Group Presentation Guidelines and Rubric

Hello everyone! I hope you're all having a wonderful weekend so far.

As promised, here is a more detailed set of guidelines as well as the rubric for the group presentation you will be doing at the end of this unit. We will go over this in class on Monday before we meet in our LC groups.

Guidelines and Rubric

Good afternoon everyone! Happy Friday!!

 

AGENDA:

1. We're going to revisit the conversation that we had at the end of class yesterday about feminist criticism.

2. We'll be doing a mini-lesson on Part 1 of They Say, I Say by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein.

CHAPTER 1: STARTING WITH WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING

• When you write, you are entering an academic conversation
• A writer needs to clearly indicate both their thesis AND the larger conversation the thesis is responding to.
• Explain what you are responding to before offering your response
• Summarize what you're responding to first, briefly because you will elaborate later, then state your own position as soon as possible.
• Ways to introduce what "they say"
• Illustrative quote
• Revealing fact or statistic
• Relevant anecdote

CHAPTER 2: THE ART OF SUMMARIZING

• Summarizing: any information from others that you present in your own words (including paraphrasing)
• Paraphrasing: your own rendition of essential information and ideas expressed by someone else, presented in a new form; more detailed than a summary
• Summarizing: a brief statement or account of the main points of something
• In a summary, you need to:
• Balance what the original author is saying with what your own focus is
• Be true to what the author is saying (outward) and what they say that interests you (inward)
• Playing the "believing game": you inhabit the world view of those of whose conversation you're entering
• If you do it WELL, your readers will not be able to tell if you agree or disagree with the author yet.
• If you do it POORLY, your summary will be biased and your credibility with readers will be undermined.
• A GOOD SUMMARY represents what the original author says fairly while spinning the focus of the summary to fit your own agenda
• Align what they say with what you say
• Satirical Summary
• A writers deliberately give his own spin to someone else's argument in order to reveal the glaring shortcomings of the original author's writing.
• Let the summarized argument condemn itself by using its own words against itself.
• What to AVOID when summarizing:
• "Closet cliche syndrome": familiar cliche is mistaken and summarized as the author's view
• "List summaries": inventory of the author's various points without focusing on his overall claim
• Boilerplate formulas: "X says" etc.
• What to DO when summarizing:
• Use action verbs

CHAPTER 3: THE ART OF QUOTING

• Main Problem: thinking that quoting speaks for itself, not understanding what is quote, and having trouble explaining what the quote means.
• When quoting:
• CHOOSE WISELY
• Make sure the quote supports your argument
• Find a thesis first then find quotes that best support it
• FRAME THE QUOTE
• Questions to ask: whose quote is it, what does the quote mean, how does it relate to your own text/thesis
• Always connect what they say to what you say!
• Sandwich the quote
• Introduction of the quote (top bread slice)
• Who is speaking, set up of what the quote is saying
• The actual quote (meat)
• Explanation of quote (bottom bread slice)
• Why is the quote important, how does it relate to your thesis
• Blend the author's words with your own
• "Echo" the author's language while moving the discussion towards your point/thesis
• RULE OF THUMB FOR QUOTE ANALYSIS
• It is better to over-analyze a quote than under-analyze a quote
• Your analysis should AT LEAST be as long or longer than the length of the quote
• Ex) 4 lines of quote = 4 or more lines of analysis

Feminist Criticism/"The Story of an Hour"

Good afternoon everyone! Here is the agenda for today.

AGENDA:

1. I will be collecting the t-charts that you did in class yesterday and finished for homework. These will count as classwork.

2. We will be beginning our discussion of feminist criticism. While we are going through the basics of feminist criticism, please be taking notes so that you have them for when you write your final essay!
          http://prezi.com/lxdkcbmu2rwh/feminist-literary-criticism/

3. You will each be given a copy of "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin. Read it silently to yourself and annotate the story. Focus your annotations on:

• Which aspects of feminist criticism you can see in the story. If you were writing a feminist critique of Chopin's story, which approach would you take and what evidence from the text supports your analysis.
• Pay close attention to the end of the story. What do you believe happens at the end of the story? What is your interpretation? What evidence from the text supports your interpretation?

