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Welcome to Eighth Grade English Literature!
Please e-mail me at fbrowne@adsrm.org
School fax: 702-949-3625
I have changed the due date for the final papers on The Road and All the Pretty Horses: the due date is now June 2nd. The students need more guidance in proper MLA formatting and other things. Rough Drafts will be handed back by May 13th.
April 28 - May 2: ERBs & The Catcher in the Rye will be handed out on Thursday and Friday.
Homework: Read Chapters 1,2, and 3 by May 5th.
May 5 - May 9:
Monday--Discuss The Catcher in the Rye in class.
Homework: Read Chapters 4, 5, and 6.
Tuesday--Discuss The Catcher in the Rye in class.
Homework: Read Chapters 7, 8, and 9.
Wednesday--Discuss The Catcher in the Rye in class.
Homework: Read the Speeches and articles I have handed out to you.
Thursday--Discuss speeches and articles
Homework: Read the Speeches and articles I have handed out to you. I will give you guidelines and goals for Paideia Seminar tomorrow.
Friday--Paideia #1 on articles and speeches
Homework: Read Chapters 10 and 11 in The Catcher in the Rye. Write graduation speech: it should be between 700 and 1500 words.
May 12 - May 30:
All days not doing Paideia Seminars, doing in-class timed writes, taking tests, or discussing books or articles will be spent reading either inside or outside. The Catcher in the Rye should be finished by May 19th at the latest.
Days reading in or outside: May 12th, May 13th, May 14th, May 15th, May 19th, and May 23rd. Possible reading days are May 27th, 28th, 29th, and 30th; on one of those days, we will be having Paideia Seminar #3.
Homework this month will generally consist of reading articles, speeches, or reading The Catcher in the Rye. The top thirteen speeches will be returned on May 16th. Rewrites are due on May 20th, and speeches must be cut to between 650 and 1000 words.
Important Due Dates in May:
Paideia Seminar #1--May 9th
Graduation Speeches Due--May 12th
Paideia Seminar #2--May 20th (Last possible day to turn in any extra credit!!!)
Timed Write on The Catcher in the Rye--May 21st
Test on The Catcher in the Rye--May 22nd
Paideia Seminar #3--May 28th, 29th, or on May 30th (TBD)
Annotations and Short Summaries of articles for Paideia Seminar #3 (Same dates as above)
Final Papers for All the Pretty Horses or for The Road are due on June 2nd. (Rough Drafts handed back by May 13th)
Final Exam on Writing and Grammar--June 2nd
Extra Credit
All extra credit assignments need to be done as a whole. I will not give credit for partial assignments! Students are responsible for carefully reading the directions and speaking directly to me if they have questions. I will accept or award no more than 13 percent (390 points) extra credit. All extra credit is due prior to May 20th. Students need at least 1800 points to pass (receive a D minus) for the semester. Total points will add up to 3000: the final is worth 200 points and that is included in the 3000.
Shakespeare: Five percent added on to your grade
You can select from King Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing,The Taming of the Shrew, and Twelfth Night.. Students will both read the play and watch the movie. For most of these, I have definite suggestions as to which movie the students should rent, but I offer up the warning that some of my preferences are PG-13 for one reason or another. For example, Branagh’s version of Much Ado About Nothing has a naked bum-bum scene at the very beginning. It’s all a question of whether a particular parent finds something like that outrageously offensive or not. Also, I can’t guarantee I remember every single scene from a movie; I can only give parents an idea of what types of scenes are in it.
Students will have to write a précis after reading a synopsis of the particular play they have chosen where they distill the summary of the scene down into one sentence, and they need to correctly identify what kind of sentence they have written. (I will supply the synopsis).
Students will need to do a thorough annotation of an article associated with the play they are doing for extra credit. I expect to see their best work. (I will suppy the article).
Students will have to both watch the movie and read the play. This will require that they purchase the book on their own, and they will need to check with me about possible versions of the movie they could watch. Generally speaking, I prefer stuff in which Kenneth Branagh directs or stars. For Twelfth Night, students could watch She’s the Man (Amanda Bynes), and they could compare and contrast the movie and the play. For The Taming of the Shrew, students could watch Ten Things I Hate About You (Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger). With King Lear, there are many good movies out there, but I am not familiar with all of them. Akira Kurosawa’s Ran is supposed to be excellent, but I haven’t seen it. Also, Masterpiece Theatre does a version of King Lear with Ian Holm in it, but I haven’t seen that either.
Order of Events: Students will write a 500 – 750 word paper comparing and contrasting the play they have read with the movie they have watched. With Shakespeare, I would prefer that they do the précis (first), watch the movie (second), annotate the related article (third), read the play (fourth), discuss the play with me (fifth), watch the movie again (sixth), and then write a comparison and contrast paper (seventh). This is an all or nothing assignment. Students can’t cherry pick what they would and would not like to do. Only by doing all of these steps can the students receive any credit, but I will most likely give all the credit to students who do everything adequately.
Cormac McCarthy: Two possibilities worth two percent each
Students can read the novel the opposite class is reading, talk to me about it, take a test on it, and then write a short literary response of about 350 words. Our conversation about the novel will require at least 45 minutes, and it should involve a larger group of students who are pursuing extra credit in this assignment. Students will need to set up an appointment time with me sometime between April 14th and May 2nd. All extra credit is due by May 20th at the very latest. As with all extra credit, students must do all parts of the assignment.
