Mr. Hughes AP English

End of Year Survey 2008-2009

2009-05-28T07:09:00.002-04:00

1. Complete end of year survey here. Please apend 20 - 30 minutes on this as it will be extremely helpful for next year's class.

2. Send your most recent email address to hughesrory@gmail.com

3. Graduating Seniors: Keep in touch!

AP Project Links

2009-05-11T07:00:00.005-04:00

Assignment Sheet

AP Book List

Internet Movie Database

Index of Film Terminology

How to Write About Film

MLA Formatting Help

Sample MLA Heading

AP Review

2009-05-06T08:40:00.000-04:00

AP Lit Final Review

MULTIPLE CHOICE

Count the passages for time management.
Rank passages from easiest to hardest.
Do the math.
Okay to skip a passage if you do really well on the rest.
POE (Process of Elimination)
Eliminate easiest questions, then come back to hardest.
No blind guesses.
1/2 bad = all bad.
Preview questions.
Read for main idea.
(Poetry) Read twice before answering qs.
Don’t worry about deeper meanings the first time through.
Ignore line breaks—read as if it’s sentences.
When in doubt, pick answer that agrees with main idea.
Pick answers that agree with each other.

· If confused, answers can help you understand.

· For general qs, look for answer that describes entire passage.

· Pay close attention to wording of qs

· Check time at last passage.

· If 7 min or less, use 7 min passage technique (don’t read passage—go from qs requiring no knowledge to those requiring complete knowledge)

Read before and after line references
Don’t worry about scansion (IP)
On EXCEPT, NOT, and LEAST qs, eliminate negative word and eliminate all answers that fit remaining qs.

WRITING

40 min per essay
easiest 1^st, hardest last
AP – answer the prompt

· Idea machine—hidden q is first question

Don’t worry about being wrong; have confidence in your interpretation
Identify key words in essay prompt
Do get attention and answer prompt in intro
Body par: clear topic, provide and explain evidence
Conclusion: have one, add something!
Do not ignore or restate prompt
Do not have more quotes/plot summary than analysis
Do not have hurried concl that restates intro
Shakespeare is recommended
Do not write about non-fiction

TEWWG Non-fiction piece

2009-02-18T05:44:00.005-05:00

Read the following article and answer the following questions as a comment. Your answers should be detailed and in complete sentences. You may want www.dictionary.com open as you read.

What is Voodoo?
What is Smith's thesis?
Define syncretization.
Why is Voodoo an appropriate religion for Hurston to draw from in Their Eyes?
What are the two classes of Voodoo loa and how are they different?
How does Hurston present Voodoo as a viable religion?
Who is Erzulie Freda and in what ways does Janie resemble her, physically and otherwise?
According to Smith, what is the significance of the pear tree?
To what Voodoo figure is teacake compared and what is the significance?
Why, according to Smith, does Teacake slap Janie?
What, according to Metreaux, is the Voodoo concept of God and how/why does it fit with Hurston's message?
According to Smith, how has Janie changed upon her return to Eatonville?
Paraphrase Janie's lesson about the "importance of self-determination."
According to Smith, what is the "alternate path to selfhood" embodied by Janie?

Their Eyes Were Watching God - Socratic Seminar Prep

2009-02-11T07:28:00.003-05:00

The Socratic Seminar for Their Eyes has been moved back to tomorrow in order to give you more time to prepare. Today, you will be creating a list of 20 guiding questions for tomorrow's discussion, which feed into one overarching question. You are to post this guide as a comment on the post you are reading now. In order to do that, click on the word "comment" at the bottom of this post.

Coming up with provocative questions is not easy, but it is a lot easier with an overarching question, which should:

1) Address a central theme of the book.
2) Place that theme within the context of the world in general, either now, at the time of the book's publishing, or both.

From there you craft questions (10 of which must refer to specific passages in the book) and "feed" into the larger question. For example:

OVERARCHING QUESTION

What is the message of Their Eyes Were Watching God regarding the role of women and how does Hurston communicate that message?

