Eating Rituals

Select an “eating ritual” or “eating environment” for close observation and commentary.  The ritual or environment you choose may be new or part of your daily routine. Record or take notes of your observations.  You will want to shape and convey a message of your own observation as freshly and meaningfully as possible.  Your commentary will need to include a thesis.  It may be something like, ” High school cafeteria lunches are often not about eating but about maintaing social connections.”  You will want to include your observations of your eating environment as evidence to support your idea.

Your blog will be graded on the following:

Thesis (Supported Observation) (5 points)

Evidence (5 points)

Organization (5 points)

Use of description, imagery, and/or other rhetorical strategies (5 points)

Student sample from AP English Language and Composition: Rhetoric in Pre-20th-Century Texts Curriculum Module:

“There is steady, relentless rhythm during every meal taken in the school cafeteria. And beyond the general lunchtime beat and bustle followed by everyone in the giant blue room, there is also some specific, routine way that mealtimes unfold at any given table. For example, the same two people might always sit beside each other. Or maybe everyone at the table claims an “assigned” seat. Some people might even take the exact same meal every day. The entire experience is usually quite predictable.

On the other hand, there’s a less predictable element of a school cafeteria lunch: the social portion. Lunch in a high school cafeteria is more than jsut a mundane daily ritual; it’s usually the only time in the patterned school day during which extened groups of friends or acquaintances can sit and socialize, uninterrupted. The steady rumble and hum of the lunchroom indicates that nearly everyone revels in this opportunity. Most people don’t even seem to realize they are inhaling food in their seventeen free minutes, so busy are they relating stories, telling jokes, and trying to help each other get homework done. Lunch is almost never limited to only what you bought or brought. At my lunch table in particular, I know that at least half the table is involved in grazing, reaching onto plates for food that doesn’t belong to them. Most days, it’s a veritable smorgasbord.

So lunch in a high school cafeteria is about alking, and it’s about sharing. The eating seems almost incidental. Maybe the ritualistic nature of almost all eating accounts for this; the routines are so familiar, so unimportant, and so often tasteless, that we can focus ourselves in talk. And while eating is obviously a neccessary part of our lives, if you were to ask just about any teenager what the most important part of lunch is to them, they would probably not replay with “food;” they would tell you it’s time with their friends.”

(Essay written by  student from Mt. Arat High School).

 

The Compelling Words of Mr. King

Martin Luther King, Jr. possessed an amazing gift for moving crowds.  In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,”  King beautifully responds to the statement made by eight Alabama clergymen against the peaceful demonstrations and civil disobedience of King’s group.  Choose one of the following quotations and explain why you find it compelling or why you might choose to challenge it.  Cite evidence from historical, economic, literary, or personal experiences to support your opinion.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

“…freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misundersanding from people of ill will.”

Challenging Curriculum

Choosing the right curriculum for teachers is often a daunting task.  For English teachers, choosing the right books for students is one of the most difficult tasks.  Each English teacher has had at least one book challenged in her career.  Books are intimate, personal, and often contain hard and significant problems, conflicts, and issues.  Often book taught in the common high school classroom has been challenged at one point in time.  For example, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and Grapes of Wrath, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and Lois Lowry’s The Giver.

Do some research.  Examine the American Library Association’s website on Banned Books (http://www.ala.org). In a well-thought post, answer the following questions:

• What reasons might be given for the banning or challenging of a book?
• Why might a particular group or person want to protect a child from some of the ideas in the challenged books?
• Why might it be important for students to read books that explore controversial or sensitive topics?
• How might controversial books be used to break down stereotypes and bias?

Be sure to post links in your article to cite your information.

First Things First: Important Instructions

Great job, students, and congratulations on leaping into the “published” world.  I have enjoyed reading your introductory blogs, and I look forward to reading your posts.  Before you delve into your first prompt, there are a few business items we need to take care of before we begin.

If you are unsure of how to use your blog space and although it is fairly intuitive, you can watch the video tutorial in the dashboard.

POSTS: By now many of you have posted your introductory posts.  You’ve figured out that the posting section functions a lot like Word.    This is where you will respond to the writing prompts I post each week.   As you post weekly, you want to make sure that you give your post a title that relates to what you are writing.  As you’re posting, make sure that you format paragraphs, use spell check, and follow our normal rules of grammar and mechanics.  You are not texting for crying out loud! 

You are allowed some creativity in your blog posts.  Add photographs if it helps make your point.  Remember rhetoric includes visual images.   To add a photograph, click the “Insert Photo” button on the Post Dashboard.

LINKS: For argumentative posts or posts asking you to respond to an event in the news, you will need to provide a link to the news article within your blog post.  Failure to complete this step for such posts will not earn you all the available points.  To insert a link, use the “chain link” button located at the top of the text box.

When you have finished your assignment, you must click “Publish Post.”  If you only “Save” or “Preview,” I will not be able to see your post.

First, you need to look to the right of this post. If your name is not listed, you have not sent me your blog address. If your name is there, click on it, and see if it opens to your blog. If it does not, you’ve sent me an incorrect address.

SUBSCRIBE: You will need to subscribe to my blog.  Click on “links,” and then “add new.”  Put my name, Mrs. Smith in the first box, and put the web address (miscmanuscripts.wordpress.com) in the next box. Make sure you click “Save.”  You will perform this task as you add the blogs of your classmates.

You must get at least FIVE of your peers to link to your blog.  Try to link peers who you know will give you honest and constructive feedback.  Sometimes our friends have a hard time doing this.

If you cannot see a links section, you will need to add one.

WIDGETS:  Widgets are blog “add-ins.”  Each theme contains some widgets, but you can exchange them for ones you actually want.  Make sure you add the LINK widget.  Remember to SAVE each time you make a change.

MISCELLANEOUS:  Everything else is pretty self-explanatory.  Play around.  Have fun.  Be creative.

TWITTER/FACEBOOK:  Set up your blog so it automatically tweets your posts or adds your posts to Facebook.  This will help you develop a following, which is part of the point of this assignment.  You want others to hear your voice.

 

 

The Voice of the Class of 2015

Welcome to my blog created to help provide practice for my AP English Language students.

A few years ago, in a French history class at Texas Tech University, I became fascinated with the voices of others.  It seems that prior to the French Revolution, the middle class, bourgeoisie, began to discover their voices.  More and more of the working class began recording their lives, their thoughts, and their memoirs.  Seamstresses, farmers, and factory workers desired to have their voice heard.  What occurred in that period of French history is not unlike what has occurred recently with the advent of blogs and social media.  Again, different classes of people have begun to seek out space to record their voices for all the world to hear.

With the blog assignment, I hope to encourage my students to share their voices.  I want them to share their thoughts and opinions on what has occurred in the world and what is currently happening in it.  They have a voice, and their voice matters.