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AP English Language Composition
Advanced Placement English Language and Composition
Miami Beach Senior High
Instructor: Patricia Haselmann
Before you read the syllabus it is important to know some important rules of the classroom.
1. Miami Beach Senior High is a uniform school. No student will be allowed into the class without a uniform and ID. On days where there are test, you will not be allowed to take the test without a uniform or Id.
2. Tardies will be handled by a short Do Now at the beginning of each class. When the bell rings the door will be locked and all students will complete the Do Now. If you are late, you will not be allowed in the room until the brief assignment is complete.
3. If you are absent you are responsible to get any work you missed in class and bring to class with an admit within three days. If you do not have an excused admit you will not be able to make up the assignment.
4. Any work done at home will be typed so if you are not in class, I expect you to email me the assignment. No late work will be accepted. You must be aware of the due dates and turn the assignments in on time. No excuses will be accepted.
5. This will not be an academic "Safe Space" all opinions and ideas will be voiced, discussed and respected. To be truly educated, it is important to be exposed to a variety of different ideas that will make you critical thinkers and this class will provide that opportunity.
6. Please do not ask to go to counselors, other teachers, or an administrator during my class as it is important that you are in class so you do not miss important information. Please make arrangements to do any of your business on your time.
7. Please copy and paste the last page to a word document, sign, have your parents sign and return to me by Friday August 26th.
My email is: phaselmann@dadeschools.net
Course Overview:
This AP English Language and Composition Course is loosely structured according to writing modes, with quarter one centered around exposition, quarter two focused on persuasion, and quarter three devoted to satire. However, it must be noted that these writing modes cannot be neatly compartmentalized. Exposition, for instance, is persuasive when one considers the point of view of the speaker.
This is a college level course and will be taught accordingly.
1st Nine Weeks – Rhetorical Situation, Analysis, Building a Common Language of Craft, From a Sophomore to a Sophisticated Thesis, Rhetorical Analysis, Columnist Assignment, The Writing Process, Criticism. "Individuals write within a particular situation and make strategic choices" (APGuide)
2nd Nine Weeks – Claims, Evidence, Reasoning, making claims about a variety of subjects that rely on evidence that supports or justifies the claim as well as aknowledging the opposition Visual Literacy, Media Metaphors, Logical Fallacy, Methods of Appeal, Point of View, Criticism
3rd Nine Weeks –Reaoning and Organiztion, Use of organization to illuminate the analysis of a work, development of strong arguments, MLA Works Cited and In-Text Documentation, Opposite-the-Editorial, Criticism
4th Nine Weeks – Style, Strategic, stylistic choices of authors, Writing Portfolio Inventory and Construction, Humor, Test Review which includes timed essays and Multiple Choice tests, Criticism. Attendance for this quarter is imperative as you will not be able to make up any timed test and you will lose the benefit of the test preparation.
Manifesto for Teaching Rhetorical Strategy, Use and Interpretation
How do I teach a group of adolescents to channel their a prior knowledge into the crafting of effective expository argument, and multi-dimensional interpretive reading? I offer students some sound ideas about specificity in using rhetoric, and about being perspicacious in analyzing the rhetorical decisions of others. I introduce my students to common systems of belief and influential voices in a number of various stages and places on the continuum of human recorded history. I teach my students to be assertive in the expression of their opinions and well-warranted in the founding of those opinions. I ask my students to keep-up a running dialogue with the texts they encounter so as to shape critical interpretation actively, responsively, and reflectively.
Standards:
Upon completing the A.P. Language and Composition course students should be able to:
· Analyze and interpret a variety of literary forms, identifying and explaining the author’s use of rhetorical strategies and techniques
· Create and sustain arguments based on research and experience and document as necessary using MLA format
· Demonstrate understanding and mastery of standard written English as well as stylistic maturity in their own writing
· Complete acceptable written assignments in a variety of genres and contexts, both formal and informal, employing appropriate strategies, conventions, and techniques (including, but not limited to, personal essay, literary analysis, documented research paper, critical review, timed essay responses)
· Move effectively through the stages of the writing process, with careful attention to inquiry and research, drafting revising and editing
· Discuss the historical and cultural development of American literature
· Write under time constraints
· Read and analyze a minimum of seven longer works
Materials:
Journal: Students are to procure a bound, sturdy, and serious journal with a cover made of something harder than cardboard and something other than a black and white composition notebook. Student journals ought to have about them a feeling of permanence. Such journals can be purchased at bookstores or stationary stores. These journals will come to serve as important study guides at the end of the year and will be graded quarterly (see journal assessment)
Tablet or laptop: Students will receive numerous handouts (vocabulary lists, rhetorical strategy explanations, AP Free Response Prompts, etc. that will be accessible on Onenote and my website. These will be invaluable in May as we prepare for the AP Exam.
Reading Objectives and Strategies
1) Reader Response Journal Activities:
Various activities are employed requiring the student reader to respond critically to challenging text. Most nonfiction texts are derived from 50 Essays (Cohen), in addition to some photocopied readings, and the quarterly novel or two. (See Reading List) Reader response strategies taught and assigned to students include 2-Column Notes, S.O.A.P.S.Tone, and specific questions for rhetorical analysis which include both multiple choice critical reading questions in AP format, and short and extended response questions.
All reader response strategies are consistently modeled. Students learn how to hold conversations with the writers they read; they learn that a short or long answer analysis question is not answered effectively until the responder has offered an assertion, provided evidence from the text to support that assertion, and connected their evidence to the text through thoughtful, validating commentary. The assertion-evidence-commentary formula applies to the 2-column note taking and SOAPSTone exercises as well.
Voice Lessons - The Voice Lesson Exercises, from Nancy Dean’s Voice Lessons: Classroom Activities to teach Diction, Detail, Imagery, and Tone, serve as springboards for mini-units* on each of these five key rhetorical strategies over the course of the year.
Sample rhetorical strategy mini unit: ON Syntax
- A Voice Lessons introduces the mini-unit on syntax: James Baldwin, from Sonny’s Blues, Syntactical analysis voice lesson
- Syntax Types for Emphasis Common Lang. of Craft Handout
- Hamlet and the Queen, tone developed through syntax journal activity
- Dear John Punctuation Matters journal activity
- Simple/Complex/Compound Sentences (previous prompts + Scarlet Letter)
2) Development of Common Language of Craft: Journal Glossaries
A systematic approach to a serious study of rhetoric requires an awareness of the terminology used to describe language. Students develop facility with the common language of craft during the first semester and continuing, to a lesser extent, during the second semester. Provided to them are lists of rhetorical and literary devices and strategies; lists of words to describe tone, diction, syntax, and speaker; student extracted vocabulary from novels and nonfiction readings; and “word of the day” quick-takes from Dictionary.com.
In addition to the various glossaries of terminology, the Common Language of Craft section of the students’ journals will contain an index of symbols for Revision and Editing.
Quarterly Journal Assessment:
Student journals will be collected at the end of each quarter and graded based on largely on completeness and adherence to strategies. All journal pages must be numbered in the top-right hand corner of each page. All journal assignments must be clearly headed at the top of each page. All headings must correspond to the headings in the Table of Contents, to be completed using the first five pages of the journal.
One of the four quarterly journal grades will be for organization as per the requirements enumerated in the previous paragraph; the other three quarterly grades will be based on equal division of the reader response and the development of a common language of craft exercises mentioned above. The majority of the reader-response and language development exercises will be assigned a home learning so the journal check each nine weeks can be considered a homework check to mandate that students keep-up that active dialogue with their readings. Journals will also include various writing exercises and inventories of the characteristics of the three major writing modes – exposition, persuasion, and satire – around which each semester is structured.
- Conversations with the Ethicist using NYTIMES, Sunday Magazine
Teaching Toulmin Model: Warrants, Qualifiers, Major and Minor Premises
Review of New York Times Book Reviews - These quarterly practice partly used as a model for effective criticism, the nature of which students are wrangling with in crafting their Cultural Literacy project compositions.
