AP English Croquet Party!

Be there, or be square!

—Your Super Cool English Teacher, Dr. B.

AP English: Maurice Sendak (Part 2)

In yesterday's class, we worked on the first two parts of our creative writing project: steps 2 and 3 of our children's book assignment, here.  You selected your conflict (step 2) and organized your plot (step 3). Many of you also posted step 4, which was to identify your main characters.

For today, we will begin class by finishing Stephen Colbert's 2012 interview with literary giant Maurice Sendak (here) and I will show you my own copy of I Am a Pole (and So Can You!).

When we are finished, please get with your partners and jump into steps 4 and 5. Step 5 is now the most important: Write a rough draft. Make sure to confine yourself to twenty pages (see the back of your assignment sheet) and let me know if you have any questions.  When you are done, please post your answers to steps 4 and 5 in the comments section below.

AP English: Writing Your Own Children's Book

Part 1 of my favorite 2012 interview with Maurice Sendak (author of Where the Wild Things Are) with Stephen Colbert.

My lovely AP students, I was so moved yesterday when we went down to the library, pulled out some children's book and began to read. It felt like that day in elementary school and when your teacher says, "We're going to the library!" and every kid jumps up from their desk and says, "Yay!" As I looked around the library yesterday, you were all laughing and excited about the stories you were reading, and something suddenly became clear: some of our favorite books are not long, three-volume Victorian novels, but those written for children.

Today, we will be finishing step two of our Children's Book Project (assignment sheet here), making an outline of the story. I encourage you all to also finish step three, characters, so you are ready to jump into the rough draft tomorrow.

For today, we will warm-up by watching this 7-minute interview (Part 1) of Stephen Colbert's interview with children's book author Maurice Sendak, author of Where the Wild Things Are, which was first published in 1963, and very much like Lewis Carroll's Alice stories, still resonates with us today.

When we are done, get with your partner and complete step 2 (and 3 if you can) from your assignment sheet. Post your answers in the comments section below to turn in your assignment.


Standard/Rubric for this Assignment (here)
W3, "I can write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences."

AP English: Adaptations of the Croquet Match in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Writing Prompt:

As we close in on the end of our discussion of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, it is time for us to look at my (Dr. Brigman's) favorite scene: the croquet match with the Queen of Hearts that goes incredibly wrong. 

As time changes, so do the characters in the stories we tell, and I find the changes to Alice's foreboding, hot-headed queen some of the most interesting! I have often thought Carroll (and his illustrator, John Tenniel), based her off of the most famous queen of their Day: Queen Victoria.

Do you see the similarity between the image (above) and the one Tenniel illustrated (below)?

Clip from the 1951 Disney animated feature, Alice in Wonderland.

2010 Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland featuring Helena Bonham Carter (Tim Burton's wife!) as the Queen of Hearts.

Questions for Discussion:

1) In your opinion, which Queen of Hearts is the most like the one that appears in Chapter 8, "The Queen's Croquet Ground" (60-67)? Please use specific textual evidence.

2) Vice versa, which Queen of Hearts is the least like the one that appears in Chapter 8?

3) Pick one of the two Queen of Hearts we saw today and discuss appropriation. Remember: appropriation means, "to take something and make it your own." What was the creator (either Tim Burton or Walt Disney) taking? What were they making their own? What do you think the creator was trying to accomplish with this version? 

4) Lastly, why a Queen of Hearts?

AP English: Cheshire Cat

Hands down, the Cheshire Cat remains one of the most iconic images from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. He speaks in riddles, floats through the air, and grins without stopping. What makes him so interesting is often hard to describe, and there are many ways to read this magical, mysterious, and curious character.

For today, watch the following clips and answer the discussion questions in the comments section below. Pay close attention to how the Cheshire Cat is characterized and how he is like/unlike the one represented in our books.

1951 scene from Disney's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

The Cheshire Cat in Tim Burton's 2010 adaptation of Alice in Wonderland.