Students can read and watch No Country for Old Men provided their parents call me so they can understand that the novel and the movie are quite violent. While the violence is not gratuitous and it is central to the story, I am pretty sure the movie carries an MPAA rating of R. Students will then need to schedule a time to speak with me about the book and the movie and differences between them (they are both excellent). Students will then write a 500 – 750 word comparison and contrast paper on the book and the movie.
Poetry: Either the 500 lines or T.S. Eliot’s “The Lovesong of J.Alfred Prufrock”
T.S. Eliot’s poem is 130 lines, but I am willing to offer up three percent extra credit to a student who can recite it from memory all at one shot. Students can try to do this several times, but they would have to have it memorized prior to May 20th.
The other extra credit poetry assignment is—and has been for a long time—posted on the homepage. Students are free to do poems they have already done in class or even poems they have previously memorized for extra credit.
Outside book: Students can either read David Denby’s Great Books or they can read Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct for up to two percent extra credit on each
Students will have to read the book and schedule two times to speak with me about it. I am usually available in the mornings, but students need to schedule an appointment. Students will then have to write a reflective essay on a particular segment or idea in the book. This essay will be between 350 and 500 words.
NPR Assignment: Fresh Air with Terry Gross or This American Life with Ira Glass worth up to one percent per essay (three reaction piece maximum)
On National Public Radio, the radio shows This American Life and Fresh Air are hosted by Ira Glass and Terry Gross respectively. Fresh Air consists of interviews of movie stars, authors, directors, musicians, and so on. This American Life consists of eclectic shows about the vagaries of human existence in America. NPR can be found at 88.9 F.M. and both shows can be accessed on the internet at www.thislife.org and www.npr.org/freshair . I believe This American Life is heard on Friday nights and replayed on Sunday. Fresh Air is on in the afternoon and replayed in the evening. The beauty of the internet is that the listener can listen to these shows whenever he or she wants and can peruse the archives for shows that may be more interesting based on the subject matter or the person being interviewed.
The radio show review is essentially a personal essay, 350-500 words long. It should have a fairly extensive plot rehash and the listener should reflect on the show and reveal if he or she learned any new information and what impact it might have on him or her and the way he or she might look at things in the future. The review should be double-spaced and good grammar, spelling, and mechanics are expected.
Creative Writing Option: Please come to me to pick up handouts and short stories. Your assignment is to write a 2000 to 5000 word short story after reading all the handouts and the short stories. The handouts will function as a guide to you as to what to put in and how to construct your story. Your story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Stories, like all other extra credit, are due on May 20th.
Second Semester Grade Breakdown 2008.doc (not completely reliable)
Extra credit: Students are free to memorize any poetry we have covered in class for extra credit, and they may also approach me about other poems in advance. Students can attempt to memorize up to 500 lines of poetry over the semester in order to possibly earn five percent of their semester grade. Since there are seventeen to eighteen weeks in the semester, I would suggest spreading out the memorization over that time. Students might have great difficulty in being successful in trying to make a desperate attempt to learn the majority of the poems in the last two or three weeks of the semester.
To demonstrate proficiency, students will come in during break, before school, or after school to either recite or write out the memorized poem. Poems can be anywhere from eight lines to one hundred and fifty lines. For poems longer than forty-five lines, students can feel free to break them up over several sessions. To receive any credit, students must achieve at least 80 percent accuracy. While students may select other poems to remember, they must check them with me first. Students may also choose from any of Shakespeare's sonnets, and any soliloquies in Macbeth or any of Shakespeare's other plays.
Poems for memorization:
"Terence, this is stupid stuff" - Housman
"There is no Frigate like a Book" - Dickinson
"The World is too much with Us" - Wordsworth
"Spring" - Hopkins
"The Forge" - Heaney
"The Convergence of the Twain" - Hardy
"I taste a liquor never brewed" - Dickinson
"Metaphors" - Plath
"A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning" - Donne
"Dream Deferred" - Hughes
"To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" - Herrick
"Fire and Ice" - Frost
"Much Madness is divinest Sense" - Dickinson
"Ozymandias" - Shelley
"The Unknown Citizen" - Auden
"Departmental" - Frost
"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" - Frost
"The Flea" - Donne
"The Turtle" - Nash
"God's Grandeur" - Hopkins
"We Real Cool" - Brooks
"Nothing Gold Can Stay" - Frost
"Virtue" - Herbert
"Because I could not stop for Death" - Dickinson
"Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" - Thomas
"Death, be not proud" - Donne
"Sunday Morning" - Stevens
"The Snow Man" - Stevens
"The Tiger" - Blake
"Kubla Khan" - Coleridge
"The Second Coming" - Yeats
"Mad Girl's Love Song" - Plath
Here is a good site for you to use to answer almost any of your grammar questions. Please be aware that this is a website at a Canadian university, so some of the spelling may be a little different.
Course Overview for 8th Grade English Literature.
Please read this to know what you can do to maintain or improve your participation grade.
By examining both your own writing and the writing of others, you'll see that good writing is planned, not accidental. Please look at these documents: 20 Detractors from Mature Academic Voice and Improving Sentence Style.
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