- (See Appendix H)
Socratic Discussion:
Daily practice providing immediate feedback and progressive, communal analysis or argument in regards to readings.
Teaching Higher Order Thinking (THOT) Poems:
A classroom activity in which the entire class uses the assertion- evidence-commentary strategy for rhetorical analysis in order to discover the title of a poem for which the title has been removed prior to the students’ reading. Collectively students assert responses to an open-ended prompt, then try and err in attempting to validate those assertions with interpretation of specific text in the poem. The THOT poem activity parallels and illustrates the process involved in the analysis of any text.
Reading List (Subject to Revision)
Text: 50 Essays – A Portable Anthology – Samuel Cohen
Fall and Spring Texts:
- The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
· The Great Gatsby --F. Scott Fitzgerald
Excerpts from Longer Works:
- A Summer Life – Gary Soto
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: “Learning to Read and Write”
- Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi
- On Writing Well: “Criticism” – William Zinsser
Shorter Readings
- Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God- Jonathan Edwards
- The Declaration of Independence – Thomas Jefferson
- The Gettysburg Address – Abraham Lincoln
- The Second Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln
- “Mission Accomplished” – President Bush’s speech onboard USS Abraham Lincoln
- Once More to the Lake – E.B. White
- The Allegory of the Cave - Plato
- Public Statement by Eight Alabama Clergymen
- Two Ways to Belong in America – Bharati Mukherjee
- Gone Off Up North – Roy Blount, Jr.
- The Lowest Animal – Mark Twain
- Letter from Vietnam – Lt. Sandy Kempner
PERSUASION and DOCUMENTATION
“Self-Reliance”- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Civil Disobedience”- Henry David Thoreau
“Letter from Birmingham Jail”- Martin Luther King
“Speech to the Atlanta Convention”, from Up From Slavery- Booker T.
Washington
“The Morals of the Prince” – Niccolo Machiavelli
“Just Walk On By – Black Men In Public Space” - Brent Staples
“Who Killed Benny Paret?” – Norman Cousins
Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech- Wangari Maathai
“Learning to Read”- Malcolm X
“Hills Like White Elephants” – Ernest Hemingway
“Shooting an Elephant” – George Orwell
“The Ways We Lie” – Stephanie Ericsson
“How to Tame a Wild Tongue” – Gloria Anzaldua
“Once More to the Lake” – E.B. White
SATIRE
“The Company Man” – Ellen Goodman
“A Modest Proposal” – Jonathan Swift
“Why Don’t We Complain?” – William F. Buckley Jr.
“Learning to Read and Write” – Frederick Douglass
“Me Talk Pretty One Day” – David Sedaris
“Lost in the Kitchen” – Dave Barry
“Miami Isn’t So Bad, Really” – Dave Barry
The Onion – Assorted Articles
The New York Times – Satirical Political Cartoons
Slate Online Magazine - Satirical Political Cartoons
The Miami Herald – Leonard Pitts & Carl Hiassen Columns
Select AP Free Response and Multiple Choice Prompts
- Shorter nonfiction pieces are included in packets to be distributed to
students for close reading and analysis, including packets entitled
“Persuasion,” “Satire,” and “Point of View.”
- Other course required readings to be announced
Columns
- Do Not Be Alarmed: Miami Isn’t So Weird – Dave Barry
- Opus Cartoons – Berkeley Breathed
- Selected Articles from “The Ethicist” – Randy Cohen
- Break Up – Starley Kine
- New York Times Book Reviews
- Columns chosen by students
II. Composition Objectives and Strategies
Sophisticated expository writers utilize the rhetorical strategies that they intuit in their readings. Different writing modes call for different rhetorical strategies.
The tenets of Writing to Show, as outlined by Michael Degen in Crafting Expository Argument, however, pertain to all writing modes with which students work throughout the school year.
WRITING TO SHOW
The Writing Process does not end at the completion of an essay. In the grander scheme, each student will continue the process of crafting effective expository argument until the day he or she stops putting pen to paper.
The short-term writing objectives of this course are that students develop the ability to make clear assertions, and to support those assertions with relevant evidence and demonstrative commentary. The long-term objective of this course is to provide students with an arsenal of rhetorical strategies and an understanding of the functions of these strategies in any given writing occasion.
Enumerated below are a sampling of writing skills and strategies taught during the first semester, in addition to the editing and revision symbols used by the teacher to assess student composition. These same symbols are continuously employed by students during the peer and self revision and editing stages of the writing process. Several composition assignments call for students to show these revision symbols , along with annotated revisions and editions, on submitted first drafts. Above all, Degen’s writing to show strategies encourage specificity in composition.
- Clauses, Phrases Notes
- Independent vs. Dependent Clause
- Fragment and Run-on mini-lessons
- Mini-lessons on Degen’s Rules for writing effective exposition and the Active Voice, including mandatory elimination
of to be verbs in favor of active verbs; substitution of concrete nouns and adjectives for abstract diction; avoidance of
plural, general nouns for singular, specific ones; elimination of vague, “naked” pronouns; present tense instead of past
- Mini-lessons on Present and Past Participles acting as adjectives to modify independent clauses
Revision Marks To be employed all year: SH = Show, don’t tell, E3 = extend elaboration , PrPP = Present Participial Phrase, PaPP = Past Participial Phrase
- Sentence Combining with PrPP, and PaPP – from simple to complex and compound syntax
- Adverb Subordinate Clause = sentence combining activity
- Comma and Semicolon usage including Sentence Combining Exercises
- Writing and Writing Skills:
- Redrafting one essay from the first quarter, including specific revision tasks: sentence combining/refining through
modifying phrases and clauses.
- Independent / Subordinate Clause and Phrase Notes, Continuing Sentence Combining Activities
- Essay Response Notation Page in Journal – Keeping track of teacher and student writing comments --- Personal Revision Tip Sheet
- Grammar and Conventions Minilessons
- 20 Most Common Grammatical Errors, from SAT Workshop Materials, 2nd round my adaptation
- bedfordstmartins.com/exercise central – specific, periodic mechanics exercises
- Cultural Literacy Projects x2 each quarter (See Appendices A-C )
An effective Critical Commentary consists of description, interpretation, synthesis and evaluation. According to David Jolliffe, college-level writers should display aptitude in these four areas. Gaining in sophistication each quarter, the cultural literacy projects meet College Board objectives on a number of fronts:
- Students must read in a medium other than print by attending cultural relevant events.
- Students must develop facility with the language of the various events in which they partake or attend so as to portray a valid critical voice
- Students must describe the event clearly, using concrete sensory detail, so that the reader may visualize it
- Student must interpret the constituent elements and purpose of the event in the context of the broad scope of culture
- Student must evaluate the event, basing their critical claims about the event on sound warrants and logical premises
- Continual Thesis Statement Revision and Editing Exercises
- AP Timed Essay Prompts 2-3 per nine weeks + 2 part thesis statement development
journal activities
- The Tonal Paragraph Interpretation Small Group Game
Writing Portfolio – Writing portfolio folders feature student essays in chronological order from the beginning of the year. Complete Writing Portfolio s consist of the following:
· A Table of Contents which lists the title of each entry, comments on the explicit and implicit parts of all essays endeavored, and a two-word declaration of the essay’s writing mode.
Columnist Assignments
- Cultural Literacy Project, Version 3.0 – Incorporating a variety of media into a presentation / recreation of the
cultural event that is the subject of the student’s criticism. (See Appendix A-C)
- Opposite the Editorial Contest Writing – Satirical persuasive composition incorporating the elements of satire
studied in the third quarter into a cogent argument about a contemporary social issue.