1999 Cheshire Cat scene from the made-for-TV movie Alice in Wonderland

Questions for Discussion:
1) In your opinion, which cat (from the above adaptations) is most like the one that appears in Chapter VI of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland? Please use specific textual evidence to support your ideas.

2) Which cat is the least like Carroll's Cheshire cat? Why?

3) Pick your favorite Cheshire Cat quote. Explain the nonsense and the logic behind it.

4) Lastly, why a Cheshire cat?

AP English: The Final Countdown!

For today's class, we are going to do something a little bit different. Rather than have you do the writing, Dr. B. is going to show you how she would write an AP exam essay.  Your job for today is to watch the process that unfolds as she
1) reads through a prompt,
2) identifies the questions the AP exam writers want to be answered,
3) breaks down the passage, and
4) answers the question.

In the comments section below, comment on anything you notice or find important in Dr. Brigman's technique: how does she break down the question? How does she jump into the writing task? What can you do during Wednesday's exam that will involve the same strategies?

You might also consider Amanda Vickery's advice, "a mind at work." What does Dr. B. do that shows you (and the AP readers) her mind is "at work" while answering the question?

AP English: Some Universal Truths about Comedy

Playwright and author Oscar Wilde (1854—1900), who was famous for his use of comedy to make fun of social situations.

Writing Warmup: 
On page 6 of your Drama Packets, you will find some Universal Truths about Comedy.  Comedy...

1. Is always at someone's expense.
2. Binds and excludes people.
3. Lessons social tensions.
4. Has the potential to have real tragedy embedded within it.
5. Gives power to those who make us laugh.

Using one or two of the universal truths above, describe a key moment in The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (pictured above).  How does that moment prove the universal rule about comedy?

AP English: The Reader's Theater

Beginning Activities

A Doll House and The Importance of Being Earnest

Activity One:  Reader’s Theater

1.  Before students begin reading either play, randomly assign students to read and perform the following scenes.

2.  Allow five minutes for a read through and a brief discussion among the group on how to read/perform the parts.

3.  As students watch the performances, have them record initial impressions and make predictions.

4.  As they read the plays, students should test their initial responses against their later ones.

Suggestions for Student Notes:

1.  What conclusions can we draw about the characters? Do they remind you of

                  people you know or of characters in other works?

            2.   What conflicts seem to emerge in act one?  Act three?  

            3.  What leads you to your conclusions?

            4.  If the same passages are performed, are there differences in characterization?

            5.  What commonalities do you see between the two plays?  Differences?

            6.  What questions do you have after watching the plays?

Suggested Scenes from A Doll House (Dover Thrift Editions)

Act 1: 

            Pages 1 – 2.  Beginning scene through Nora’s speech that begins with          “Whatever you say Torvald.”  (Nora, Torvald, Delivery Boy (“Porter”))

            Pages 6 – 7.  Entrance of Mrs. Linde through her speech that begins with “Your     husband?  How marvelous!” (Nora and Mrs. Linde)

            Pages 14 – 15. Krogstad’s first lines “It’s me, Mrs. Helmer” through Nora’s          speech that begins with “Oh come on Dr. Rank – you really do want to live     yourself.”  (Krogstad, Mrs. Linde, Nora, Dr. Rank)

           

Suggested Scenes from The Importance of Being Earnest.  1899 Google Boocs Ed.

Act I:

            Pages 1 – 5. Opening Scene through Algernon’s speech that begins with      “Lane’s views on marriage seem somewhat lax. (Lane, Algernon)

           

            Pages 6 – 8.  Jack’s line “I am in love with Gwendolen through Jack’s speech         that begins with “Cecily!  What on earth do you mean?”

            Pages 19 - 21.  Lady Bracknell’s line “Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope…”   through Lane’s exit after Algernon discovers there are no cucumber         sandwiches.(Lane, Algernon, Gwendolen, Lady Bracknell, and Jack.)

Act II: 

            Pages 55 – 57.  Beginning of scene with Miss Prism through Cecily’s speech that begins with “I wish Uncle Jack would allow that unfortunate young man, his            brother, to come down here sometimes.”

