For the projects we are doing in class, we started watching the plays that we chose to look deeper into critical theories. We basically just watched the play the entire week while still doing SSR and creative writing. While watching Macbeth, it was a little hard to understand because of the way they spoke, but watching with subtitles made it a whole lot easier. I was really excited to watch this because it is referenced in so many other places. The only thing is, I did not like it very much. It does have an interesting story line but I think because we have read all of these other tragedies and Shakespearean plays, I thought it was going to be the best one yet. It turned out to be my least favorite play by Shakespeare. This could have been because we watched the movie first without reading the book. However, I am pretty sure this movie followed the story line very well. The entire class was to take Cornell notes on specific events from the play. A lot of the notes in my group helped sum up how crazy everyone was being in the story. Comparing it with Existentialism we were able to see that most "prophecies" come true because someone tells you about it. When you hear of a prophecy, even if it is a really crazy idea, you begin to believe it could actually become real. Then, because of this, you do everything in your power to follow the prophecy and in that can lead to chaos. When it all comes down to it, you have the ability to make your own decisions but decisions you make can be influenced by the people around you.
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When doing the Poem of the Week last trimester we only looked at one poem the whole time. This trimester we are starting to read and analyze two poems in a week in order to compare and contrast themes. The two we looked at were "Ozymandias" and "Sonnet 146". They were both very good poems in my opinion that dealt with the idea of life after death. One poem was mainly about how a person's soul can live on once they have passed but the other represented that people will not be remembered forever and will soon finally "die out". These pieces were very interesting to me in order to see how reading a poem can change a person's view on a topic. A lot of times in poetry, the poet formulates their wording in such a way that it makes you believe that is the only way of looking at something. Poets can sometimes be compared to "used car salesmen" but instead of cars, it is ideals that they are selling. The great part about looking at two differing poems with the same idea is that your mind opens up to different interpretations. Also this week, we started a new project where we pick to analyze either "Macbeth" or "King Lear". I chose Macbeth because I have always wanted to read it and it sounds very interesting. For the project we have to get into groups and pick and critical theory topic to help with the story we decided to follow. My group picked philosophical (existentialism) and we spent the week answering questions to go along with our theme. My group works well together and we are able think well on the topic. I think it will get easier to think about existentialism and the project in general once we know the whole story behind Macbeth. For the start of the new trimester, we did a practice AP Literature test to see what it would be like. It was very much like taking the SAT so I did not like it at all. However I did think it was interesting to see how it all worked and what kind of answers the test is looking for. When taking the AP test you should base you answers off of what the author is trying to showcase and not what you interpret or think yourself. I think that is the hardest part of it all. Just because you have a good opinion does not mean that the author will have the exact same one. Taking practice tests in advance can really help you when faced with the actual AP exam and help you formulate new strageties. I'm not really sure that the AP test would be beneficial for me to take because of the school I want to go to but I do believe that this class will help me a ton in college and in life. Also this week we picked new SSR books in order to do a final project at the end of the trimester. We had to pick two books in advance so we would be able to pick an area of interest that we would like to look deeper into. My overall theme is about why people feel the need to be loved and wanted by others and where that sense of being valued stems from. To learn more about this I plan on reading Jane Eyre and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. We dove even farther into the topic of tragedy this week with more articles, a ted talk, and the reading of a tragic poem. When reading the article we did the same thing as before where we get into groups of three and highlight the most important parts of the piece. My group got really into it this time and we were all able to have a very good discussion about how this article interpreted tragedy. I like do looking at the article this way because it gives everyone more than one way of interpreting the text in order to find new meanings throughout the piece. The Ted Talk we watched was all about who moves up through society and how success can mean something different than being the absolute best in a community. There are a lot of snobby and envious people and there is no way fixing that. I liked the talk because it made me think differently on how people perceive tragedy. Sometimes something can be fine to one person but very tragic to another. It is all about what someone is going through at that specific time that can make something feel like a tragedy which I though was interesting. The main thing done in class was reading Oedipus Rex which I thought was a very good story that related very well with what we were talking about in tragedy. I really enjoyed how Schoenborn explained different parts throughout the text because a lot of it was hard to follow. The whole thing entirely made sense but sometimes the diction can be confusing, especially with the whole class reading different parts and everyone else trying to follow along. There are many ways to take good notes but we did cornell notes on this story which I thought were extremely helpful in order to write a blog post on it. It helped me get my thoughts together and organize them so they would make sense when written down. This week we dove into our new topic in class which is tragedy. The only thoughts I had on the