- Synthesis Prompt Research Project (SEE APPENDIX E)
- A.P. Timed Free Response Prompts: at least two released AP prompts from previous tests’ Free Response
Section per nine week’s
- Released and student created synthesis questions (See Appendix E)
- Writing Portfolio Self-Evaluation of the Year’s Writing Assignments Questions
- The Worst Piece Ever is an attempt to maintain all of the elements of the ‘SOAPStone’ of the first draft, while
“destroying showing writing” in the writing portfolio piece of their choice(Degen). For example, students replace
active verbs with passive, helping verbs; substituting concrete nouns and adjectives for abstract ones; shifting tense,
and other mechanical snafus; etc.
- The Best Piece Ever: no surprises here. Students revise and edit one portfolio piece focusing on specificity by
incorporating the writing to show objectives we’ve worked with all year, and edit out errors in mechanics,
employing a varied syntax while adhering to the conventions of standard written English.
- “What’s So Funny” – Exit project after completion of AP Exam (See AppendixG)
Additionally, students are instructed on the MLA format for in-text documentation
Related MLA Citation / Documentation assignments
Students are referred to my web page and bedfordstmartins.com for MLA citation information on the format for citing various media sources
AP ESSAY ASSESSMENT
Letter Grade / AP Free Response Essay Score Equivalency
All timed AP Free Response Essays (minimum two per quarter) will be worth two grades as follows.
8, 9 – A/A 5 – C/C 0, 1, 2 – F/F
6, 7 – B/B 3, 4 – D/D
Appendix A Advanced Placement English Language and Composition
Cultural Literacy Quarterly Project
Rationale:
One of the many qualities of a great writer is that he or she is first an engaged and receptive observer. The more capacity we have for making interdisciplinary connections the more literate we become. The more we expose ourselves to the arts and history of the people and places both near and far, the more perceptive we become as citizens of the world.
Greater Miami and its surrounding communities offer a divergent array of cultural activities. These events enrich our lives and sensitize us to the experiences of the people with whom we share our combustible planet.
Description:
Each nine weeks, students are required to make two cultural outings.Activities may include, but are not limited to, concerts, book discussions, theatrical plays, ballet, modern dance, or ethnic dance performances. Museum visits are also viable for these assignments, as are films shown as part of film festivals, for instance the Miami Brazilian Film Festival, Miami Jewish Film Festival, or The Miami Jazz Film Festival. Commercial movies will not be accepted. If you are unsure whether or not an event in which you are interested is suitable for this assignment, check with Ms. Haselmann. After the event, students will write reaction/evaluation/critique pieces based on the experience. Students are required to submit a ticket stub, receipt, or other verifiable artifact from the event, along with their evaluation pieces, as proof of
attendance.
Appendix B
A.P. English Language and Composition
Cultural Literacy, Version 3.0
Spring 2017
Cultural literacy:
Knowledge of history, contributions, and perspectives of different cultural groups, including one's own group, necessary for understanding of reading, writing, and other media
http://www.dictionary.reference.com/browse/cultural%20literacy%20. Lexico Publishing Group, LLC: 7 Feb 2007
Objectives:
· Analyze and interpret a variety of literary forms
· Appraise the value of a “work of art and place it in the context of what has been done before in that medium or by that artist” (Zinsser)
· Create and sustain arguments based on research and experience and document as necessary using MLA format
· Move effectively through the stages of the writing process, with careful attention to inquiry and research, drafting revising and editing
· Allude to at least three other culturally significant works or historical precedents in the medium
· Create a multimedia presentation synthesizing at least three different media forms
Activities:
I. Background Reading:
Zinsser, William. “Criticism.” On Writing Well, Fifth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1994. 214-229.
II. The Appraisal:
Refer to the directions for the cultural literacy projects in the first and second nine weeks.
Defer to William Zinsser’s comments about effective criticism. Bear in mind that all persuasive writing is bonded to a central argument. In order to develop some level of expertise in art form that you are critiquing for this appraisal, and in the spirit of synthesis, allude to at least three comparable works or artists in your writing.
In order to ensure that you know of what you speak, you are required to research and cite the sources you use to build upon your expertise in the subject.
The final page of you submission will be a MLA Works Cited
250 -500 Words, Typed, Double-Spaced
III. Central Focus: Why do you think the event was good or why do you think the event was not good?
For the sake of our project: Why do you think the event was a good, or a bad, example of the kind of thing that a person ought to experience in order to become more culturally literate?
Approach your appraisal in terms of your attended event’s historical value, (i.e. its place in the continuum or canon of the medium); social value, artistic value, cultural relevance, contribution to the fabric and/or landscape of the city, political implications, economic impact, etc.
IV: The Presentation:
1) Take us to your cultural literacy event. Your presentation is to be expository. You will recreate the event your attended event using at least three different forms of media:
a) something audible
b) something visual
c) something tangible – a symbol, an icon, a prop, an artifact, a piece of memorabilia, anything that a literate person might associate with the event you attended after he or she has attended it. You might choose an object that is literally part of the experience, or an object that is significant to the experience in a metaphorical way.
Appendix C
A.P. English Language and Composition
Cultural Literacy Project, Version 3.0
WRITING PROCESS EXTENSION EXERCISE
Directions:
1) Find your group by locating the students who have the other q-cards in your set.
2) Complete the puzzle as a group
Peer Feedback – Writing Workshop
- Head a sheet of paper with the title “Review of Students’ Cultural Literacy Projects”
- Exchange Cultural Literacy Projects with one of the members of your group.
- On your paper, answer the following five questions after reading your partner’s appraisal.
1- What is the speaker’s central claim about his or her subject?
2- What techniques does the speaker use to appeal to his or her audience in supporting the claim?
3- What biases of the writer are revealed?
4- Is the speaker convincing? Explain why or why not.
5- What aspect(s) of culture does the piece speak of?
- Return your partner’s project and discuss your responses.
- Repeat this process a second time with a different member of your group.
- Lastly, after speaking with two people who have appraised your appraisal, on a separate sheet of paper that will be attached to the back of your cultural literacy project, note what you learned about your piece in discussing it with your colleagues.
- Both your responses to your peers and your reflection about your own piece after discussing it with your peers should be stapled and handed in separately from your Cultural Literacy Project.
- You will receive an extra credit grade for the third nine weeks based on the quality of the reflections.
APPENDIX D
Advanced Placement English Language and Composition
“Synthesis Set” Research Project and Prompt Development
Haselmann
Spring, 2017
START BY ASKING A GOOD QUESTION
Explanation:
-Student will design a fair and relevant A.P. English Language and Composition style synthesis prompt using the sample synthesis essay question as a model.
Each student will design his or her own question by selecting a topic that can be, and that has been, looked at in multiple perspectives, and researching and copying all materials to be used a “sources”.
Once the topic selection has been made, and before writing the cover page, the student must research and select a set of sources that he or she deems to be important in a thoughtful consideration of the issue in question.
- The resources must come from at least three different forms of written media,
i.e. online article, magazine, encyclopedia, newspaper, radio or television broadcast transcript, interview, expert testimonial, opposite-the-editorial,
novel or short story, poem, biography, etc.
- One of the six resources must ask the reader to employ his or her visual literacy skills. Visual resources include comics, illustrations, diagrams, charts, artistic renderings like paintings or sculpture.
- All resources are to be neatly photocopied and or printed, then formatted so as to fit neatly on a single page. For this reason, students should consider the space available to them on a single page, and select the most relevant excerpts from each resource.
- Each resource must be labeled Source A-F.
- Each resource page must include a proper MLA citation above the text.
- Neatness matters. So, if you need to do some extra photocopying after you’ve cut and pasted your material onto the page, do so.
The Cover Page:
See your packet.
- The Directions will not change.
- The Introduction must begin with a factual statement that establishes your subject, followed by a series of questions. It is important that you consider your Introduction questions carefully. The issues you raise in the Introduction should be touched upon in the resource material that you include. These Introduction questions represent some of the most important perspectives on the issue in question and they serve to start the responder’s thinking on the subject.
