Reminder ENEWS

Please come to class tomorrow with your sourcebooks and folders for a mid-year self-assessment. Also bring any work you are currently working on.

Thanks,
Ms. S

Newspaper Club cancelled for tomorrow morning

Newspaper Club will be cancelled on Monday, 1/28. I have a parent meeting at 7:30.

Thank you in advance for all of your hard work.

Ms. S

Newspaper Reminders

First - good luck today and tomorrow on your Regents...

Second - keep working on what is due for school. Quite a few of you are missing one or more assignment. Visit teacherease ease and do work on missing assignments:

Articles - first (see earlier post for your assignment and editorial
Task 1 essay on coffee -
Literary Analysis paper
current events assignment

See you next week.

Ms. S
Divya, Please send me the pages so I can get them published...

a note before Regents testing

Please make sure you keep up with your classwork even though you won't be in school due to testing

When you return you should have the following:
a first draft of your literary analysis paper (just a draft)-

a draft of your editorial -

any past due work like the task 1 essay or first article. If you have questions, you can contact me over break via email: mssackstein@yahoo.com

Good luck.

Ms. S

Printer

I have finally found us a printer and now all I need to do is get our finished pages to the new printer ASAP. The first issue will be ready to come out I hope once everyone returns from the Regents break.

The second issue should come out quickly there after as we already have enough finished articles for a second issue if we use the club's articles. I'm hoping to start rolling out 4 pagers as often as we can now that we have a printer.

Looking forward to seeing what your hard work looks like in newsprint.

Ms. S

MLA Citation for works cited

http://www.liu.edu/CWIS/CWP/library/workshop/citmla.htm - here is a simple explanation of proper citation for MLA (Modern Language Association) style.

Your paper should have a works cited.

MLA style parenthetical citation for literary analysis papers

http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/research/mlaparen.html - a definition of parenthetical citation and how to use it...

"In MLA style, in-text citations, called parenthetical citations, are used to document any external sources used within a document (unless the material cited is considered general knowledge). The parenthetical citations direct readers to the full bibliographic citations listed in the Works Cited, located at the end of the document. In most cases, the parenthetical citations include the author's last name and the specific page number for the information cited. Here are general guidelines for in-text citations, including use of authors' names, placement of citations, and treatment of electronic sources. "

Guidelines for specific usage with different kinds of author situations:
http://www.phonon.net/mayfield/mla-gpc.htm

Please make sure you understand how to cite properly within a text...

Writing Editorials and Opinion pieces

http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=11069 - read this article written about editorials -
Summarize the article - what surprised you about how to write one and what did you already know?

Examples of Op-Ed pieces: http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=media_opeds

http://www.rodborlase.com/Guides/Op-Eds.html - good tips

Remember that editorials are unsigned opinion pieces that offer solutions to the issues presented... they are supposed to be representative of the whole paper.

Opinion pieces represent an individual's opinion and are signed. They are still researched and do anticipate the other side of an issue being discussed. Just because you can give your opinion doesn't mean it can be unresearched.

http://www.rodborlase.com/Guides/Op-Eds.html - a good powerpoint to help you understand what an editorial is within a paper.

At the end of class, I will collect your work. Start thinking of issues you may want to write about for your editorial piece.

ENEWS class - homework reminders and conference information

For Monday, please make sure you have your finished article and your lit. analysis topic.

I will be setting up a conference schedule for each student very shortly- we will be talking about your progress, setting goals for the rest of the year and what standards you feel you have mastered and which need work.

In preparation for this conference, please look through your working folders and start reflecting on what knowledge you feel you've secured in your long term memory and what you need to continue working on.

Thanks in advance,
Ms. S

Newspaper Club

If you haven't turned in at least 1 completed article (typed, revised and edited - you conferenced with me and I said it was okay), please make sure you email me what you have been working on at mssackstein@yahoo.com

Those of you who are now working on where to go next, please make sure to meet with me so that you may begin your next article. Be inventive and creative with your choices... what would students want to read?