FOLLOWUP QUESTIONS

1. Consider the scene by the pear tree on p. 10 and 11. What might Janie's experience be symbolizing in terms of the empowerment of women and sexuality.

2....

You may work in pairs.

AP Review

2009-01-14T06:57:00.001-05:00

For next week's final, you'll need to master the vocabulary words from the sheet I handed out earlier this week. From that list you will create a set of flashcards at Quizlet. Today, go to Quizlet and:

1. Create an account
2. Create your own set from the list--you'll need to use a print or online dictionary.
3. Play the games and test yourself. You should be at 100% by finals time.

Death of a Salesman Reading Guide

2008-12-18T20:26:00.002-05:00

Thoroughly answer ALL of the questions from the reading guide, which you can find here. Thorough means at least one paragraph. Bring your completed guide to class on 1/5 and be ready for a test.

Metamorphosis Intro

2008-12-18T19:10:00.002-05:00

In The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka introduces the existential character, Gregor Samsa, who turns into a gigantic bug. Eventually this causes another metamorhophosis to occur to his younger sister Grete. While Gregor undergoes a physical change, Grete transforms from child to adult. Gregor and Grete's metamorphoses contribute to Kafka's overall meaning, which is: in the end everyone is alone and will die that way.

Poetry Essay Revisions

2008-12-17T07:17:00.000-05:00

For today, you are to complete revisions from yesterday and then follow the same steps for your poetry prompt.

Metamorphosis Writing Prompt - Peer Revisions

2008-12-16T07:14:00.002-05:00

Your assignment today is to:

1. Type your Metamorphosis essay as a blog post.

2. Read, make extensive comments on, and score yours and 3 of your colleagues' essays using the AP General Rubric and the Writing Commandments.

Here are the groups:

1
Rebecca B.
Brian C.
Jahleia C.
Kelley

2
Jaclyn
Gil
Nicole F.
Jazz

3
Michelle
Nikki
Ranika
Brittaney M

4
Charles
Shantanique
Elle

5
Alexis
Elaine
Alex
Brittany O.

6
Jacqui P.
Biance P.
Charleen S.
James T.

7
Virginia
Brittanie W.
Kristal W.
Lorena W.

The Metamorphosis - Ch 3 questions

2008-12-10T07:28:00.003-05:00

1) Post detailed, thoughtful answers to 10 of the following questions to your blog. When completed, print your answers, which will be your ticket for tomorrow's discussion.

Why was his family so selfish that they couldn’t help him when he needed them the most?
When Gregor was working his parent’s dept off he was thinking about them so why did they exclude him?
Do you think that they move the furniture in the room to kill him faster?
Does Gregor's family blame him for their present situation?
Why does Gregor feel depression at his family's reaction to him?
Does Gregor's family feel sadness at his death? Relief?
Why does Gregor want to kidnap his sister when he hears her playing the violin?4.Why does Gregor's family stop believing that the bug Gregor is really Gregor?
How does Gregor's family get over losing Gregor so quickly?
What was the significance of Gregor dying?2. Why did the whole family just get up and leave? Does Gregor's father feel any remorse at all?
Why did Grete call Gregor a monster?
Why is the family more quiet at meal times?
Why does Gregor stop eating?
How does this chapter satirize American families today?
Why does Grete all of the sudden start playing her violin now?
If Gregor is a bug, why do his feelings tend to be more humane than when he was a human?
Why does the family abandon Gregor?
Why does Gregor still have love and affection for his family even after they start to forget about him?
How long has Gregor been in the room before he dies?
What is the significance of the violin? Of all the choices of instruments, why does Kafka choose the violin for Grete to play?
Why does Grete NOW choose to get a job? Both her parents are getting them so what is the point?
Is there significance why the Maid finds Gregor dead and not one of his family members? After Gregor turns into a bug, he mentions that his family sometimes go on walks together.
The third paragraph from the end of the chapter says that once the 3 family members left, they all went on a walk together and that they "absolutely needed one". Is there a tie between the first and last thought of the family walking?
Why did Kafka make Gregor die?

2) Go to Quizlet and search "AP Poetry Terms." Then take the test until you get 100%. Make sure the test is 56 questions.