- The Assignment must be phrased in the same way that a typical A.P. English Language Persuasive Free Response question is phrased. Be sure that the Assignment clearly presents a question that the responder is to make the central focus of his or her essay.
Start by asking a good question.
Assessment:
Value: 4 grades
Breakdown: Grade 1 – Cover Page (Format, Introduction, Assignment, Topic, Focus, Assertion of Introductory Fact, Guiding Questions)
Grade 2 – Resources (Relevance, Variety of perspective, and Connection to Topic)
Grade 3 – Works Cited and MLA Citation
Grade 4 – Overall Project (Neatness, Consideration of Issue, Demonstration of Research Reflective of Multiple Points of View)
APPENDIX E
What’s So Funny?
A.P. English Language and Composition
Haselmann
Spring, 2017
The following assignment is to be completed in lieu of a final exam. Your Final Exam grade will come from an averaging together of the written and oral assessments for this assignment.
You can also choose to do a Cultural Literacy essay and multimedia presentation for your final exam grade.
The “What’s so Funny” Assignment – Tasks
I. Write out the joke that you will be telling in class, including mandatory stage directions*. You will receive an “F” as a final exam grade if the written portion of your assignment is merely copied from somewhere else. I will know if you merely copied your joke because I will be looking specifically for the stage directions. If you do not have stage directions built-into your written version of your joke, I will assume that it is merely copied, and you will receive an ‘F’.
Stage directions: You are essentially going to be on-stage when you go before the class to tell your joke and try to make us laugh. Often, comedy is physical. That is to say that facial expressions and physical movements can be as vital to the “staging” of a joke as the joke itself. Tone of voice, and considerations about timing and pauses are also vital in eliciting slaps of knees.
· Write the joke exactly as you intend to perform it, including all stage directions (parenthetically) in your written joke submission. I will be basing both the written portion and the performance portion of your grade, in part, on how well you follow your own stage directions during your performance. Look at the example below:
Example of Written Joke with Stage Directions
Haselmann: (Speaking to the general audience in a here-comes-another-knock-knock joke tone) Knock. Knock.
Audience: (Several pipe up; it’s an automatic response for anyone who’s ever heard a knock-knock joke) Who’s there? Who’s there? (quoth several speakers)
Haselmann: (Hands waving slowly back and forth at chest level) Wait. Wait. I can only tell this joke to one person. (wait for “Me. Me’s.” to subside. Then, choose someone who looks like they haven’t heard this joke yet) Damian, Knock. Knock.
Damian: Who’s there?
Haselmann: (Quickly, Running syllables together in a mumbly manner)
Innerup’ng Couw.
Damian: (Hesitantly; unsure if he’s heard correctly) In-ter…In-
(Anticipation from the audience heightens, especially those who know the joke already)
Haselmann: (Pouncing. So as to squelch any audience members’ chance to say something that might give away the punch line. Hands waving, chest-high) Let me start again. Let me start again. (To Damian in a once and for all sort of voice) Knock. Knock.
Damian: (Also ready to get the tedium that this joke is becoming over with) Who’s there?
Haselmann: (Enunciating every syllable. Speaking slowly) Interrupting Cow.
Damian: (Hearing. Speaking assuredly) Interupting—
Haselmann Moo. Moo. Moo.
II. Analysis Questions (Rhet. Strategies, Speaker, Audience, Purpose)
Explain what’s funny, or supposed to be funny, about your joke by answering the following:
1) Describe yourself as a speaker, or describe your joke-telling method. Find a few adjectives to describe your tone, and explain what you do tonally, or figuratively to portray yourself as this kind of speaker.
2) Identify at least two rhetorical strategies used in telling your joke, for example, irony, hyperbole, metaphor, understatement, allusion, ambiguity, absurdity. Then describe how each of these strategies serves to create the humor in your joke?
3) Who is your audience? Yes, it’s your classmates, but ‘classmates’ is plural. Who actually are the individual people in the class? Describe the class’ composition by considering cultural, religious, ethnic, gender, and socio-economic biases.
4) What does your audience know that will allow them to understand the humor in your joke? In other words, what can you assume about your audience that indicates to you that your joke won’t completely bomb?
5) Could anyone in the room be offended by this joke, and, if so, is it worth telling the joke in this forum? Explain.
Assessment: One grade for each of the following: (1)Written Joke w/ stage directions (2) Analysis Q’s (3) Joke Performance and adherence to stage directions (4) The average of these three grades will be your final exam grade.
Resources
Cohen, Samuel, ed. 5o Essays: A Portable Anthology. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004.
College Board. AP English Language and Compostion: 2006-2007 P Professional Development Workshop Materials: Special Focus: Writing Persuasively. New York: College Board, 2006.
Dean, Nancy. Voice Lessons: Classroom Activities to Teach Diction, Detail, Imagery, Syntax, and Tone. Gainesville: Maupin House, 2000.
Degen, Michael. Crafting Expository Argument: Practical Approaches to the Writing Process for Students and Teachers. Fourth Edition. Dallas: Telemachos Publishing, 2004.
Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1986.
Hacker, Diane. A Pocket Style Manual. Fourth Edition. Boston: Bedford/ St.Martin’s, 2004.
Lunsford, Andrea A., John J. Ruszkiewicz, and Keith Walters. Everything’s an Argument: With Readings. Third Edition. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. 2004
Shea, Renee H., and Lawrence Scanlon. Teaching Nonfiction in AP English: A Guide to Accompany 50 Essays. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2005.
Vogel, Richard and Charles F. Winans. Multiple Choice and Free-Response
Questions in Preparation for the AP English Language and Composition Examination. Brooklyn: D&S Marketing Systems, 2001.
Zinsser, William. On Writing Well. Fifth Edition. New York: Harper Perennial, 1994.
Please copy and paste this section to a word document, sign scan, and e-mail to me or bring to class the first week of school.
Students receiving a ‘D’ or ‘F’ after quarter one in an Advanced Placement class at Miami Beach Senior High will be rescheduled into an Honors level course in the corresponding discipline. Parents or guardians wishing for their students to continue in the AP class, despite the ‘D’ or ‘F’ grade after quarter one, will be required to attend a parent-teacher-student-counselor appointment so all parties can clearly understand the causes of the inadequate grade, and decide upon the most effective intervention strategy for ensuring the student’s success.
MIAMI BEACH SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL ACADEMIC INTEGRITY POLICY
GOAL: The success of a school depends on the combined efforts of the faculty, administration, students and PTSA. This is particularly important when it comes to the issue of academic integrity. Miami Beach Senior High School strives for the highest degree of integrity from its faculty, administration and students.
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY DEFINED: Cheating is defined as “the giving or receiving of unauthorized information to gain an unfair advantage in your work.” Cheating includes, but is not limited to, plagiarism. Plagiarism is defined as “the act of taking the language, thoughts, or ideas of another, including works of art and music, and presenting them as one’s own without acknowledgement.”
CONSEQUENCES OF CHEATING/PLAGIARISM
1. FIRST OFFENSE: “F” on the assignment. “F” in conduct for the quarter. Immediate referral to administration for consideration of additional actions. All other teachers of the students will be notified as well as the student’s coaches, faculty advisors and counselors. A Parent-teacher-counselor conference must be scheduled.
2. SECOND OFFENSE: A second offense means any second cheating or plagiarism event in the same academic year. Even if the second offense occurs in a different class, it will be considered a second offense. The consequences of a second offense are: “F” for the academic year in the subject in which the second offense occurs. A referral to administration will be written for consideration of additional action.