topic was that it highlighted sad moments in the lives of people usually dealing with loss. When we dove further into tragedy I realized that there is not just one type. It was interesting to see how it is woven in to Literature and how it makes reading about it impactful. We did partner notes with classmates we don't sit by in order to switch up perspectives when looking at the topic. I liked this because I have only been thinking about things with my table which can get repetitive. My group was able to learn a lot of information about tragedy that we did not realize before class. Also at the beginning or the week we looked at a poem called "The Juggler" and read an essay on it that scored highly on an AP test. We learned how good essays have three parts that you can identify while reading. Writers illustrate with literary devices, authorizes with quotes and examples, and extend, meaning that they take their own stance or interpret an dig deeper with their own words. Learning this really help me write better especially when we did our first tragedy blog. I was able to break up my own writing using this format to get my ideas across in a neat manner. Lastly on Friday, we discussed the Dakota pipeline and tried to take our own stance on whether we thought it was a good idea to be built. I liked doing this because it sparked a good discussion in our class but on the other hand in drove me crazy. Many people in our class were throwing out their opinions without even supporting it with facts. Some people were trying to bring new perspectives to the conversation and other people would instantly shoot the down just because they did not agree. I think we could all learn a lot from this. When discussing something you have to look at the big idea from all sides and educate yourself on the topic ahead of time before you choose to be so opinionated. Especially with this upcoming election. Many people need to be smart about it and vote for a candidate that they feel will be able to run the country well. You can not base your vote on a party without researching what the individual candidate stands for. Also you cannot formulate your opinion only from social media which is why this election as well as the Dakota pipeline have issue have not looked so great. Half of this week was spent doing our first presentations for the class. Whitney and I were the first group to present and we were actually not nervous at all. We had worked very hard in order to plan out the most important information that we wanted to talk about. Also getting really in depth with the topics helped make us real comfortable when talking about it in front of the class. We decided we wanted the whole presentation to seem very laid back and styled sort of like a Ted Talk. Our goal was to follow the structure of the what is now versus what could be and try to teach our audience why the elements of fiction we chose were of very high importance. I think Whitney and I did a great job presenting. We were able to work well with each other, making our presentation look like an intellectual conversation we were having. We were good at staying on topic and finishing and picking up new thoughts to make our entire talk flow. I do think Whitney and I have some areas to improve as well. Watching other presentations from class and hearing our grade I realized we really lacked in pictures and an overall visual. We were so focused on what we were going to say that we neglected pictures to captivate the audience, which don't get me wrong, the substance of the presentation was a huge part of the assignment. Although when learning about a topic, I do agree that the audience is intrigued by sound and visual. Once you take away one of those the mind of the people watching starts to drift. I really liked Isra and Sela's presentation because not only did they have intelligent things to say about their topic but they also had very nice visuals that kept me intrigued. For the first week of the new marking period we wrapped up reading our short stories and started to create our presentation. We decided to outline it first on paper so it will be easier to put it all in a Prezi. We focused on the most important information of our topics. For Point of View we talked about how using a specific type can help the reader understand the piece in a different way. I thought it was cool how a limited point of view can help you relate to the main character and put yourself in their shoes. I also like how the objective point of view lets you be creative and infer the feelings of every single character in the story. It also allows for an unbiased piece because the author cannot say how the people are feeling, only what is going on. We have yet to outline our other element of literature, Structure, but looking at it now I think Whitney and I are off to a good start. We have been having good discussions about out presentation and are trying hard to figure out the "so what?" question. Being in groups for projects like this one helps the members bounce ideas off each other and figure out what the most important information is. We are determined to make an influential presentation that captivates our viewers and teaches them a thing or two about why these elements of Literature are extremely influential to the main idea of a story. Whitney and I also discussed the theme of our presentation in regards to format and colors in order to set an overall mood. We spent some time just figuring out the color scheme because we know how influential that can be to help showcase the central idea. If you were presenting something that was very sad and gloomy, you would not want to make your presentation very colorful and bright since there isn't a correlation and you would risk confusing the emotions of the people viewing. The same goes for every presentation. The end of the first marking period was this Friday meaning that we had our first free response essay on the novel we read instead of the poem of the week essay. I found it easy to write because there was a question that highlighted the whole basis that the book was on. Also my book was SO GOOD. The question I wrote about was how scenes of violence in works of Literature contribute to the overall theme. "A Clockwork Orange" is all about violence so writing about it was easy. I wanted to expand and talk about all the topics because of how much I liked it. There were so many themes intertwined it was hard to pick just a small portion