5 Ways of Reading - taken from: http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/teaching/E140/FiveWays.cfm

Five Ways of Reading
Each with its own set of underlying assumptions about the nature and role of literature, authors, readers, critics, human nature . . .
Each with its own kinds of questions
Each revealing more about some kinds/pieces of literature than others

Reading for Realism
Reading as Experience
Reading for Structure
Reading Suspiciously
Reading for Culture

Reading for Realism
Literature is realistic in one way or another, though not always obviously, and not always in relation to the same idea of reality
Literature is about the human condition; it's a repository of cultural wisdom; authors are particularly insightful about "human nature"
When we read, we focus on things like plot, character, setting, point-of-view, theme
Our readings are based on belief rather than suspicion: we believe what the author/book tells us

Questions:

Some of these are the questions we ordinarily consider when we talk about a piece of literature as if its characters were real people-combined with some simple questions about structure, such as how plots help embody themes.

• What's happening here? Why? How do we know? So what?
• What motivates these characters? How do we know? So what?
• What's this piece really about? Love? Hate? Families? Growing up? Loneliness? Loss?
• How do we know? How realistic is the treatment?
• What does this piece tell us about human nature? Life?

Some are more complicated questions, moving beyond what we might consider a "common sense" notion of "realistic."

• What kind of realism are we dealing with here? What's the text's view of reality?
• What kinds of gaps are there between text and world?
• What kinds of techniques does the author use to represent reality?

Reading as Experience
Literature is the experience its readers have while reading

In thinking about texts this way, we focus on how they manipulate their readers both on small and large scales-how our experience changes from page to page, moment to moment, whether our expectations are fulfilled or not, how we automatically fill in gaps in the text
We may assume a kind of "generic" reader-the one the text or author "wants" for itself or the "ideal" reader who knows all the references and sees all the nuances

We might also focus on experiences of particular kinds of readers-individuals with their idiosyncracies and private psyches; readers from the text's original historical contexts; readers grouped by age, gender, race, class, kind of education, place in the world, etc.

Questions:

• The big question here is always some version of what does this piece of literature do?
• How does this text manipulate its readers, word by word, line by line, chapter by chapter?
• Does the way it works match what it says? How do the large structural elements work?
• If the plot is not chronological, how do the mismatches manipulate the reader's experience?
• Where does the text set up expectations? Do these get satisfied or frustrated? So what?
• Does the reader's experience parallel the characters'? Contrast? Do we learn at the same time as the characters do, before, or after? To what effect?
• What might the experience have been for the text's earliest/original readers? Would they have been more surprised? Less? To what effect?
• What did the work do to the genre expectations of its own time? To general cultural values? To hot issues?
• What kind of reader does the work want for itself? How does it construct/assume this reader?
• What kinds of info would this text's ideal or educated reader have?
• How does the experience of different kinds of readers differ?
• How do the reader's time period, culture, class, race, ethnicity, gender, education matter?
• What are the options for resisting as readers?

Reading for Structure
Literary works are carefully structured objects whose formal details are significant; which details matter & how varies from type to type

Some deliberate attention to details grounds most other ways of reading; different details matter in each context
We might focus on plot, on language and imagery and the unity of the text, on the structural "skeleton" and big underlying oppositions, on literary conventions such as genre and sub-genre, on versions of often-shared stories such as myths

Questions:

• What are the elements of the story? (consider plot, character, setting, etc.) How does each function? What if we were to take some out or rearrange them?
• Which of these elements are often found in other pieces of literature, and is their function always the same? If they are common, why? Because they are central to human life?
• Because they belong to dominant cultures? Because they are central literary conventions?
• What are the image patterns? What other special uses of language are here, and what do they contribute to the effect and meaning of the piece?
• Is there irony? Ambiguity? What holds the piece together as a unit? How does each detail contribute to the whole?
• Can big underlying structural issues and/or oppositions be identified-light and dark, life and death, good and evil, man and woman, individual and society? If so, how do the text's details contribute?
• What does the text conclude about any major oppositions, if anything?
• What role might this textual treatment of such issues play in a culture's ability to maintain itself? Are these issues common to all humans at all times? Why/not?
• Are there any underlying myths here? What kinds? Freudian myths about family relations? Myths about gender? Myths about heroes & quests? Myths about cultures & minds? Myths about class values, about history, about nature? Popular culture myths? If so, how do they function in the text, and what does the text say about them?

Reading Suspiciously
Literature can reveal much more than is on the surface; every text and every reading is partial (biased & incomplete) and ideological; authors, texts, readers, language can't be trusted to tell the whole truth, but always hide some things while revealing others

Here we read with a focus on the workings of personal, cultural, and textual unconscious/subconscious-the way we repress things (gaps, slips, lies), the shapes of compulsions (repetition), the way we disguise things through displacements/condensations/symbols/etc.

We might question everything about the text-the main terms, oppositions, assumptions/values; we read for gaps, textual self-contradictions, stray details that don't seem to fit, oddities; we ask what's at stake with various elements of the text; we try to keep our interpretations unsettled

Questions:

• Are there any apparent or hidden contradictions here? Is there anything in the text that might contradict or complicate the writer's main points? Is the text ever self-critical? To what effect?
• Does the text tell us anything the writer might not have wanted it to? Can we see the writer's own personal or cultural limitations? Where and how? Might he/she have been expected-given the time period and culture-to see what we can see, or not?
• Does the text reveal any major social/cultural problems/ issues the writer might not have recognized? What are the text's ideologies?
• Does the text assume basic categories we might not assume? Does it break down/critique/analyze its own categories? If so, does it do so deliberately or accidentally?
• Does it critique any major cultural assumptions/values?
• Does the structure of the text seem at all to follow the structures of unconscious forces (dreams, repressions, desires, etc.)? Does it hint at hidden meanings different from the obvious meanings? If so, of what kinds? Authorial? Cultural?
• What meanings/values/assumptions seem stable here? At what cost? What's silenced to leave room for what's said?

Reading for Culture
Literature takes part in cultural conversations about issues; forces of influence go all directions (to and from literature, to and from the rest of the world); other cultural expressions (including popular culture) may be equally relevant & useful; literature is part of the negotiations between individuals and cultures

Here we read with a focus on how texts represent things (historically contextualized); how texts participate in the construction of the "real"; how texts might undermine or critique certain cultural representations/ assumptions/ideologies; we look at the detailed historical circumstances of both writing & reading

These readings depend on all the strategies above, including especially those based on suspicion

Questions:

• How are categories like "femininity" or "masculinity" or "whiteness" or "blackness" or "civilization" or "nature" represented? What are the historical & cultural circumstances of these representations?
• How does the text participate in the cultural construction of categories/meanings like these? Is the text's position straightforward and single, or complex and multiple? Does it match and support the dominant views of its time, or criticize them, or subvert them?
• What does the text say about major economic systems like capitalism? What is its position re class? Race?
• What other cultural expressions of the same time might be relevant/similar? What does this text contribute that's different from or like these other things?
• What historical events/circumstances are present in this text in traces, between the lines, behind or beneath the pages? What might original readers have known that later readers, or those from different cultures or groups, would not know, and what differences would this information make to their understanding of the text? What kinds of research might one have to do to understand a text's full historical context?
• How do the issues of the reader's time & place affect his/her interpretations of texts, and in what ways are our own cultural circumstances hard to move beyond?
  

*(Thanks to Sue Ellen Campbell for this portion of the guide's content.)