3. ADDITIONAL RULES FOR AP/IB CLASSES AND SCHOLAR’S ACADEMY STUDENTS:
a. Any cheating or plagiarism on an IA, External Assessment or AP test will result in immediate dismissal from the IB program, disqualification of the AP and/or IB test, and dismissal from the Scholar’s Academy. This applies to first offenses.
b. Any episode of cheating, even if a first offense, may be considered by faculty/administration in deciding future AP/IB placement.
c. Any episode of cheating/plagiarism will result in notification of colleges/universities/scholarship funds to which the student applied. The teacher has the right to withdraw any recommendation letter written on a student’s behalf with notice of the cheating/plagiarism.
I have read and understand the course information presented on this syllabus as well as the Miami Beach Senior High Academic Policy. I understand that my child will have reading materials that may have to be purchased or borrowed from the library. My child is expected to be responsible and keep on top of the required assignments and I will see that they are prepared and I will make sure they have what is necessary to succeed.
Student signature:______________________________________________
Parent signature:_______________________________________________
Date:_______________________
Advanced Placement English Language and CompositionMiami Beach Senior High
Instructor: Patricia Haselmann
Course Overview:
This AP English Language and Composition Course is loosely structured according to writing modes, with quarter one centered around exposition, quarter two focused on persuasion, and quarter three devoted to satire. However, it must be noted that these writing modes cannot be neatly compartmentalized. Exposition, for instance, is persuasive when one considers the point of view of the speaker.
1st Nine Weeks – Description and Narration, Analysis, Building a Common Language of Craft, From a Sophomore to a Sophisticated Thesis, Writing to Show
The Writing Process, Criticism
2nd Nine Weeks – Persuasion, Argument, Visual Literacy, Media Metaphors, Logical Fallacy, Methods of Appeal, Point of View, Criticism
3rd Nine Weeks – Satire, Argument Supplanted with Research, MLA Works Cited and In-Text Documentation, Opposite-the-Editorial, Criticism
4th Nine Weeks – Writing Portfolio Inventory and Construction, Humor, Test Review, Criticism
Manifesto for Teaching Rhetorical Strategy, Use and Interpretation
How do I teach a group of adolescents to channel their a priori knowledge into the crafting of effective expository argument, and multi-dimensional interpretive reading? I offer students some sound ideas about specificity in using rhetoric, and about being perspicacious in analyzing the rhetorical decisions of others. I introduce my students to common systems of belief and influential voices in a number of various stages and places on the continuum of human recorded history. I teach my students to be assertive in the expression of their opinions and well-warranted in the founding of those opinions. I ask my students to keep-up a running dialogue with the texts they encounter so as to shape critical interpretation actively, responsively, and reflectively.
Standards:
Upon completing the A.P. Language and Composition course students should be able to:
- Analyze and interpret a variety of literary forms, identifying and explaining the author’s use of rhetorical strategies and techniques
- Create and sustain arguments based on research and experience and document as necessary using MLA format
- Demonstrate understanding and mastery of standard written English as well as stylistic maturity in their own writing
- Complete acceptable written assignments in a variety of genres and contexts, both formal and informal, employing appropriate strategies, conventions, and techniques (including, but not limited to, personal essay, literary analysis, documented research paper, critical review, timed essay responses)
- Move effectively through the stages of the writing process, with careful attention to inquiry and research, drafting revising and editing
- Discuss the historical and cultural development of American literature
- Write under time constraints
- Read and analyze a minimum of seven longer works
Materials:
- Journal: Students are to procure a bound, sturdy, and serious journal with a cover made of something harder than cardboard and something other than a black and white composition notebook. Student journals ought to have about them a feeling of permanence. Such journals can be purchased at bookstores or stationary stores. These journals will come to serve as important study guides at the end of the year and will be graded quarterly (see journal assessment)
- Three Ring Binder: Students will receive numerous handouts (vocabulary lists,
- rhetorical strategy explanations, AP Free Response Prompts, etc. A neat binder will also serve as a useful study guide in May.
- A Duotang folder for the construction of the student writing portfolio.
- Novels: If monetarily possible, students and parents are asked to acquire the novels listed in the Book List (refer to page ). If, for any reason, the student cannot acquire the text, the teacher will provide it for him or her. It is important that students get in the habit of annotating, or taking marginal notes. (Refer to booklist on page )
Reading Objectives and Strategies
1) Reader Response Journal Activities:
Various activities are employed requiring the student reader to respond critically to challenging text. Most nonfiction texts are derived from 50 Essays (Cohen), in addition to some photocopied readings, and the quarterly novel or two. (See Reading List) Reader response strategies taught and assigned to students include 2-Column Notes, S.O.A.P.S.Tone, and specific questions for rhetorical analysis which include both multiple choice critical reading questions in AP format, and short and extended response questions.
All reader response strategies are consistently modeled. Students learn how to hold conversations with the writers they read; they learn that a short or long answer analysis question is not answered effectively until the responder has offered an assertion, provided evidence from the text to support that assertion, and connected their evidence to the text through thoughtful, validating commentary. The assertion-evidence-commentary formula applies to the 2-column note taking and SOAPSTone exercises as well.
Voice Lessons - The Voice Lesson Exercises, from Nancy Dean’s Voice Lessons: Classroom Activities to teach Diction, Detail, Imagery, and Tone, serve as springboards for mini-units* on each of these five key rhetorical strategies over the course of the year.
Sample rhetorical strategy mini unit: ON Syntax
- A Voice Lessons introduces the mini-unit on syntax: James Baldwin, from Sonny’s Blues, Syntactical analysis voice lesson
- Syntax Types for Emphasis Common Lang. of Craft Handout
- Hamlet and the Queen, tone developed through syntax journal activity
- Dear John Punctuation Matters journal activity
- Simple/Complex/Compound Sentences (previous prompts + Scarlet Letter)
2) Development of Common Language of Craft: Journal Glossaries
A systematic approach to a serious study of rhetoric requires an awareness of the terminology used to describe language. Students develop facility with the common language of craft during the first semester and continuing, to a lesser extent, during the second semester. Provided to them are lists of rhetorical and literary devices and strategies; lists of words to describe tone, diction, syntax, and speaker; student extracted vocabulary from novels and nonfiction readings; and “word of the day” quick-takes from Dictionary.com.
In addition to the various glossaries of terminology, the Common Language of Craft section of the students’ journals will contain an index of symbols for Revision and Editing.
Quarterly Journal Assessment:
Student journals will be collected at the end of each quarter and graded based on largely on completeness and adherence to strategies. All journal pages must be numbered in the top-right hand corner of each page. All journal assignments must be clearly headed at the top of each page. All headings must correspond to the headings in the Table of Contents, to be completed using the first five pages of the journal.
One of the four quarterly journal grades will be for organization as per the requirements enumerated in the previous paragraph; the other three quarterly grades will be based on equal division of the reader response and the development of a common language of craft exercises mentioned above. The majority of the reader-response and language development exercises will be assigned a home learning so the journal check each nine weeks can be considered a homework check to mandate that students keep-up that active dialogue with their readings. Journals will also include various writing exercises and inventories of the characteristics of the three major writing modes – exposition, persuasion, and satire – around which each semester is structured.
- Conversations with the Ethicist using NYTIMES, Sunday Magazine
Teaching Toulmin Model: Warrants, Qualifiers, Major and Minor Premises
Review of New York Times Book Reviews - These quarterly practice partly used as a model for effective criticism, the nature of which students are wrangling with in crafting their Cultural Literacy project compositions.
- (See Appendix H)
Socratic Discussion:
Daily practice providing immediate feedback and progressive, communal analysis or argument in regards to readings.
Teaching Higher Order Thinking (THOT) Poems:
A classroom activity in which the entire class uses the assertion- evidence-commentary strategy for rhetorical analysis in order to discover the title of a poem for which the title has been removed prior to the students’ reading. Collectively students assert responses to an open-ended prompt, then try and err in attempting to validate those assertions with interpretation of specific text in the poem. The THOT poem activity parallels and illustrates the process involved in the analysis of any text.
