Back in School Today

William Blake
We were back in school today after an unexpected 4 day break due to an Artic cold front which came through the state late Wednesday. We still have enough snow days that we are looking at being out for summer during the last week of May. However, we still have the rest of January, February, and even March to get through.

I am teaching my seniors some of the poems from William Blake, ones from his Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. I am trying to get them to become aware of who is talking in the poems, or the Speaker, and the Tone of the poems. Blake's a good one for that because he adopts different personas in the poems from the two books.
Mark Twain
My Honors English 11 is getting ready to study The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. I gave them the books three weeks before Winter break, so they have had about 6 or 7 weeks to do the reading. I am under no illusions that they have done so.

My regular English 11 has had the novel also. They are even less likely to have done the reading. I am not sure what to do with them except to have them read certain passages and get through the book best they can. Today we went over words they are likely to see on the "End of Instruction" (EOI) test. I had to use my loud voice to get through to them. This is the biggest problem I have, getting them to be quiet and listen to me long enough to get any sort of learning done.

National Pun Day is Tomorrow!

Top Secret
Tomorrow is March 4th, which I have designated "National Pun Day."

The reason why I chose this day was that the date is itself a pun. In fact, it is the answer to a riddle I learned as a child: What is the date that soldiers hate the most? (Just say the date above out loud and you will get it.)

So tomorrow, we will play with homophones, word puzzles, visual puns, and other language games.

I have prizes for students who participate. I hope to increase their love of language.

Cat and I Taking Classes

I have not been blogging lately because since Monday, Cat and I have been at Tulsa University taking a summer Advanced Placement English Literature seminar. I am doing this despite the fact that I won't be teaching an AP course next year at Centennial. I think though that much of what I will learn can be used in my English courses.

For example, today we did an exercise with writing and painting. The technique actually has a name: Ekphrasis which is defined as the graphic representation of a work of art. An example of this in poetry would be John Keats poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn." We first did a free writing about our childhood and then did a water color presenting our free writing. Then we wrote a "poetic" representation of our writing and painting. Then we did a "free painting" by trying to paint something in 3 minutes. Then we wrote about what we had painted.

I think I can use this.