Literary Tool Box Finale

So in class we finished out our literary tool box with finishing the making words into images and the Magic bag of tricks section. We finished each section by writing our own examples into the group slides. Many examples were given therefore we were given a better understanding about the topics. My favorite topics were the devices, paradox and oxymoron. My favorite example of oxymoron was the one Finn said. Finn said, "Pinnocchio said my nose will grow." Also my example with oxymoron, "The Statement below is false, The statement above is true." The class was just fun in general.

Literary toolbox part 3 9/27

Today in English class we continued going over our literary toolbox; however we also talked about the blog website and respect. Mr.Rivers mentioned respecting everyone and the class as a whole. Someone had written something inappropriate on google classroom and he told us that that will never be acceptable in the classroom. He also talked about how respecting people wasn't just in the classroom and that it goes wherever we go. Respect is not something you do passively but it is an active thing you work on 24/7.  After that we learned how to post on the blog because a lot of people were confused about that. To post for the first time on the blog you have to go to your school email and find the email from Mr.Rivers and Mrs. Carroll and then click new post. After that we continued the group presentations of their literary device section. This time it was my group, so we took turns saying the definitions of our literary devices that were from the section, "power of sounds" and we read the examples from the letter or sonnet and the group's example. Our literary devices were assonance, alliteration, euphony, cacophony, and onomatopoeia. All of these had to do with sound that letters make and repetitive sounds. We then started going over the 3rd section of literary devices called "Making words into images". In this section the literary devices were: metaphor, simile, hyperbole, personification, and allegory. Learning these literary devices can tell the reader more about what the writer is trying to portray and his tone. For example, euphony means a word pleasing to the ear; so if someone would use a word like "lush", their writing would most likely have a positive connotation. However if they used a cacophony, which is a harsh, discordant sounding word, the writing would probably have a negative connotation.


-Sarah Pineau

9/27/17 Where to Post Blogs, Mixed Tool Box (Power of Sounds and Making Words Into Images)

     Today in class we discussed, at the start of class where to post blogs and where to access other blogs posted by other classmates. To locate the class blog, type in the search bar "https://www.blogger.com" , then make a account using your school gmail. Make sure to check your school gmail account for a invite to blogger.com from Mr. Rivers, then hit accept.

We then continued going over the "Literary Tool Box" slides and covered all of the "Power Sounds" slides and almost all of the "Making Words Into Images" slides, with the exception of allegories. In the "Power of Sounds" we covered the word Assonance, which means the repetition of the sound of one or more vowels for example "The purple curtain shaded the room". The next word was Alliteration its definition is the occurrence of the same letter of sound at the beginning of adjacent of closely connected words. For example "For in a fortnight shall we fail forever". Then Euphony, which is defined as using pleasing to the ear combinations of words like "The bacon is sizzling". Cacophony means a harsh discomforting mixture of sounds for example Gollum's name is harsh and represents his character and speech in Lord of The Rings. The final word in this category is onomatopoeia, which is the formation of a word from a sound association. Like in the old comics with Bam!, Whack!, Pow!, Zoom!.
     In the "Making Words Into Images" category the vocabulary words covered today in class are simile, metaphor, personification, and hyperbole. A simile is using the words "like" or  "as" to compare unlike things such as "He is like a angry storm" comparing the man to a angry storm. The next word is metaphor, which compares two things without using the words "like" or "as"; for example "She is a perfect symphony of one". Personification is used to give inanimate objects human like characteristics; for example "We chase the melodies that seem to find us".The final word covered in class was hyperbole, which is a exaggeration not meant to be taken literally; for example "That building is so small, it could fit in my pocket".

The Structural Choices of our Literary Toolbox(9/26)

So today in class we began to really dive into our literary toolbox. Metaphorically speaking, of course. The first and only topic we went over today was the structural choices. These words were anadiplosis, anaphora, antistrophe, antithesis, asyndeton, and polysyndeton (actually this is an example of a asyndeton!!). For the absentees, I will give a broad explanation of what each term really is, but I highly, highly recommend going to the literary toolbox in the classroom for a better definition. To begin, an anadiplosis is when the end of one sentence or clause is the beginning of the following sentence or clause. An anaphora is the repetition of a word or phrase in multiple clauses. An antistrpohe is the exact opposite of an anaphora. Instead of having repetition at the beginning it has it at the end! The antithesis is opposite words such as love and hate near each other in a sentence or following sentence. An asyndeton is when there is an absence of conjunctions(or F.A.N.B.O.Y.S) in a sentence. Instead of the conjunctions there is a comma put in its place. A great example of this can be shown above. The polysyndeton is the opposite of the asyndeton where instead of having no conjunctions you have many conjunctions. Those were all of the Structural choices in our literary toolbox and what was reviewed in class today.
In the real world, these can be extremely useful and are used commonly. Especially in speeches or poetry. The I have a Dream Speech by M.L.K. is actually one long anaphora. I have a dream that... I have a dream that...  And so on and so forth. These can be used to list ideas in an argumentative source and can be used as great pieces of rhetoric in your essay. Even a polysyndeton can be added to a poem or speech to really inspire someone and reiterate what point you are trying to get across. Even in children books these literary terms can be identified. Even Dr. Seuss(who wasn't even a real doctor) used them!