Reading List (Subject to Revision)
Text: 50 Essays – A Portable Anthology – Samuel Cohen
Summer Reading:
- Mountains Beyond Mountains – Tracy Kid- The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel HawthorneFall and Spring Texts:
- The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien- The Crucible – Arthur Miller
- Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
- The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion
- Fountainhead – Ayn Rand
Excerpts from Longer Works:
- A Summer Life – Gary Soto
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: “Learning to Read and Write”
- Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi
- On Writing Well: “Criticism” – William Zinsser
Shorter Readings
- Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God- Jonathan Edwards
- The Declaration of Independence – Thomas Jefferson
- The Gettysburg Address – Abraham Lincoln
- The Second Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln
- “Mission Accomplished” – President Bush’s speech onboard USS Abraham Lincoln
- Once More to the Lake – E.B. White
- The Allegory of the Cave - Plato
- Public Statement by Eight Alabama Clergymen
- Two Ways to Belong in America – Bharati Mukherjee
- Gone Off Up North – Roy Blount, Jr.
- The Lowest Animal – Mark Twain
- Letter from Vietnam – Lt. Sandy Kempner
PERSUASION and DOCUMENTATION
“Self-Reliance”- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Civil Disobedience”- Henry David Thoreau
“Letter from Birmingham Jail”- Martin Luther King
“Speech to the Atlanta Convention”, from Up From Slavery- Booker T.
Washington
“The Morals of the Prince” – Niccolo Machiavelli
“Just Walk On By – Black Men In Public Space” - Brent Staples
“Who Killed Benny Paret?” – Norman Cousins
Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech- Wangari Maathai
“Learning to Read”- Malcolm X
“Hills Like White Elephants” – Ernest Hemingway
“Shooting an Elephant” – George Orwell
“The Ways We Lie” – Stephanie Ericsson
“How to Tame a Wild Tongue” – Gloria Anzaldua
“Once More to the Lake” – E.B. White
SATIRE
“The Company Man” – Ellen Goodman
“A Modest Proposal” – Jonathan Swift
“Why Don’t We Complain?” – William F. Buckley Jr.
“Learning to Read and Write” – Frederick Douglass
“Me Talk Pretty One Day” – David Sedaris
“Lost in the Kitchen” – Dave Barry
“Miami Isn’t So Bad, Really” – Dave Barry
The Onion – Assorted Articles
The New York Times – Satirical Political Cartoons
Slate Online Magazine - Satirical Political Cartoons
The Miami Herald – Leonard Pitts & Carl Hiassen Columns
Select AP Free Response and Multiple Choice Prompts
- Shorter nonfiction pieces are included in packets to be distributed to
students for close reading and analysis, including packets entitled
“Persuasion,” “Satire,” and “Point of View.”
- Other course required readings to be announced
Columns
- Do Not Be Alarmed: Miami Isn’t So Weird – Dave Barry
- Opus Cartoons – Berkeley Breathed
- Selected Articles from “The Ethicist” – Randy Cohen
- Break Up – Starley Kine
- New York Times Book Reviews
- Columns chosen by students
II. Composition Objectives and Strategies
Sophisticated expository writers utilize the rhetorical strategies that they intuit in their readings. Different writing modes call for different rhetorical strategies.
The tenets of Writing to Show, as outlined by Michael Degen in Crafting Expository Argument, however, pertain to all writing modes with which students work throughout the school year.
WRITING TO SHOW
The Writing Process does not end at the completion of an essay. In the grander scheme, each student will continue the process of crafting effective expository argument until the day he or she stops putting pen to paper.
The short-term writing objectives of this course are that students develop the ability to make clear assertions, and to support those assertions with relevant evidence and demonstrative commentary. The long-term objective of this course is to provide students with an arsenal of rhetorical strategies and an understanding of the functions of these strategies in any given writing occasion.
Enumerated below are a sampling of writing skills and strategies taught during the first semester, in addition to the editing and revision symbols used by the teacher to assess student composition. These same symbols are continuously employed by students during the peer and self revision and editing stages of the writing process. Several composition assignments call for students to show these revision symbols , along with annotated revisions and editions, on submitted first drafts. Above all, Degen’s writing to show strategies encourage specificity in composition.
- Clauses, Phrases Notes
- Independent vs. Dependent Clause
- Fragment and Run-on mini-lessons
- Mini-lessons on Degen’s Rules for writing effective exposition and the Active Voice, including mandatory elimination of to be verbs in favor of active verbs; substitution of concrete nouns and adjectives for abstract diction; avoidance of plural, general nouns for singular, specific ones; elimination of vague, “naked” pronouns; present tense instead of past
- Mini-lessons on Present and Past Participles acting as adjectives to modify independent clauses
Revision Marks To be employed all year: SH = Show, don’t tell, E3 = extend elaboration , PrPP = Present Participial Phrase, PaPP = Past Participial Phrase
- Sentence Combining with PrPP, and PaPP – from simple to complex and compound syntax
- Adverb Subordinate Clause = sentence combining activity
- Comma and Semicolon usage including Sentence Combining Exercises
- Writing and Writing Skills:
- Redrafting one essay from the first quarter, including specific revision tasks: sentence combining/refining through modifying phrases and clauses.
- Independent / Subordinate Clause and Phrase Notes, Continuing Sentence Combining Activities
- Essay Response Notation Page in Journal – Keeping track of teacher and student writing comments --- Personal Revision Tip Sheet
- Grammar and Conventions Minilessons
- 20 Most Common Grammatical Errors, from SAT Workshop Materials, 2nd round my adaptation
- bedfordstmartins.com/exercise central – specific, periodic mechanics exercises
WRITING TO SHOW ACTIVITIES 1-5
Peer Reading and Revising and Editing of WTS Exercises
Resubmission of two WTS Exercises of student’s choosing
- Universal Editing Symbols, Editing Procedure, drafting, skipping lines
- Cultural Literacy Projects x2 each quarter (See Appendices A-C )
An effective Critical Commentary consists of description, interpretation, synthesis and evaluation. According to David Jolliffe, college-level writers should display aptitude in these four areas. Gaining in sophistication each quarter, the cultural literacy projects meet College Board objectives on a number of fronts:
- Students must read in a medium other than print by attending cultural relevant events.
- Students must develop facility with the language of the various events in which they partake or attend so as to portray a valid critical voice
- Students must describe the event clearly, using concrete sensory detail, so that the reader may visualize it
- Student must interpret the constituent elements and purpose of the event in the context of the broad scope of culture
- Student must evaluate the event, basing their critical claims about the event on sound warrants and logical premises
- Continual Thesis Statement Revision and Editing Exercises
- AP Timed Essay Prompts 2-3 per nine weeks + 2 part thesis statement development
journal activities
- The Tonal Paragraph Interpretation Small Group Game
Writing Portfolio – Writing portfolio folders feature student essays in chronological order from the beginning of the year. Complete Writing Portfolios consist of the following:
· A Table of Contents which lists the title of each entry, comments on the explicit and implicit parts of all essays endeavored, and a two-word declaration of the essay’s writing mode.
· Writing to Show Descriptive Expositions 1-5 (Degen)
Other essays included in the student Writing Portfolio in 2006-2007 are
- Cultural Literacy Project, Version 3.0 – Incorporating a variety of media into a presentation / recreation of the cultural event that is the subject of the student’s criticism. (See Appendix A-C)
- Opposite the Editorial Contest Writing – Satirical persuasive composition incorporating the elements of satire studied in the third quarter into a cogent argument about a contemporary social issue.
- Synthesis Prompt Research Project (SEE APPENDIX E)
- A.P. Timed Free Response Prompts: at least two released AP prompts from previous tests’ Free Response Section per nine week’s
- Released and student created synthesis questions (See Appendix E)
- Writing Portfolio Self-Evaluation of the Year’s Writing Assignments Questions
- The Worst Piece Ever is an attempt to maintain all of the elements of the ‘SOAPStone’ of the first draft, while “destroying showing writing” in the writing portfolio piece of their choice(Degen). For example, students replace active verbs with passive, helping verbs; substituting concrete nouns and adjectives for abstract ones; shifting tense, and other mechanical snafus; etc.