4. After you read the story and annotate it, turn to the person next to you and take 5 minutes to discuss your final interpretations of the story.

5. After 5 minutes, we will pull together for a class discussion about how you were able to view Chopin' story through a feminist lens.

Homework: Make sure you are reading the first section of your novel and completing your LC ready so that you are ready for your first LC meeting on Monday!!

HOW TO WRITE FEMINIST CRITICISM: CHEAT SHEET

Realism .vs. Romanticism

 Characteristics of Romantic Literature:

o   Themes: Highly imaginative and subjective; Emotional intensity; Escapism; Common man as hero; Nature as refuge, source of knowledge and/or spirituality

o   Characters and setting set apart from society; characters were not of our own conscious kind

o   Static characters--no development shown

o   Characterization--work proves the characters are what the narrator has stated or shown

o   Universe is mysterious; irrational; incomprehensible

o   Gaps in causality

o   Formal language

o   Good receive justice; nature can also punish or reward

o   Silences of the text--universals rather than learned truths

o   Plot arranged around crisis moments; plot is important

o   Plot demonstrates: romantic love, honor and integrity, idealism of self

o   Supernatural foreshadowing (dreams, visions)

o   Description provides a "feeling" of the scene

o   Slave narrative: protest; struggle for authors self-realization/identity

o   Domestic (sentimental): social visits; women secondary in their circumstances to men.

o   Female gothic: devilish childhood; family doom; mysterious foundling; tyrannical father.

o   Women's fiction: anti-sentimental heroine begins poor and helpless, heroine succeeds on her own character, husbands less important than father

Characteristics of Realist Literature:

o   Emphasis on psychological, optimistic tone, details, pragmatic, practical, slow-moving plot

o   Rounded, dynamic characters who serve purpose in plot

o   Empirically verifiable

o   World as it is created in novel impinges upon characters. Characters dictate plot; ending usually open.

o   Plot=circumstance

o   Time marches inevitably on; small things build up. Climax is not a crisis, but just one more unimportant fact.

o   Causality built into text (why something happens foreshadowed). Foreshadowing in everyday events.

o   Realists--show us rather than tell us

o   Representative people doing representative things

o   Events make story plausible

o   Insistence on experience of the commonplace

o   Emphasis on morality, usually intrinsic, relativistic between people and society

o   Scenic representation important

o   Humans are in control of their own destiny and are superior to their circumstances

·         

Mark Twain Essay

Good morning, everyone!!

AGENDA:

1. We'll doing a quick review of what we talked about yesterday with realism.
          http://prezi.com/sxdeimd3sn62/american-realism/

2. We will be reading a Mark Twain Essay. Your task for today is to read the essay and highlight, underline, or otherwise mark up the parts of the essay where:

• Twain lists what Cooper's offenses are
• Twain says what Cooper should have done instead

Once you have finished this, we will go over it as a class.
          Intro
          Mark Twain's The Literary Offences of Fenimore Cooper
          Who is James Fenimore Cooper?

What is American Realism?

Today, we start getting into the meat of our unit.

AGENDA:

1. Spend about 5-10 minutes completing the padlet that we started yesterday.
          http://padlet.com/wall/aoldrg94sa

2. After about 10 minutes, we will go over what you found and put on the padlet.

3. Introduction prezi to American Realism. Please take notes!!!
          http://prezi.com/sxdeimd3sn62/american-realism/

American Realism/Introducing Literature Circles

Good afternoon, everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and, if you watched it, were not too disappointed with the Superbowl. This is the first week of our American Realism unit and today is just going to be a set up of the unit.

AGENDA:

EQ: What are the characteristics of American Realism?
        Why was there a shift from Romanticism to Realism in the second half of the 19th century?

1. We will get into our LC groups and you will get a copy of the your book. For those of you reading The Awakening, Herland, or Huckleberry Finn, you will need to go down to the library and pick up your book.

2. We will go over how the LCs are structured, what you will be doing, and the reading schedules.

3. If there is time left in class, we will begin our introduction into what American Realism is.

http://padlet.com/wall/aoldrg94sa


LITERATURE CIRCLE GROUPS AND PRESENTATION