Literary Analysis Paper due Feb. 15th

Ms. Sackstein - Final drafts are due: Friday, February 15, 2008
Text Analysis Paper – Independent Reading book

A text analysis paper will focus upon an area of the work that you find interesting, significant, or feel merits discussion. A text analysis paper should be fairly formal, and should genuinely attempt to shed light on one or more aspects of the work. You may discuss the significance of character, plot, setting, symbol…whatever catches your fancy. Overall, I am looking for interesting and original insights concerning the reading assignment.

An ideal text analysis will be from 1-2 pages in length, double spaced, and typed. Your paper will explore a problem or point of interest created by a work of literature (this includes, but is not limited to, character motivation, thematic elements, symbol, irony, etc.). Your ideas and insights will be based on information from the pages in the text we have read so far (outside research is encouraged, but not at all necessary), calling upon specific examples to illustrate the idea or issue you are exploring. Your grade will be based on the quality and depth of your insights, and on the use of specific textual evidence as support. (Avoid the obvious! Take risks! Make it interesting! This is an issue that the class may be asked to discuss at a later date.)

Possible starting places for your text analysis include an author’s life, politics, the social context of the work, philosophical musings, how and why the work evokes a particular feeling in you, cultural relevance, or the components of the text such as the significance of setting, narrative voice, imagery, or symbolism. Or, perhaps you will read a critical approach to the text and use it as a springboard for your own ideas (the library database Contemporary Literary Criticism Select is often a nice starting place). Or, you may wish to explore the relationship between elements of the text (How does setting influence character?). As we move on into the later weeks of the course, you may even wish to direct your questions toward identifying patterns between texts, and asking what the significance of these patterns might be.

The Dos and Don’ts of Text Analysis Papers:
DO NOT: Only summarize plot
DO: Analyze the thematic and symbolic significance of events in the story.
DO NOT: Say you didn’t like a character
DO: Explain how a character was unlikable, and why that may or may not have been the author’s intent.
DO NOT: Generalize and provide vague
DO: Use specific examples from the text reasons behind your Text Analysis (including quotes, if significant).
DO NOT: Make superficial, obvious insights (eg: This Boy’s Life is about the struggles of growing up)
DO: Think deeply, and look closely into the work. Notice things that a casual reader would not.
DO NOT: Simply repeat ideas mentioned in class by the instructor or by other students.
DO: Build off ideas mentioned in class, adding your own thoughts and insights to the discussion.
**Remember: Text analysis papers must be typed and submitted on time. They will be evaluated on the basis of focus, development, use of evidence, creativity, and level of insight.

Timeline:
Submission of novel being used and thesis idea: Monday, January 14th

Notes of specific excerpts from text you plan to use to support your ideas: Friday, January 18th

First draft :Monday, January 28th

Draft Revisions and conferences: Monday, January 28th – Friday, Feb. 1

Final draft due with all revisions and notes: Friday, February 15th

Newspaper Club - No meeting on Thursday, 1/10

Due to a meeting I will be at, we won't be able to meet on Thursday. Please make sure you continue working on all articles. If I haven't seen your drafts yet, please make sure I see all work by Friday.

Thanks,
Ms. S

Deadlines

Good morning folks,

Just a few deadlines on the horizon:

Friday, the task 1 essay should come in ready to be graded. I've seen some of your work, but not everyone's. The new folks will have a little extension through the weekend.

Your 2nd current events check will be on 1/18 (Friday). Make sure there are 15-20 articles represented with good analysis.

Your articles should be coming in as well. The faster we have a bunch amassed the sooner we can actually get an issue together.

Welcome Back!

Newspaper Class reminder -

Your task 1 essays are due when you return tomorrow.
Your drafts of your articles should be finished and ready for final revisions and editing.

We will be starting new articles as well as an independent reading assignment soon.

Newspaper club -

Please make sure your articles have been submitted to me via email soon. We will be meeting tomorrow morning 1/3 at 7:30.
mssackstein@yahoo.com


Happy New Year!