- The Best Piece Ever: no surprises here. Students revise and edit one portfolio piece focusing on specificity by incorporating the writing to show objectives we’ve worked with all year, and edit out errors in mechanics, employing a varied syntax while adhering to the conventions of standard written English.
- “What’s So Funny” – Exit project after completion of AP Exam (See AppendixG)
Additionally, students are instructed on the MLA format for in-text documentation
Related MLA Citation / Documentation assignments
Students are referred to my web page and bedfordstmartins.com for MLA citation information on the format for citing various media sources
AP ESSAY ASSESSMENT
Letter Grade / AP Free Response Essay Score Equivalency
All timed AP Free Response Essays (minimum two per quarter) will be worth two grades as follows.
8, 9 – A/A 5 – C/C 0, 1, 2 – F/F
6, 7 – B/B 3, 4 – D/D
Appendix A Advanced Placement English Language and Composition
Cultural Literacy Quarterly Project
Rationale:
One of the many qualities of a great writer is that he or she is first an
engaged and receptive observer. The more capacity we have for making
interdisciplinary connections the more literate we become. The more we expose
ourselves to the arts and history of the people and places both near and far, the
more perceptive we become as citizens of the world.
Greater Miami and its surrounding communities offer a divergent array of
cultural activities. These events enrich our lives and sensitize us to the experiences
of the people with whom we share our combustible planet.
Description:
Each nine weeks, students are required to make two cultural outings.
Activities may include, but are not limited to, concerts, book discussions, theatrical
plays, ballet, modern dance, or ethnic dance performances. Museum visits are also
viable for these assignments, as are films shown as part of film festivals, for
instance the Miami Brazilian Film Festival, Miami Jewish Film Festival, or The Miami
Jazz Film Festival. Commercial movies will not be accepted. If you are unsure
whether or not an event in which you are interested is suitable for this assignment,
check with Ms. Haselmann. After the event, students will write reaction/evaluation/critique pieces based
on the experience. Students are required to submit a ticket stub, receipt, or other
verifiable artifact from the event, along with their evaluation pieces, as proof of
attendance.
Appendix B
A.P. English Language and Composition
Cultural Literacy, Version 3.0
Spring 2014
Cultural literacy:
Knowledge of history, contributions, and perspectives of different cultural groups, including one's own group, necessary for understanding of reading, writing, and other media
http://www.dictionary.reference.com/browse/cultural%20literacy%20. Lexico Publishing Group, LLC: 7 Feb 2007
Objectives:
- Analyze and interpret a variety of literary forms
- Appraise the value of a “work of art and place it in the context of what has been done before in that medium or by that artist” (Zinsser)
- Create and sustain arguments based on research and experience and document as necessary using MLA format
- Move effectively through the stages of the writing process, with careful attention to inquiry and research, drafting revising and editing
- Allude to at least three other culturally significant works or historical precedents in the medium
- Create a multimedia presentation synthesizing at least three different media forms
Activities:
I. Background Reading:
Zinsser, William. “Criticism.” On Writing Well, Fifth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1994. 214-229.
II. The Appraisal:
Refer to the directions for the cultural literacy projects in the first and second nine weeks.
Defer to William Zinsser’s comments about effective criticism.
Bear in mind that all persuasive writing is bonded to a central argument.
In order to develop some level of expertise in art form that you are critiquing for this appraisal, and in the spirit of synthesis, allude to at least three comparable works or artists in your writing.
In order to ensure that you know of what you speak, you are required to research and cite the sources you use to build upon your expertise in the subject.
The final page of you submission will be a MLA Works Cited
250 -500 Words, Typed, Double-Spaced
III. Central Focus: Why do you think the event was good or why do you think the evnt was not good?
For the sake of our project: Why do you think the event was a good, or a bad, example of the kind of thing that a person ought to experience in order to become more culturally literate?
Approach your appraisal in terms of your attended event’s historical value, (i.e. its place in the continuum or canon of the medium); social value, artistic value, cultural relevance, contribution to the fabric and/or landscape of the city, political implications, economic impact, etc.
IV: The Presentation:
1) Take us to your cultural literacy event. Your presentation is to be expository. You will recreate the event your attended event using at least three different forms of media:
a) something audible
b) something visual
c) something tangible – a symbol, an icon, a prop, an artifact, a piece of memorabilia, anything that a literate person might associate with the event you attended after he or she has attended it. You might choose an object that is literally part of the experience, or an object that is significant to the experience in a metaphorical way.
Appendix C
A.P. English Language and Composition
Cultural Literacy Project, Version 3.0
WRITING PROCESS EXTENSION EXERCISE
Directions:
1) Find your group by locating the students who have the other q-cards in your set.
2) Complete the puzzle as a group
Peer Feedback – Writing Workshop
- Head a sheet of paper with the title “Review of Students’ Cultural Literacy Projects”
- Exchange Cultural Literacy Projects with one of the members of your group.
- On your paper, answer the following five questions after reading your partner’s appraisal.
1- What is the speaker’s central claim about his or her subject?
2- What techniques does the speaker use to appeal to his or her audience in supporting the claim?
3- What biases of the writer are revealed?
4- Is the speaker convincing? Explain why or why not.
5- What aspect(s) of culture does the piece speak of?
- Return your partner’s project and discuss your responses.
- Repeat this process a second time with a different member of your group.
- Lastly, after speaking with two people who have appraised your appraisal, on a separate sheet of paper that will be attached to the back of your cultural literacy project, note what you learned about your piece in discussing it with your colleagues.
- Both your responses to your peers and your reflection about your own piece after discussing it with your peers should be stapled and handed in separately from your Cultural Literacy Project.
- You will receive an extra credit grade for the third nine weeks based on the quality of the reflections.
APPENDIX D
Advanced Placement English Language and Composition
“Synthesis Set” Research Project and Prompt Development
Haselmann
Spring, 2014
START BY ASKING A GOOD QUESTION
Explanation:
-Student will design a fair and relevant A.P. English Language and Composition style synthesis prompt using the sample synthesis essay question as a model.
Each student will design his or her own question by selecting a topic that can be, and that has been, looked at in multiple perspectives, and researching and copying all materials to be used a “sources”.
Once the topic selection has been made, and before writing the cover page, the student must research and select a set of sources that he or she deems to be important in a thoughtful consideration of the issue in question.
- The resources must come from at least three different forms of written media,
i.e. online article, magazine, encyclopedia, newspaper, radio or television broadcast transcript, interview, expert testimonial, opposite-the-editorial,
novel or short story, poem, biography, etc.
- One of the six resources must ask the reader to employ his or her visual literacy skills. Visual resources include comics, illustrations, diagrams, charts, artistic renderings like paintings or sculpture.
- All resources are to be neatly photocopied and or printed, then formatted so as to fit neatly on a single page. For this reason, students should consider the space available to them on a single page, and select the most relevant excerpts from each resource.
- Each resource must be labeled Source A-F.
- Each resource page must include a proper MLA citation above the text.
- Neatness matters. So, if you need to do some extra photocopying after you’ve cut and pasted your material onto the page, do so.
The Cover Page:
See your packet.
- The Directions will not change.
- The Introduction must begin with a factual statement that establishes your subject, followed by a series of questions. It is important that you consider your Introduction questions carefully. The issues you raise in the Introduction should be touched upon in the resource material that you include. These Introduction questions represent some of the most important perspectives on the issue in question and they serve to start the responder’s thinking on the subject.
- The Assignment must be phrased in the same way that a typical A.P. English Language Persuasive Free Response question is phrased. Be sure that the Assignment clearly presents a question that the responder is to make the central focus of his or her essay.
Start by asking a good question.