to write about. I'm really glad I've been keeping up with my reading at that the pieces we have read are actually of interest to me. I love to read but sometimes I get lazy or distracted by other things. Being able to read a good amount of Literature in class helps me make time for it outside of class. Also due this week was our 750 words of creative writing. This was even easier to do because it was just revision. I like this too because it can be fun to look back at your writing. Sometimes I'll journal when I'm extremely tired before bed and then I'll read it weeks later and surprise myself with how well I wrote a particular piece. I think the creative writing we do in class is the same way. I was very interested with what I wrote and was excited to clean it up and make it into something I was proud of. Finally, we were still continuing with the short story essays. Whitney and I were able to finish up reading about Point of View and Plot Structure and start to read some of the stories. We read "The Story of an Hour" and both really liked it. It had a surprise ending and some sad irony to it that made it an enjoyable read. With delays and days off it was hard to get a lot of learning done and have multiple discussions with the class. However, we were able to talk about this weeks' poem, "Bright Star", and discuss the different perspectives that one poem could have. "Bright Star" involves a speaker discussing the love of his or her life as if they were a bright star, forever unchangeable. We talked about putting ourselves in the poem in order to relate to it and find a deeper meaning when we compare it to our own lives. I personally thought this was a good way to help look at the poem. You could look at this through the eyes of the speaker, the speaker's love, or even the star. I have had different situations where I have experienced all three perspectives, although at this moment in time I was able to relate most directly to the speaker's love. Looking at it in this perspective helped me put the poem in a situation similar to my own. We also looked at how the poet used an apostrophe in order to bring the different perspectives to life. This term meaning to personify an object, in this case it is the star. I think this is very important when trying to evaluate a poem so you can figure out the true feelings of the speaker and to help discover a deeper meaning to a poem. This week we also started to dive into our essays. I am working with Whitney on this project and the two elements of literature we chose are Plot/Structure and Point of View. We thought we would be able to put a lot of thought into both of these elements and the stories we chose that coincide with them in order to create a well written essay and a good presentation. I think this project will come fairly easy for us because of our previous knowledge on the topics and the information we have most recently learned by taking AP Literature. This past week in class was a very good one. I felt like we did a lot and I learned a lot as well. We discussed story versus literature and how literature has more substance. This lead my table into talking about why we like reading more than watching movies because there is more substance there as well. Watching the movie is just like reading a little story and getting nothing out of it. When you read a great work of literature you become immersed in what is going on and every detail in the book is relevant to the plot and meaning. This week we pieced a part the poem "I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain". We concentrated on the poetic element, imagery, and focused on the different perspectives of the speaker, reader, and author. At the beginning of the week I was very firm in opinions of the meaning of the poem, or what type of imagery was being used. I learned that opinions are important but sometimes they can cloud your mind. When looking at poetry or any other form of art it is best to keep an open mind about things and evaluate other perspectives. For example, I at first did not think that visual imagery was missing from the poem because it painted an image in my own mind. Later I learned that if I had read the poem from the speaker's perspective I would have realized that they do not describe visually what is going on. The absence of visuals really help the feeling you get when reading the poem which I have learned to enjoy and appreciate. Besides all of that learning, there are some separate moments about this week that really stuck with me and will continue to stick with me the rest of my life. These have to do with all the different types of art we talked about and will continue to look at this next week. We are starting to take literature and compare it to paintings. I think this is very interesting when you look at it from the perspectives of the author or painter. Each has a motive to why they choose to create something and put meaning into their art. In class we watched a Ted Talk about art and how it is interpreted through other people looking at it. I learned that we are all selective and will not always find meaning or love every piece of art or even book we come across. In the Ted Talk the women showed a few pieces of art that stopped her and made her think about it for a while. I thought this was really cool how she did this and I wanted to do it for my own. I've been wanted to go to art galleries for a very long time but have not gotten around to it. Being in this class got me really excited and so me and a few of my good friends took a trip down to Grand Rapids for Art Prize to become immersed in the beauty of the city and the art covering every street. We went today (Sunday) and spent hours looking at really cool paintings and sculptures. Ironically we saw a sculpture of "The Girl with the Pearl Earring" like the one we talked about in class although they made it entirely out of wood and you can only see her face when the light is on at the top! SO COOL! ART IS SO AWESOME WHAT THE HECK! Sorry this blog is extremely long and a little all over the place but I can't really think straight because of how in awe I have been all day. I will probably write more about how cool art is in a creative writing but to just recap, I am glad that this week gave me new perspectives when evaluating art and poetry in order to fully appreciate it!! |
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March 2017
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