Sheehy English 9

A Teacher Talk podcast for my students wondering if they have yet experienced the odd feeling of looking back at your life and seeing something in the past that you didn’t see when it was the present.

Teacher Talk 5

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Image Attribution:
Original image: ‘untitled‘ by: Ibon

What is great poetry? That is the question you will answer during our poetry unit, and I think the perfect way to begin the unit is to make you attempt to answer the question now, before we’ve actually discussed poetry at all. What, today, is your opinion? What is great poetry?

Figuring that you might not have too much to say in response, consider also what you think you will need to do to make yourself better able to answer the question. What should we do in the next couple weeks to enable you to answer the question, “What is great poetry?”

Please write at least 100 words in your blog to respond to this question, and then read and reply to at least two classmates’ answers (that means write comments). Also, please remember to put in your article a link back to this article on the class blog.

P.S. – That river in the picture is in my hometown in New Hampshire.  

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Image Attribution:

Original image: ‘the mighty contoocook‘ by: Ben McLeod

Another edition of Teacher Talk, wondering where some of my students’ motivation goes.

Where has your motivation gone?

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Original image: ‘Peter Extends His Hand‘ by: DoubleSpeak

This is the last article you will write about your book, which means it should be written after you have completed the book and should display your best and most complex thoughts. That also means my expectations, grade-wise, will be set a bit higher than they were for the early articles. Attempt to wow me with this article.

You may recall that your main task is to theorize about the best potential symbols and how they connect to the most important themes in the book. Thus, you are writing a reflection-style article about symbols and themes.

Symbols

I know symbols are kind of hard to discuss and find, but once you get the hang of it, I think you’ll find it to be fun. Experts in literature do not have it all figured out – that’s why they love literature so much, there’s more to learn every time one discusses a great work. So the first thing you need to do when looking for symbols is trash the idea that you have to have your book “figured out.”

Instead, I want you to discuss “potential symbols.” You may not know know what the something greater is that the symbol stands for, but if you have read attentively, you will be able to recognize and identify something important, something that may be more significant than it seems at first. You created a list of potential symbols on the wikis, and in your article, I’d like you to extend further – to theorize not only what the most significant symbols are, but what you think they might symbolize. (That is, what is the something greater that your symbol stands for?)

Themes

Your important symbols will bring up ideas and conversations, and the topics of those ideas and conversations are likely themes to the book. Themes, you will recall, are main ideas and concepts explored in a work. What are the main ideas in your book? What questions does the book raise? You may either tie comments about theme into your comments about symbols, or you may tag a paragraph at the bottom of your article, after you comment about symbols.

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Original image: ‘walk‘ by: Rick Audet

Original image: ‘Questions‘ by: Tim O’Brien

Writing about setting is understandably difficult for many students (that’s why I require only 250 words for this article), but it’s an essential element to stories and it’s important for you as an intelligent reader to stop and evaluate it thoroughly.

How, though? How do you talk about setting for so long when usually all you have to do is answer the question, “What is the setting?” in four or fewer sentences? One way to talk about setting is to talk about every little tidbit of the setting, and that’s why your groups worked together to list everything you know about the setting in your book. On those pages, I already explained two strategies for extending your thinking:

1. Consider any changes in the setting and what happens in particular places.
2. Also consider how your book would be different if it took place somewhere else.

Those are two of my favorite strategies, and while you do that, don’t forget that setting is more than physical location – it’s also the time, including the time in history. So if I think about The Odyssey, I might consider what happens when the setting changes. For one thing, each time the setting changes, there seems to be a new obstacle for Odysseus to overcome. And if the book had taken place somewhere else – say, for example, the USA during the 1990’s – then Odysseus wouldn’t have been in a culture that cared about the gods and goddesses.

Other strategies for thinking about setting:

• How do the characters feel about the places (and situations the places are responsible for creating) in the story?
• Does the setting play a major role, or is it more of a background element?
• How does the author describe the setting? (In long descriptive passages? In short blips that let you know where and when things are happening?)
• Is the setting clear? If it is unclear, is it unclear for a particular reason?
• What kinds of attitudes do the characters possess as a result of the setting? (For example, if the book is set in Alabama in the 1940’s, chances are the white people would possess significantly racist attitudes towards black people.)

Those questions are not intended as a checklist, but as a help to get you thinking about setting. 250 words is a lot more than the four sentences you’d like to write, but you are very capable of doing it. If you get stuck, please reopen the conversation with your group’s members to see if, together, you can generate more thinking and insight about setting.

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Image Attribution:

Original image: ‘Grand Street: Texting‘ by: Mo Riza

Original image: ‘The Land of Ghosts‘ by: Peter Bowers