Objectives:
After this class, students will be able to:
1. Reflect on their impressions of the course and its workload.
2. Take a diagnostic test based on the actual AP English Lit test.
3. Analyze non-fictional writing about the purpose of fiction.
Agenda:
1. Warm-Up: Students should answer the following question in their notebooks: Now that you know the expectations and workload of AP English Lit, 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. Ms. Kingsbury will solicit answers from students.
2. Diagnostic Test: 20 minutes: Today students will take, in their small workgroups, a short AP English Lit Diagnostic Test (SEE ATTACHED TEST). This test has 20 questions based on two reading excerpts. Students may work together in any way that they see fit. This is a chance for them to determine whether they’ve aligned themselves with the best group for their learning/working style. While they are taking the diagnostic test, students should underline, highlight, question, annotate, as they see fit. They should write any words they don’t know into their notebooks. We will review the answers at the end of 20 minutes and reflect on and evaluate how the groups members worked together to achieve a common goal.
HOMEWORK: 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:
1. 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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