Literary Toolbox Part 2 9/26

In class today we continued expanding our literary toolbox by learning words from a different group. The group had the section called Structural choices with five literary devices. The five literary devices are  anadiplosis, anaphora, antithesis, asyndeton,and polysyndeton. I had never even heard of any of these before so I did learn some new literary devices today. In American Literature, we had to understand the definition of the literary device and then give our own example on one slide, to show that we understood the word. Anadiplosis means when a word is at the end of a sentence and the same word is at the beginning of the next sentence. My group's example was "jump over the rivers. Rivers is on the other side".  We learned that anaphora means the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of one or more sentences. The other group's example was " You are nice, you are smart, you are funny".  Antithesis means where two opposite ideas are put together. For example, "It was the best of times, but it was the worst of times".  The two last ones are opposites, asyndeton and polysyndeton. Asyndeton means when you eliminate conjunction words and replace them with punctuation. However, polysyndeton is when you eliminate punctuation and add conjunction words. For asyndeton, the group's example was "Chris loves video games, books, movies, sports, school and food". Their example for polysyndeton was "Catherine likes working and school and friends and her phone and softball and her chromebook". We also learned an acronym for the conjunction words, FANBOYS. F:for, A:and, N:nor, B:but, O:or, Y:yet, and S:so.

Literary Toolbox 9/25

Today Monday, September 25th, American Literature class learned about a couple new literary devices. We first went over how literary and rhetorical devices help a reader better identify choices in writing, rhetorical analysis. Today's lesson was also about expanding our literary toolbox. To expand our literary toolbox we were split into 4 groups and each had a different kind of grouping of literary devices. For example, my group had the group of "power of sounds" but another group had the section "Making words into images"
. The section called "power of sounds" had literary devices such as, alliteration, onomatopoeia. The "making words into images" section had literary devices such as, simile, personification. In our groups we had to define each term, give an example from a sonnet or letter used in the classroom or use one from an outside source if we couldn't find one, and give our own example of the literary device.  I learned some literary devices that I had not even heard of before. One literary device that I had never heard of before was cacophony. Cacophony is a harsh discordant mixture of sounds. For our example from a sonnet or letter we said "your joy and laughter were contagious", contagious being the cacophony. For the example that we made up we said "the cackling distorted witch sat hunched over her cauldron." Cackling, distorted, hunched, and cauldron were the cacophony words; we noticed that for this specific literary device, it was very opinionated.
 This will help us in writing because it will expand on the whole story, tone, imagery and the writing will have more detail. This will also help us in understanding different kinds of writings from authors. Rhetorical analysis will help break down parts of a writing and understand different aspects of it. It could be used to identify theme, mood, tone, characters, conflicts, and genre. Literary devices are also a form of language for the author to express their ideas, and they help to convey the meaning of the writing and where the reader can try to interpret it or analyze it.

-Sarah Pineau

Baselines… Yayyy 9/15/17

September 15, 2017

Today we started on the baseline essay we prepared for yesterday. I was ready to go because I had highlighted everything I was going to talk about and wrote my thesis before hand. I mean the article was interesting but I had to think a lot about what I was going to say which took up a lot of my time, which led to me writing less, which then in turn made my essay shorter. Otherwise the requirements were fair. I mean this all helps toward when we really have to write our own 20 page essays about the most boring thing in the world like 2 years from now when we all go to college. Or better yet when we get the first essay of this marking period that I’m going to have shave off hours of time just to try and make it perfect. I mean hey this is good practice if you wanna be a writer, producer whatever. I could go on about how this helps. So in conclusion we used are notes, and annotations, and any other helpful guidelines from the article to write the baseline essay for the whole period, after that the period was over.

-Seth Quinones

So Basically Here is Today... 9/14/17

Today, we began doing prewriting and research for our baseline essay, which was on feminism today, and why it is necessary. We read the article on the topic, highlighted pieces of the text, and did some prewriting. Tomorrow we will write the actual essay. Our goals for the essay on Day 1 of 2 were:

• Read and understand the prompt
• Read and annotate the article for information that will strengthen your response
• Use the pre-writing space to gather evidence and draft thesis statement and topic sentences

after we completed this, the period basically ended, so we submitted the assignment, and we will unsubmit and continue tomorrow. In order to use this in our day to day life, we have to understand the material we are working with, and what information we can glean from it that would aid us in our task at hand. If we can learn to gather information from a source, and expand on it, we will be better equipped to handle situations we are unfamiliar with.

Thank you

Finn

INTRO POST: How does this work, anyway?

OUR CLASS BLOG:

Our class blog is an extension of our classroom! You will be responsible for 5 blogs throughout the course of each marking period. Some will have specific due dates, while others must be complete by the end of the marking period (see end of calendar below). Your blog posts make up a significant amount of your grade because they are so IMPORTANT!

Daily Log Blog (3 per MP, 20 points each)

Three times per marking period, you will post a 300-500 word summary of our class that day. Your post should include:

• A specific enough summary of the day’s learning that a student who was absent would be caught up
• An extension that extends what we learned in class to the world at large
• A title

NOTE: Blogs posted after 10:00 pm will lose 20%. Blogs posted after midnight will lose 50%.

You may swap days with another student, but please make sure you update this document so I know who to grade!