The Metamorphosis Reading Guide

2008-11-24T16:07:00.003-05:00

Dear AP Student-

Please download and print The Metamorphosis study guide here and complete over Thanksgiving break as you read.

I took another look and you will be completing ALL activities.

Poetry Questions

2008-11-21T20:04:00.004-05:00

Choose 10 to answer for each of the poems in the packet and be prepared to discuss Monday.

Find the questions here.

"Why The Future Doesn't Need Us" By Bill Joy

2008-10-30T20:34:00.000-04:00

Read link here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html

What is Joy's thesis? How/can humans avoid becoming obsolete and/or unnecessary? How are institutions contributing to this "inevitability?" How would Huxley respond to Joy's article? What rhetorical strategies does Joy employ in his piece? Do you think Joy is a fear monger? Comment on Joy's use of literary devices. How do they contribute to the message/meaning of the piece as a whole? How does this article connect to BNW?

Welcome to AP English 2008-2009

2008-09-21T19:40:00.003-04:00

Task #1:

1. Create a Google Account.

2. Comment on this post with your name and three college choices.

Schedule for next two weeks

2008-01-06T11:27:00.000-05:00

AP Lit & Comp Students-

You have 6 days in school to accomplish the following:

Finish Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Post an AP Style question appropriate to the book.
Post an answer the the question.
Score yourself using the 9-point AP Scale.
Repeat steps 1-4 for a book of literary merit. You can find these at apcentral.collegeboard.com or you can email me for approval.

The final will be a mini-version of the actual AP Test. I'm trying to get you guys in the lab every day so you can do college app stuff if you finish early.

HAPPY 2008

Blog Response #11: 2007 Writing Prompt (Form B)

2007-12-10T05:55:00.000-05:00

Survey

2007-12-03T01:32:00.000-05:00

Take Ms. P's survey here.

Post responses as comments.

Blog Response #10: "Dead Poets Society"

2007-11-30T11:30:00.000-05:00

In lieu of a writing prompt you'll be writing a response to "Dead Poets Society," which is due at 6 pm Sunday. In the response you are to:

Rate the film on a scale of 1 to 10.
Justify your rating.
Explain its relevance to studying poetry.
Argue for/against showing this film in future AP classes.

for Monday 11/26

2007-11-24T10:58:00.000-05:00

1. choose a a poem or song.

2. do a close reading like i did with "sky blue sky."

3. make 18 copies or email me the text and i'll make copies.

4. post the lyrics to your blog.

Blog Response # 9: Poetry Prompt 1

2007-11-16T06:10:00.000-05:00

See link for prompt.
Choose one prompt.
You may write or type.
Due at end of class.

Blog Response #8

2007-11-11T15:15:00.000-05:00

By Thursday at 7 am, listen to this album and post a 500-word response.

Blog Response #7: "The Hunger Artist" by Franz Kafka

2007-11-04T18:47:00.000-05:00

Read "The Hunger Artist" by Franz Kafka here.

By Thursday, 11/8 at 7 am, you must:
1. Complete a Close Reading.
2. Post 5 provocative questions for Thursday's discussion.
3. Rewrite and post the story in no less that 500 words without losing the central themes and message.

Blog Response #6: Kafka

2007-10-28T17:51:00.000-04:00

You will be watching a film for next Wednesday's discussion.

See

http://imdb.com/title/tt0102181/

Guiding Question:
After watching Kafka, how has your reading/perspective of The Metamorphosis changed? What do you think is the "moral of the story"? Assuming Kafka didn't just want to write about a guy who turns into a bug, what is he saying about humanity? Family? Institutions?

Blog Response # 4: "Harrison Bergeron"

2007-10-10T20:43:00.000-04:00

Read "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut HERE.

