10/17/18 Blog #2

We started the class off today by going over our daily 'I Will Be Able To". Today's was; be able to differentiate between topic and them & be able to articulate sophisticated themes through drafting and revision of paragraphs (and their individual components). We then took out our notebooks and went over the last of the three thematic myths in order to better understand what a theme actually is:
#3- (Wrong): A theme can be one word long. (Correct): No, that's  a topic!
Mr. Rivers then added more details and information about this last topic. He wrote: A single text can develop many topics! An example is the Declaration of Independence which contains many topics in it. Such as, independence, Freedom, Citizenship, Rebellion, and Rights. Rivers then went on to say that (depending on perspective) the main theme(s) of the Declaration of Independence were/was:
- POV of the writers of the Declaration: Rights belong to white, male landowners.
- POV of Elizabeth Stanton (a feminist in the late 1800s): Rights should not exclusively belong to men, white women also deserve rights.
Once we had finished with taking notes, Mr. Rivers had us all log onto Google Classroom and start a new assignment with our groups. He then told each group to open 'When I Heard a Learn'd Astronomer'  by Walt Whitman and then write two lists, a topics list and a themes list of all the topics/themes in the text. He explained that there are two different types of topics, concrete (ones that you can see and touch. Such as nature and math) and abstract (ones that you cannot touch and see. Such as feelings and emotions). Afterwards, he asked each group to  on Google Classroom a overall theme that they saw throughout the passage.

This lesson connects to real life because in school, when writing an essay, you need to be able to pull topics and themes out of sources in order to support your claim/thesis of your essay.