Objectives:
After this class, students will be able to:
1. generate baseline AP Exam data.
2. work in pairs to reach a consensus.
3. compare and contrast communication technologies in varying time periods.
Agenda:
1. Warm-up: Students will answer the following questions in their notebooks: Now that you know the expectations and workload of AP English, what are your impressions? Do you think the class will be easy? Are you intimidated? Do you wish you were in a regular English class instead of here? Are you totally psyched and up for the challenge? Write a paragraph in your notebook providing your specific reasons for your choice of feelings about the class. Students must be done their warm-up within the first ten minutes of class to get credit.
2. Students will take a 20 minute diagnostic test (multiple choice) to determine their baseline data. Students can work with a partner. They should circle all the words they do not know. 30 points for their best effort!
Homework: Students should complete the following assignment in their notebooks:
Reading and Analysis: Thomas Jefferson - On the Dangers of Reading Fiction:
“A great obstacle to good education is the inordinate passion prevalent for novels, and the time lost in that reading which should be instructively employed. When this poison infects the mind, it destroys its tone and revolts it against wholesome reading. Reason and fact, plain and unadorned, are rejected. Nothing can engage attention unless dressed in all the figments of fancy, and nothing so bedecked comes amiss. The result is a bloated imagination, sickly judgment, and disgust towards all the real businesses of life. The mass of trash, however, is not without some distinction; some few modeling their narratives, although fictitious, on the incidents of real life, have been able to make them interesting and useful vehicles of a sound morality . . . For like reason, too, much poetry should not be indulged. Some is useful for forming style and taste. Pope, Dryden, Thompson, Shakespeare, and of the French, Molière, Racine, the Corneilles, may be read with pleasure and improvement.”
Letter to Nathaniel Burwell, March 14, 1818, in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson
Questions for Critical Thinking and Writing:
Jefferson voices several common objections to fiction. What, according to him, are the changes associated with reading fiction? Are these concerns still expressed today? Why or why not? To what extent are Jefferson’s arguments similar to 20th century objections to watching TV? Please write your answers to these questions in short essay format - introduction, thesis, main points, and conclusion. Feel free to use “I” in your short essay. MAKE A LIST OF ALL THE WORDS YOU ARE UNFAMILIAR WITH IN YOUR NOTEBOOK!
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