Choose several of the following questions to guide your blog response
(due at 7 am Wed. 10/17)

What tendencies in present-day American society is Vonnegut satirizing? Does the story argue for anything? How would you sum up the theme? Is Vonnegut’s characterization of Diana Moon Glampers realistic? If not, why doesn’t it need to be? From what point of view is the story told? Why is it more effective than if Harrison Bergeron had told his own story in first person? Two sympathetic critics of Vonnegut’s work, Karen and Charles Wood, have said of his stories: “Vonnegut proves repeatedly…that men and women remaining fundamentally the same, no matter what technology surrounds them.” Try applying this comment to Harrison Bergeron.”

"The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas" text

2007-10-03T18:42:00.000-04:00

Here's what I need for this post (Due Monday 10/7 by 6 am):

1. 1 paragraph in which you react to the piece in general
2. 1 paragraph in which you react to the piece in terms of its connection to 1984.
3. 1 paragraph that discusses literary devices and their contribution to the style and theme of
the work.
4. 5 questions that might work well as part of a Socratic discussion on the piece.

Get to it...

"The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas"
By Ursula K. LeGuin

With a clamour of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. The rigging of the boats in harbour sparkled with flags. In the streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings, processions moved. Some were decorous: old people in long stiff robes of mauve and grey, grave master workmen, quiet, merry women carrying their babies and chatting as they walked. In other streets the music beat faster, a shimmering of gong and tambourine, and the people went dancing, the procession was a dance. Children dodged in and out, their high calls rising like the swallows' crossing flights over the music and the singing. All the processions wound towards the north side of the city, where on the great water-meadow called the Green Fields boys and girls, naked in the bright air, with mud-stained feet and ankles and long, lithe arms, exercised their restive horses before the race. The horses wore no gear at all but a halter without bit. Their manes were braided with streamers of silver, gold, and green. They flared their nostrils and pranced and boasted to one another; they were vastly excited, the horse being the only animal who has adopted our ceremonies as his own. Far off to the north and west the mountains stood up half encircling Omelas on her bay. The air of morning was so clear that the snow still crowning the Eighteen Peaks burned with white-gold fire across the miles of sunlit air, under the dark blue of the sky. There was just enough wind to make the banners that marked the racecourse snap and flutter now and then. In the silence of the broad green meadows one could hear the music winding through the city streets, farther and nearer and ever approaching, a cheerful faint sweetness of the air that from time to time trembled and gathered together and broke out into the great joyous clanging of the bells. Joyous! How is one to tell about joy? How describe the citizens of Omelas? They were not simple folk, you see, though they were happy. But we do not say the words of cheer much any more. All smiles have become archaic. Given a description such as this one tends to make certain assumptions. Given a description such as this one tends to look next for the King, mounted on a splendid stallion and surrounded by his noble knights, or perhaps in a golden litter borne by great-muscled slaves. But there was no king. They did not use swords, or keep slaves. They were not barbarians. I do not know the rules and laws of their society, but I suspect that they were singularly few. As they did without monarchy and slavery, so they also got on without the stock exchange, the advertisement, the secret police, and the bomb. Yet I repeat that these were not simple folk, not dulcet shepherds, noble savages, bland utopians. They were not less complex than us. The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy. How can I tell you about the people of Omelas? They were not naive and happy children - though their children were, in fact, happy. They were mature, intelligent, passionate adults whose lives were not wretched. O miracle! But I wish I could describe it better. I wish I could convince you. Omelas sounds in my words like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time. Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the occasion, for certainly I cannot suit you all. For instance, how about technology? I think that there would be no cars or helicopters in and above the streets; this follows from the fact that the people of Omelas are happy people. Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive. In the middle category, however - that of the unnecessary but indestructive, that of comfort, luxury, exuberance, etc. - they could perfectly well have central heating, subway trains, washing machines, and all kinds of marvellous devices not yet invented here, floating light-sources, fuelless power, a cure for the common cold. Or they could have none of that: it doesn't matter. As you like it. I incline to think that people from towns up and down the coast have been coming in to Omelas during the last days before the Festival on very fast little trains and double-decked trams, and that the train station of Omelas is actually the handsomest building in town, though plainer than the magnificent Farmers' Market. But even granted trains, I fear that Omelas so far strikes some of you as goody-goody. Smiles, bells, parades, horses, bleh. If so, please add an orgy. If an orgy would help, don't hesitate. Let us not, however, have temples from which issue beautiful nude priests and priestesses already half in ecstasy and ready to copulate with any man or woman, lover or stranger, who desires union with the deep godhead of the blood, although that was my first idea. But really it would be better not to have any temples in Omelas - at least, not manned temples. Religion yes, clergy no. Surely the beautiful nudes can just wander about, offering themselves like divine soufflés to the hunger of the needy and the rapture of the flesh. Let them join the processions. Let tambourines be struck above the copulations, and the glory of desire be proclaimed upon the gongs, and (a not unimportant point) let the offspring of these delightful rituals be beloved and looked after by all. One thing I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt. But what else should there be? I thought at first there were no drugs, but that is puritanical. For those who like it, the faint insistent sweetness of drooz may perfume the ways of the city, drooz which first brings a great lightness and brilliance to the mind and limbs, and then after some hours a dreamy languor, and wonderful visions at last of the very arcana and inmost secrets of the Universe, as well as exciting the pleasure of sex beyond