Category Archives: Advanced English 11

Ideal Bookshelf Essays

Adv Eng 11:

When assessing your Ideal Bookshelf essays, I will be looking at two qualities:

  • Reading: evidence of thoughtful reflection about the texts you have selected.
  • Writing: ability to communicate clearly

Reading

5: Thoughtful, perceptive observations about the texts you selected.

4: Comprehensive and thorough comments about the texts.

3: Basic and perfunctory comments about the texts.

 

Writing

5: Writing is clear, expressive, and engaging.

4: Writing is clear and effective.

3: Writing is comprehensible (may contain some errors that do not interfere with meaning)

 

Here is a link to some examples from the book.

Notebooks!

Our Notebooks are a place to keep track of our reading and writing this semester. You can design the pages to look however you like, but I would ask that the first 8 pages are set up with the following content:

page 1: Books I Have Read

Pages 2 & 3: To Read List

Page 4: Reading Stats

Page 5: Writing Stats

Page 6: Reading Overview

Page 7: Writing Overview

 

Here are images from my own Notebook to help get you started:

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School Supplies!

Don’t you just love back to school shopping??? All of those beautiful notebooks and pens neatly lined up on the store shelves just waiting to be taken home… ahhh!

For our classes together (Advanced English 11, English 12, and AP English 12) you will all need a notebook of your choice. My only suggestion is that it is full size (8 by 11-ish) because it is pretty hard to write on mini-pages (unless that is your preference!) and that it has a firm back cover if possible because we will often be writing away from our desks (a.k.a on our laps).

Here is mine ready to go for September. I can’t wait to write in it!

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MGP Genres

Two weeks to go!

I hope you find some time this weekend to do some writing for your projects. The more pieces you create, the more you will have to choose from when it comes time to put your papers together!

Here is a list of genres we have been exploring:

Poetry

  • “Aspects of Robinson” by Weldon Kees
  • “Good Old Days” by Ralph Fletcher
  • “The Fish” by Lila Zeiger
  • prose poems such as “Black Snake” by Mary Oliver and personifications from The Book of Qualities by J. Ruth Gendler
  • recipe poems
  • photograph poems such as “England, 1944” by Donald Murray
  • poems for two voices
  • black-out poems (see video in an earlier post)
  • found poetry

 

Narrative

  • Flash Fiction
  • Indelible Moments
  • Internal Thoughts/Stream of Consciousness
  • Fragmented Narrative

Intro to Shakespeare

We have had an exciting week as we have been learning about and playing with Shakespeare’s language. We ended the week with a viewing of a film version of Othello which we will finish in class on Monday. We are watching the film first as it gives us a chance to do a first draft reading of the play which will help us develop the big picture before we turn our attention to the written text next week. If you missed class you should watch up until the 1 hour 20 minute mark.

 

Performing Poetry

Today in class we began looking at how to perform poetry for an audience. We watched two performances of Carl Sanburg’s poem “Chicago” and discussed what was effective (and ineffective!) in each.

We then watched a video that provided some tips for performing poetry. You can find the video here along with some other tips for reading and understanding a poem.

Finally, check out the Poetry180 page for a list of great poems. Choose one that you will perform later next week. Once you have selected your poem, use your gnspes.ca email to find the Poetry180 document so you can reserve the poem of your choice 🙂

Poetry

We have finished our work with The Kite Runner and are now dipping our toes in the poetry pool 🙂

My expectation is that you are keeping up with your independent reading and working towards meeting your reading goals. Also, when the mood strikes you, try picking up your notebooks and writing some poetry. Trust me… it won’t hurt.

In the next few days I will be asking you to visit the Poetry 180 site to pick some interesting poetry. If you want to get a head start you can follow this link.

Happy Easter!

After getting your fill of chocolate eggs, cozy up with a good book and read up to page 204 of The Kite Runner.

We will be using speaking and listening skills to work through our understanding of the book so come prepared to class with one “extra-fantastic-super-duper-amazing-astonishing discussion question.” We will be using those questions as the basis of our discussion on Tuesday. Keep in mind that this past week’s work has been a warm up and next week I will be assessing your speaking and listening skills.

Have a great long weekend, and I look forward to listening to your thoughts and ideas about The Kite Runner next week!