I cannot
believe this is already our third response to course material blog post. This
year has already been flying by so quickly and we have done quite a few
different things in AP Lit.
We finally
finished our Death of a Salesman
fishbowl discussions and wrote our summary and analysis blog post on it. I had
never done a fishbowl discussion before, but I think for the most part it is a
pretty good idea. I know that I am not the most talkative person in my class,
so being part of a fishbowl discussion allowed me to contribute more of my
thoughts. The only thing that I don’t think is so great about these types of
discussions is that it can sometimes be hard to pay attention when you’re not
in the center, especially when you’ve already been part of the discussion
during that class period. It would have been nice to do about half the
discussions as a group discussions and the other half as fishbowl discussions.
We also did
another practice in-class essay on the “Century Quilt.” I have written in-class
essays before, in previous lit classes and in other AP classes, like APUSH, but
I thought this essay was kind of hard to write. I just think it’s hard to have
to analyze a poem you’ve never read before, then formulate an essay right
afterwards. I think writing essays for history classes (like APUSH) is easier
than writing an essay like this for lit because in history everything is
fact-based and you don’t really have to formulate a new idea about the work on
your own. All you have to do is remember the facts you learned in class. Lit is
a lot different because, although we’re given all the tools for writing and
analyzing (like DIDLS), when you write a timed essay like this one you have to
think up something new off the top of your head (although I guess it’s not really off the top of your head since
the information is in the poem that is given to you). Even though writing the
essay on the “Century Quilt” was difficult, I think with more practice I will
improve, and I still have quite a bit of time before AP exams come around.
Our class
has also done a couple mood and atmosphere exercises. I think the idea is great, to describe the
picture using different techniques without using the mood word that we chose at
the beginning. I think this is a great way to prepare for the AP exam. The only
thing that kind of annoyed me about the activity was how long our class took to
finish the last one (nearly the whole hour).
Finally, we
started and finished reading Hamlet
in class. I hadn’t realized Hamlet is
such a long play (or at least it felt long to me), but I really enjoyed it. The
plot is a bit complicated and the vocabulary and syntax a bit difficult, but I
liked reading it in class because every so often Ms. Holmes would explain to us
the significance of the plot, or the history behind it, etc.
Overall, I
feel like I have continued to learn a lot in this class, especially through the
discussions, and cannot wait for more!
Hey there Jackie! Good post. I personally had the opposite reasons for liking the shark tank (fishbowl) discussions. I am a very talkative person in class. And I liked being able to sit back and listen to the ideas of those people who are very quiet usually. Another thing that I liked was that it limited the number of people who could respond to ideas. Normally our class is like a room full of needles. And every time someone has an idea it is like a balloon floating around in a sea of needles waiting to be popped. The shark tank however, forced people to try to build onto ideas instead of popping them. I love these mood and exercise practices too. For the most part they go by relatively quickly, and by that I mean half of the hour, but what troubles our class most is coming to a consensus on details. We have many different personalities in our class that are all quite vocal. In our last one for example, we spent a ton of time deciding whether the man in the picture should be entering or leaving the cave. It was extremely aggravating.
ReplyDeleteGood summary. Yeah, I like the shark tank, too. I think it's a good way to get everyone contributing to the discussion, especially people who are usually pretty quiet. I usually talk quite a bit, too, so not so much for myself, but there were a few people whose idea we hadn't heard a lot about, and it really stimulated the discussion to get everyone talking. I too found the Century Quilt essay hard. It took so long to analyze the poem and formulate my ideas that I didn't have time to finish my own essay, so I feel like that's going to give me some trouble, but it'll get better. For everyone, I'm sure. I think you ought to do some more reprocessing of what we learned when you do these posts, though. I feel like everyone has a problem with that. You should try to make more outside connections to what we did in class. Otherwise, are you loving the class as much as I am?
ReplyDeleteI agree, the year has gone by so fast! Weird, don't you think? I think your idea of having half the class for fishbowl discussions and the other half for group discussions is a really great idea. I actually found the "Century Quilt" essay to not be too difficult, though. Once we wrote it a second time, I had a really easy time writing it and found it came fairly naturally to me. And our class also spent a really long time on those mood and atmosphere exercises. It's hard for one class to come up with a solid statement while we all have different opinions. I think it would be easier on our own, but I think that defeats the purpose of the activity.
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