Essay DUE MONDAY!

Just a reminder that your "Value of Literature" essay is due Monday. You will also turn in your green brainstorming sheet with questions.

There is No Frigate Like a Book (annotation)

Today we briefly discussed Toni Morrison's essay, "The Reader as Artist."

We also work on annotating Emily Dickinson's poem, "There is no Frigate like a Book" (poem 1286). Here are our group annotations (sorry for the poor picture quality today):

6th Hour

5th Hour

We discussed the war connotations many of the words have, and also some of the subtext about travel and poverty. Most importantly (for our purposes) we discussed her assertion that books "bear the Human Soul." We thought this might be about the author's soul he or she pours into writing. It may also be about our souls--the books we read become our souls OR we put a piece of our souls in every book we read. What a responsibility! Like Larkin, Dickinson may be suggesting that good books are key (who wants bad books in their soul)?

"Study of Reading Habits" Annotation & Essay Assignment

Hi all!

Wow--you guys blew me away today with your deep reading and analytical skills. You absolutely brought it as we discussed Philip Larkin's "A Study of Reading Habits."

Here are our living documents, the annotations we created in class. This is the product of all of our brains working together. You guys taught me some things about this poem.

5th Hour's Annotation

6th Hour's Annotations

We will work more tomorrow with Dickinson's poem and the Morrison essay.

HOMEWORK: Today you received your essay assignment for the weekend. You homework for tonight is to complete the brainstorming questions (pg. 2). 

Wednesday, Sept. 9

If you missed today, please see me about taking the poetry pre-test!

Today everyone took a poetry annotation/analysis pre-test. I will score this but the score WILL NOT count toward your grade. This is to give us a baseline. 

We read and annotated Philip Larkin's "A Study of Reading Habits." 

Homework (due tomorrow): Read and annotate Maya Angelou's "The Reader as Artist"

As always, I expect you to annotate, keep notes and engage deeply with texts I assign. We will discuss!