Aladdin

What a nice easy day for all of you! Today we started picking apart Disney. We are watching Aladdin and analyzing it using the various literary theories. Hopefully, with a new perspective on the movie some new things are popping out to you.

Upcoming: Don't forget to finish Gatsby and the sheet. You should also be thinking about your paper topics. Procrastination is not your friend!

MC Review

Today was a relatively light day. I assigned the Gatsby paper so if you were gone make sure you get a copy of the assignment either from me or print it off the website. Then we spent the rest of the hour going over the last multiple-choice test. Hopefully, you all found the correct answers and understand why they are correct. Remember that you should also be looking up and keeping a list of words you don't know.
Upcoming: Gatsby for Friday and an interesting analyzing surprise tomorrow.

Random: Nice work on whoever got the queue answer yesterday.
I'll give you a harder one today. Where does the term honeymoon come from?

Lit. Theory

Today was packed with entertaining and informative nuggets. We started off the hour with a new set of vocab and if you missed any words the set is online under SAT terms. Then we had a quick intro. to literary theory and did a little dissection of The Lion King. Don't worry there will be more deconstruction of Disney coming up soon. While you are finishing up Gatsby try to look at it from the various theories we talked about today. They actually make analyzing a little easier.
Upcoming: Finish Gatsby for Friday along with the guide.
Gatsby final paper will be assigned tomorrow and we will review the MC test.

Random: Nice guess on the wife of man (although I think I might have said that one in class).
What 5 letter English word keeps the same pronunciation if you remove 4 of its letters?

Gatsby Part 1

Yesterday was the discussion for the first half of Gatsby. Since it drives me crazy to keep my mouth shut, I'll use this as my outlet.
Some things to consider

Nick as narrator—how reliable is he? He makes a big deal out of saying how honest and nonjudgmental he is but I think the narrator doth protest too much. He definitely makes judgments about Tom, Daisy, and Jordan. Speaking of Jordan why is she such a liar?

Not to mention did anyone catch the Nick is a bit of a player?? (p. 59)

Pay careful attention to the descriptions of people.
Description of Tom—very masculine, physical, cruel
Jordan--very masculine as well but then George Wilson is very feminine--what's going on here?

Daisy's bizarre mothering skills. Why turn your head away and weep at the sight of a girl?

Don't be like the elitist and neglect the Valley of Ashes. There is a lot going on here some hints—desolate, biblical, industrial, lower class p. 24

Watch for parallel scenes. Fitzy is a genius when it comes to this. We already talked about Tom's violence with both Daisy and Myrtle but there are others. Look at the different settings we have between ch. 1 and 2 along with Myrtle's treatment of Tom.

Okay, I'll stop now but upcoming pay careful attention to everything surrounding Gatsby and Daisy's meeting...

Vocab Test

The good news is that we are done with the really hard vocab words and now will be moving into the world of SAT words but even better than that--more movies. I now have vocab videos for the rest of the year! Today we took a vocab test while watching TV (good thing you all are great at multi-tasking).
We then spent a little bit of time talking about Gatsby, but we'll have the full discussion tomorrow so bring your ideas to discuss.
If you need some tips look at the 10 step analysis I gave you a long time ago. Gatsby is ripe with interpretive possibilities.
Upcoming: Complete the study guide for Wednesday (yes write your answers down).
Finish Gatsby along with accompanying study guide for 1/30

Random: Woman is also an abbreviation. What does it stand for?
By the way if you want past answers you will actually have to talk to me. I'm trying to encourage student-teacher interaction.

Answer from yesterday

Oops I forgot to give the answer about posh. Port-side out, starboard home. If you need more explanation you'll have to ask me.

Random Question two: Why do Southern people have that type of accent?

Shakespeare's Sister

Today we started with another MC selection. The good news is that there is only one left and hopefully these ones make the real one seem easy. We then had a mini-informal discussion on the Woolf piece about women's writing. Sorry the discussion was a little confusing with the different excerpts. We also ran out of time to really do the piece justice but hopefully it got you thinking about how things are grouped.
Upcoming: Synthesis Essay tomorrow!
Vocab Test and Gatsby due Tuesday 1/20