Friday Funnies with Prometheus

 Just a quick one for those of you who teach mythology - A guy by the name of Mark Weinstein created a whole comic strip of Prometheus getting his liver eaten each day by the Vulture.   Here is an example:

Had to share!

You can read all of them online at The Whole Enchilada

Practice Annotation with "The Story of an Hour"

When starting students off with annotating, they often struggle for what is important enough to write down or how to probe the text for deeper meaning.

An easy text to start with is "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin.  Specifically, use this online text by Anne Woodlief: https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/webtexts/hour/storyofhour.html

Woodlief has gone through and linked certain words and phrases that have more meaning than others.  She doesn't just give the meaning away, she posits a question to the reader to help them focus on why this may be important to the meaning of the story.

How I Use It

I give my students this handout: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M2ZrrKOaCqdicGwzHPOW2GnntlE-t8tOH9iZjMfQqE8/edit

Students should read the story with no clicking of links and just write their first impressions.  Then, they will go back through the story, click each link and write their response on the handout.  There are so many links that I give them up to eight that they can leave blank.  Makes them feel like they are getting away with something.

Why It Works

It is a short text, so students do not get lost in it. By doing this early, students will start to see how little things - words, phrases, placement - all have a greater impact on the analysis of the story.  Often students don't know what is important enough to write about.  This gives them some guidance.

All in all, it takes most of a class period to do.  It is easy set up on my part and serves as a great introduction to literary analysis for AP Lit (though can be done with other classes).  It is the third thing I do to get students ready for AP Lit analysis.  The first is the break down "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" using different literary critical theories, followed by archetype notes (probably the best thing to give students confidence that they can break down a text).  After this activity, we are ready to go full force into the class.

For Honor and Glory!

Something you to think about trying that I stumbled upon that turned out to be a major motivating factor in my class is giving the option to live forever (or at least until I retire) on the Wall of Glory.

The names on the wall go back to 2015, but only because one year the humidity was so high over the summer that the names fell off and the custodian helpfully threw them away.  They have since travelled with me to my current school.  

I originally did it without thinking about long-term effects, but man has it paid off.  When a student wins Survivor (English IV) or the Pinnacle of Perfection (English II and IV) or becomes the Chosen One (Mythology) or is an Absolute Paragon (a 5 on AP Lit), I put their name on the wall for posterity.  These kids love the idea that students in years to come will be able to see their name on the wall.  

When I started doing this, it was for regular-level classes, but when I moved into some honors and AP, the competition for glory and honor exponentially increased.  It's lots of fun and if you have something that you could adapt this too, give it a shot!

By the way, that NASCAR autograph on my back wall was given to me by a student several years ago.  We were reading 1984 and he got the driver, Scotty Riggs, to sign "I love Big Brother!"  :)