            Pages 59—?.  Begin with Miss Prism and Dr. Chausible’s return from their walk:             

            Miss Prism:  “You are too much alone, dear Dr. Chausible…” and end with Jack’s

            entrance.

AP English: Discovering the Sonnet

The Sonnet: a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter (five feet of stressed and unstressed syllables).  

As we get ready for a visit from the lovely poets at Port Veritas next week, we've started to read poetry--lovely, concise, perfect poetry.  From the Greek verb poiein, meaning "to make," poetry is one of our oldest genres of literature, positioning the writer as a "maker" of rhythms, images, and verse.  In fact, many scholars surmise that poetry historically grew out of the rhythmic chanting and singing of oral traditions.  It is possible that poetry is one of our oldest modes of communication, and it is rooted in the human drive to communicate clearly, concisely, and with great feeling or meaning.

Poetry's link to oral traditions.

Yet what's really interesting about poetry is the way in which it allows the writer to use language in its most condensed form.  While it might take me 500-words to explain an idea, it might take a poet fifty or a hundred words to communicate the same thing.  Because of this compression, I have often thought that reading poetry required more work, but with greater benefit.  Poems don't always make their meaning obvious to readers, and they require a level of collaboration with the text that you don't usually see when reading a novel by Charles Dickens.

"Collaboration with the text?"

Basically, becoming involved in the creation of a poem's meaning.  By nature, reading is a passive act, but poetry doesn't allow its readers to be passive.  Readers go back, ask questions about a poem's meaning, look for repeating images, sounds, ideas, and "unpack" a text as they work their way through its short lines and intentional movements.

Here is an example of a poem our class worked with on last year, "Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent's Narrow Room" by William Wordsworth:

Wednesday's poetry explication: "Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent's Narrow Room" by William Wordsworth.

I put the poem on the board as a way to show how readers shouldn't just read a poem--they have to have a relationship with it.  This relationship is especially important because Wordsworth's poem is a sonnet, a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter with alternating end rhymes for each line of the work.

This particular example by Wordsworth is a Petrarchan Sonnet that is divided into two parts: an octave, or 8 lines, at the beginning, and a sestet, or six lines, at the end.  Usually, the octave will suggest a situation or an idea and the sestet will comment on that idea, offering a solution.  In the image above, our class identified the rhyme scheme (abba, abba, cddccd), the main idea at the beginning: nuns, hermits, students, maids, and bees are happy in their monotonous, "restricted" lives, and the solution or resolution at the end: the "speaker" believes that the "prison unto which we doom / Ourselves, no prison is" (lines 8-9).  This argument is a lovely way of contradicting the idea that nunneries/monasteries, cells, and citadels, just like the Sonnet form (line 11), are not places of restriction but opportunities to express meaning in a structured way.

Ultimately, Wordsworth is using the Petrarchan sonnet form to explain why he (or any poet) uses the sonnet form: its classical restrictions still offer modern poets (nineteenth century) the ability to express themselves.

Could our class have gotten to Wordsworth's argument without first annotating his poem?  Maybe, but not likely.  Like most poems, sonnets beg to be poured over and engaged.  It's one of the things I love about poetry and the reason for tonight's homework!

Homework 
Rough Draft: DUE Friday, March 31, 2017
Revised Draft: DUE Monday, April 3, 2017
Write a 14-line sonnet about a topic of your choice following the Shakespearean model: three quatrains (4-lines each) and a rhymed coupled (two lines at the end of the poem).  The turn in the Shakespearean sonnet occurs at the end of the third quatrain with the rhymed couplet commenting on (or resolving) the topic/issue/idea your sonnet is about.

Your sonnet can be on any topic you like, but it must be 14-lines and use the following rhyme scheme:

line 1 - a 
line 2 - b
line 3 - a
line 4 - b
line 5 - c
line 6 - d
line 7 - c
line 8 - d
line 9 - e
line 10 - f
line 11 - e
line 12 - f
line 13 - g
line 14 - g