all belief; and it is not habit-forming. For more modest tastes I think there ought to be beer. What else, what else belongs in the joyous city? The sense of victory, surely, the celebration of courage. But as we did without clergy, let us do without soldiers. The joy built upon successful slaughter is not the right kind of joy; it will not do; it is fearful and it is trivial. A boundless and generous contentment, a magnanimous triumph felt not against some outer enemy but in communion with the finest and fairest in the souls of all men everywhere and the splendour of the world's summer: this is what swells the hearts of the people of Omelas, and the victory they celebrate is that of life. I really don't think many of them need to take drooz. Most of the processions have reached the Green Fields by now. A marvellous smell of cooking goes forth from the red and blue tents of the provisioners. The faces of small children are amiably sticky; in the benign grey beard of a man a couple of crumbs of rich pastry are entangled. The youths and girls have mounted their horses and are beginning to group around the starting line of the course. An old woman, small, fat, and laughing, is passing out flowers from a basket, and tall young men wear her flowers in their shining hair. A child of nine or ten sits at the edge of the crowd, alone, playing on a wooden flute. People pause to listen, and they smile, but they do not speak to him, for he never ceases playing and never sees them, his dark eyes wholly rapt in the sweet, thin magic of the tune. He finishes, and slowly lowers his bands holding the wooden flute. As if that little private silence were the signal, all at once a trumpet sounds from the pavilion near the starting line: imperious, melancholy, piercing. The horses rear on their slender legs, and some of them neigh in answer. Sober-faced, the young riders stroke the horses' necks and soothe them, whispering, "Quiet, quiet, there my beauty, my hope . . . ." They begin to form in rank along the starting line. The crowds along the racecourse are like a field of grass and flowers in the wind. The Festival of Summer has begun. Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing. In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there is a room. It has one locked door, and no window. A little light seeps in dustily between cracks in the boards, second-hand from a cobwebbed window somewhere across the cellar. In one corner of the little room a couple of mops, with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads, stand near a rusty bucket. The floor is dirt, a little damp to the touch, as cellar dirt usually is. The room is about three paces long and two wide: a mere broom closet or disused tool room. In the room a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect. It picks its nose and occasionally fumbles vaguely with its toes or genitals, as it sits hunched in the corner farthest from the bucket and the two mops. It is afraid of the mops. It finds them horrible. It shuts its eyes, but it knows the mops are still standing there; and the door is locked; and nobody will come. The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes, except that sometimes - the child has no understanding of time or interval - sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens, and a person, or several people, are there. One of them may come in and kick the child to make it stand up. The others never come close, but peer in at it with frightened, disgusted eyes. The food bowl and the water jug are hastily filled, the door is locked, the eyes disappear. The people at the door never say anything, but the child, who has not always lived in the tool room, and can remember sunlight and its mother's voice, sometimes speaks. "I will be good," it says. "Please let me out. I will be good!" They never answer. The child used to scream for help at night, and cry a good deal, but now it only makes a kind of whining, "eh-haa, eh-haa," and it speaks less and less often. It is so thin there are no calves to its legs; its belly protrudes; it lives on a half-bowl of corn meal and grease a day. It is naked. Its buttocks and thighs are a mass of festered sores, as it sits in its own excrement continually. They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable misery. This is usually explained to children when they are between eight and twelve, whenever they seem capable of understanding; and most of those who come to see the child are young people, though often enough an adult comes, or comes back, to see the child. No matter how well the matter has been explained to them, these young spectators are always shocked and sickened at the sight. They feel disgust, which they had thought themselves superior to. They feel anger, outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations. They would like to do something for the child. But there is nothing they can do. If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed. The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even be a kind word spoken to the child. Often the young people go home in tears, or in a tearless rage, when they have seen the child and faced this terrible paradox. They may brood over it for weeks or years. But as time goes on they begin to realize that even if the child could be released, it would not get much good of its freedom: a little vague pleasure of warmth and food, no doubt, but little more. It is too degraded and imbecile to know any real joy. It has been afraid too long ever to be free of fear. Its habits are too uncouth for it to respond to humane treatment. Indeed, after so long it would probably be wretched without walls about it to protect it, and darkness for its eyes, and its own excrement to sit in. Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to accept it. Yet it is their tears and anger, the trying of their generosity and the acceptance of their helplessness, which are perhaps the true source of the splendour of their lives. Theirs is no vapid, irresponsible happiness. They know that they, like the child, are not free. They know compassion. It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science. It is because of the child that they are so gentle with children. They know that if the wretched one were not there snivelling in the dark, the other one, the flute-player, could make no joyful music as the young riders line up in their beauty for the race in the sunlight of the first morning of summer. Now do you believe in them? Are they not more credible? But there is one more thing to tell, and this is quite incredible. At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go to see the child does not go home to weep or rage, does not, in fact, go home at all. Sometimes also a man or woman much older falls silent for a day or two, and then leaves home. These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or girl, man or woman. Night falls; the traveller must pass down village streets, between the houses with yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Goal Post

