice, increase proficiency, and master at an individual rate your ability to be a creator of and an informed receiver of language and all forms of communication both verbal and non-verbal but with an emphasis on written language  To demonstrate sound logical thinking and critical judgment drawing on research, knowledge of the world, and personal experience  To develop to proficiency effectiveness of persuasive and argumentative writing and independent thought  To practice to proficiency rhetorical analysis of both fiction and non-fiction across time and culture, evaluate argument, and create an argument with sophistication and nuance  To master all elements of composition including content, focus, conventions, and style  To experience regularly and practice to proficiency a timed environment for both multiple choice and writing assessments

9. 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.”

10. Rhetoric—Whose idea was it?  Socrates: 469-399 B.C.E. Socrates  Father of Western philosophy and Mentor to Plato. Epistemology and logic.  Plato: 424-348 B.C.E. Plato:  Student of Socrates and founder of “The Academy” Philosophy, logic, ethics, rhetoric and mathematics.  Aristotle: 384-322 B.C.E. Aristotle  Student of Plato, and teacher to Alexander the Great.