Assessment:
Value: 4 grades
Breakdown: Grade 1 – Cover Page (Format, Introduction, Assignment, Topic, Focus, Assertion of Introductory Fact, Guiding Questions)
Grade 2 – Resources (Relevance, Variety of perspective, and Connection to Topic)
Grade 3 – Works Cited and MLA Citation
Grade 4 – Overall Project (Neatness, Consideration of Issue, Demonstration of Research Reflective of Multiple Points of View)
APPENDIX E
What’s So Funny?
A.P. English Language and Composition
Haselmann
Spring, 2014
The following assignment is to be completed in lieu of a final exam. Your Final Exam grade will come from an averaging together of the written and oral assessments for this assignment.
You can also choose to do a Cultural Literacy essay and multimedia presentation for your final exam grade.
The “What’s so Funny” Assignment – Tasks
I. Write out the joke that you will be telling in class, including mandatory stage directions*. You will receive an “F” as a final exam grade if the written portion of your assignment is merely copied from somewhere else. I will know if you merely copied your joke because I will be looking specifically for the stage directions. If you do not have stage directions built-into your written version of your joke, I will assume that it is merely copied, and you will receive an ‘F’.
· Stage directions: You are essentially going to be on-stage when you go before the class to tell your joke and try to make us laugh. Often, comedy is physical. That is to say that facial expressions and physical movements can be as vital to the “staging” of a joke as the joke itself. Tone of voice, and considerations about timing and pauses are also vital in eliciting slaps of knees.
· Write the joke exactly as you intend to perform it, including all stage directions (parenthetically) in your written joke submission. I will be basing both the written portion and the performance portion of your grade, in part, on how well you follow your own stage directions during your performance. Look at the example below:
Example of Written Joke with Stage Directions
Haselmann: (Speaking to the general audience in a here-comes-another-knock-knock joke tone) Knock. Knock.
Audience: (Several pipe up; it’s an automatic response for anyone who’s ever heard a knock-knock joke) Who’s there? Who’s there? (quoth several speakers)
Haselmann: (Hands waving slowly back and forth at chest level) Wait. Wait. I can only tell this joke to one person. (wait for “Me. Me’s.” to subside. Then, choose someone who looks like they haven’t heard this joke yet) Damian, Knock. Knock.
Damian: Who’s there?
Haselmann: (Quickly, Running syllables together in a mumbly manner)
Innerup’ng Couw.
Damian: (Hesitantly; unsure if he’s heard correctly) In-ter…In-
(Anticipation from the audience heightens, especially those who know the joke already)
Haselmann: (Pouncing. So as to squelch any audience members’ chance to say something that might give away the punch line. Hands waving, chest-high) Let me start again. Let me start again. (To Damian in a once and for all sort of voice) Knock. Knock.
Damian: (Also ready to get the tedium that this joke is becoming over with) Who’s there?
Haselmann: (Enunciating every syllable. Speaking slowly) Interrupting Cow.
Damian: (Hearing. Speaking assuredly) Interupti—
Haselmann Moo. Moo. Moo.
II. Analysis Questions (Rhet. Strategies, Speaker, Audience, Purpose)
Explain what’s funny, or supposed to be funny, about your joke by answering the following:
1) Describe yourself as a speaker, or describe your joke-telling method. Find a few adjectives to describe your tone, and explain what you do tonally, or figuratively to portray yourself as this kind of speaker.
2) Identify at least two rhetorical strategies used in telling your joke, for example, irony, hyperbole, metaphor, understatement, allusion, ambiguity, absurdity. Then describe how each of these strategies serves to create the humor in your joke?
3) Who is your audience? Yes, it’s your classmates, but ‘classmates’ is plural. Who actually are the individual people in the class? Describe the class’ composition by considering cultural, religious, ethnic, gender, and socio-economic biases.
4) What does your audience know that will allow them to understand the humor in your joke? In other words, what can you assume about your audience that indicates to you that your joke won’t completely bomb?
5) Could anyone in the room be offended by this joke, and, if so, is it worth telling the joke in this forum? Explain.
Assessment: One grade for each of the following: (1)Written Joke w/ stage directions (2) Analysis Q’s (3) Joke Performance and adherence to stage directions (4) The average of these three grades will be your final exam grade.
Resources
Cohen, Samuel, ed. 5o Essays: A Portable Anthology. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004.
College Board. AP English Language and Compostion: 2006-2007 P Professional Development Workshop Materials: Special Focus: Writing Persuasively. New York: College Board, 2006.
Dean, Nancy. Voice Lessons: Classroom Activities to Teach Diction, Detail, Imagery, Syntax, and Tone. Gainesville: Maupin House, 2000.
Degen, Michael. Crafting Expository Argument: Practical Approaches to the Writing Process for Students and Teachers. Fourth Edition. Dallas: Telemachos Publishing, 2004.
Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1986.
Hacker, Diane. A Pocket Style Manual. Fourth Edition. Boston: Bedford/ St.Martin’s, 2004.
Lunsford, Andrea A., John J. Ruszkiewicz, and Keith Walters. Everything’s an Argument: With Readings. Third Edition. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. 2004
Shea, Renee H., and Lawrence Scanlon. Teaching Nonfiction in AP English: A Guide to Accompany 50 Essays. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2005.
Vogel, Richard and Charles F. Winans. Multiple Choice and Free-Response
Questions in Preparation for the AP English Language and Composition Examination. Brooklyn: D&S Marketing Systems, 2001.
Zinsser, William. On Writing Well. Fifth Edition. New York: Harper Perennial, 1994.
Please copy and paste this section to a word document, sign and e-mail to me or bring to class the first week of school.MIAMI BEACH SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL ACADEMIC INTEGRITY POLICY
GOAL: The success of a school depends on the combined efforts of the faculty, administration, students and PTSA. This is particularly important when it comes to the issue of academic integrity. Miami Beach Senior High School strives for the highest degree of integrity from its faculty, administration and students.
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY DEFINED: Cheating is defined as “the giving or receiving of unauthorized information to gain an unfair advantage in your work.” Cheating includes, but is not limited to, plagiarism. Plagiarism is defined as “the act of taking the language, thoughts, or ideas of another, including works of art and music, and presenting them as one’s own without acknowledgement.”
CONSEQUENCES OF CHEATING/PLAGIARISM
1. FIRST OFFENSE: “F” on the assignment. “F” in conduct for the quarter. Immediate referral to administration for consideration of additional actions. All other teachers of the students will be notified as well as the student’s coaches, faculty advisors and counselors. A Parent-teacher-counselor conference must be scheduled.
2. SECOND OFFENSE: A second offense means any second cheating or plagiarism event in the same academic year. Even if the second offense occurs in a different class, it will be considered a second offense. The consequences of a second offense are: “F” for the academic year in the subject in which the second offense occurs. A referral to administration will be written for consideration of additional action.
3. ADDITIONAL RULES FOR AP/IB CLASSES AND SCHOLAR’S ACADEMY STUDENTS:
a. Any cheating or plagiarism on an IA, External Assessment or AP test will result in immediate dismissal from the IB program, disqualification of the AP and/or IB test, and dismissal from the Scholar’s Academy. This applies to first offenses.
b. Any episode of cheating, even if a first offense, may be considered by faculty/administration in deciding future AP/IB placement.
c. Any episode of cheating/plagiarism will result in notification of colleges/universities/scholarship funds to which the student applied. The teacher has the right to withdraw any recommendation letter written on a student’s behalf with notice of the cheating/plagiarism.
I have read and understand the course information presented on this syllabus as well as the Miami Beach Senior High Academic Policy. I understand that my child will have reading materials that may have to be purchased or borrowed from the library. My child is expected to be responsible and keep on top of the required assignments and I will see that they are prepared and I will make sure they have what is necessary to succeed.Student signature:______________________________________________
Parent signature:_______________________________________________Date:_______________________