2007-09-30T18:51:00.000-04:00

Sorry, I've been in the wilderness all weekend and far from the internet machine.

Post the following by the start of class tomorrow:

Top 3 College Choices
GPA Goal for the year
Goal for AP English Exam Score
Name of person who is helping you with your college application essays

"Aim high in case you miss." --?

Guiding Questions for "Robot Dreams" by Isaac Asimov

2007-09-27T15:32:00.000-04:00

By 12 noon on Sunday (9/30)
Answer the following questions on your blog. Use complete sentences and and provide evidence from the reading - cite page and paragraph numbers (p. 19, 1st par.) Title your post "Asimov Reading Response."

Read the text here:

http://southredford.schoolspan.com/PROCESS/DigiPort_User/roryhughes/Asimov-Robot-Dreams.pdf

What similarities does this piece have with 1984? Differences? What might George Orwell say to Isaac Asimov if there were to have dinner together? On what issues would they agree? Disagree? Why?

Guiding Questions for Alan Watts excerpt

2007-09-24T15:42:00.001-04:00

By 6 am tomorrow (9/25) morning:

Answer the following questions on your blog. Use complete sentences and and provide evidence from the reading - cite page and paragraph numbers (p. 19, 1st par.) Title your post "Watts Reading Response."

What is Watts' thesis? What is his view of religion? What does Watts see as the problem with the concept of "conquering" nature?How does Watts define the "new experience"? (p. 11)What does Watts see as the purpose of myths?How does Watts think someone finds his/her true identity?Draw a connection between this reading and 1984 and/or the song, "2+2 = 5." Cite specific passages to support your claim.

Tools For Success

2007-09-19T15:15:00.000-04:00

AP Student-

For homework tonight, post--as a comment on this blog--at least 5 tools/bits of knowledge that you deem necesarry for success on the Multiple Choice portion of the AP Exam.

Be VERY specific.

Post 1 - Comment

2007-09-13T15:10:00.001-04:00

Hey APer-

Complete the assignment--comment on this blog. NOW.

-Hughes