Welcome To Honors English

2. Welcome To Honors English DAY ONE August 7th

3. Welcome To AP English Language and Composition DAY ONE August 7th

5. “I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.” ~Ernest Hemingway

6. Did you know that we spend roughly 60 percentof our communication time listening…. • BUT WE ARE NOT VERY GOOD AT IT! • WE RETAIN JUST 25 PERCENTOF WHAT WE HEAR

7. What is listening? • Let’s define it as making meaning from sound. It’s a mental process. And we use some pretty cool techniques to do this. One of them is called pattern recognition. • For example, we recognize pattern to distinguish—and we recognize our nameespecially.

8. Differencing is a listening technique . • If I left this on for a couple of minutes, you would literally cease to hear it.

9. Sound Places Us in Space and Time • If you were to close your eyes right now… • What are you aware of? • Can you tell what size the room is? How? • What about the fact that there are other students sitting around you?

11. Did you know that… • Hearing is the first sense to develop in the womb… • The ear continues to hear sounds—even as you sleep. • 37 percent of children with only minimal hearing loss fail at least one grade.

12. And what does sound do to us?

13. Sound affects us physiologically!

14. It changes your heartbeat • Your breathing • Your brainwaves

15. Waves are physiologically the most pleasing to our senses because they mimic our breathing pattern.

16. Sounds Affect Us Psychologically • For example, music can change our moods. • What is it about music that affects us? • Research suggests that the sounds of birds actually affect us psychologically.We feel safe when birds are chirping.

17. Cognitively • How well do you think in a noisy classroom? • What is it like to be in a silent classroom?

18. Behavior • We move away from unpleasant sounds. • We move toward pleasant sounds.

19. The Sound of Silence • Be quiet for 10 seconds. • What did you hear?

20. Channels of Sounds • Listen. What do you hear now?

21. INTENTION • INTENTION is very important to listening. • How might intention to listen be important specifically in a classroom?

22. Listening Task • Over the course of the semester, we are going to invent our own listening patternin this classroom, among others. • TASK. I want you to number off from 1 to however many of you there are. There will be NO discussion about how you will do this. • Without talking, please proceed… If two or more people speak at the same time, we will begin again.

23. How did you do? • As a class, you just invented a pattern of listening and speaking!

24. Through this type of invention, we will build our classroom community. • Together we will find meaning and purpose through invention in the material that is new to you.

25. Reading and Writing Task One

26. READ IT! • As we read the following character descriptions, think about words or phrases that you think describe the character. • Annotate your text. Circle or underline the words you like--positive words and the negative words. • Categorize the words: hair, face, hands, movements, clothes, personality, or any other relevant category. • Do any of the words have similarities from text to text? • What patterns did you notice?

27. From Chapter 15 of David Copperfield When the pony-chaise stopped at the door, and my eyes were intent upon the house, I saw a cadaverous face appear at a small window on the ground floor (in a little round tower that formed one side of the house), and quickly disappear. The low arched door then opened, and the face came out. It was quite as cadaverous as it had looked in the window, though in the grain of it there was that tinge of red which is sometimes to be observed in the skins of red-haired people. It belonged to a red-haired person - a youth of fifteen, as I take it now, but looking much older - whose hair was cropped as close as the closest stubble; who had hardly any eyebrows, and no eyelashes, and eyes of a red-brown, so unsheltered and unshaded, that I remember wondering how he went to sleep. He was high-shouldered and bony; dressed in decent black, with a white wisp of a neckcloth; buttoned up to the throat; and had a long, lank, skeleton hand, which particularly attracted my attention, as he stood at the pony's head, rubbing his chin with it, and looking up at us in the chaise. 'Is Mr. Wickfield at home, Uriah Heep?' said my aunt. 'Mr. Wickfield's at home, ma'am,' said Uriah Heep, 'if you'll please to walk in there' - pointing with his long hand to the room he meant.

28. From Chapter 1 of Tess of D’Urbervilles “On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore, or Blackmoor. The pair of legs that carried him were rickety, and there was a bias in his gait which inclined him somewhat to the left of a straight line. He occasionally gave a smart nod, as if in confirmation of some opinion, though he was not thinking of anything in particular. An empty egg-basket was slung upon his arm, the nap of his hat was ruffled, a patch being quite worn away at its brim where his thumb came in taking it off. Presently he was met by and elderly parson astride on a gray mare, who, as he rode, hummed a wandering tune.”

29. From Chapter 1 of A Christmas Carol Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas. External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often "came down" handsomely, and Scrooge never did. Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, "My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?" No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men's dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, "No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!" But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call "nuts" to Scrooge.

30. Discuss • What patterns did you notice? • What contributed to the effective invention of each character?

31. Writing It! • You are going to invent a character. • Choose a button.

32. Write down a description of the button you have selected—you will have to give the button back to me before you leave.

33. What article of clothing was the button attached to? • Describe the item of clothing the best that you can… • Old, new, used, blue, soft, • Protective, light-weight…

34. Metaphor or Simile • Can you liken the piece of clothing or the button to something unexpected?

35. Who wore this item of clothing? • Describe this person • Physical attributes • Actions • Thinking • Speaking

36. Now, invent a character description. Imagine your character sitting somewhere. It could be at a bus station, at the opera, in a classroom, beside a grave marker—you decide. Create your character description. • This is your first writing piece for me. Please consider that before you turn it in. Be ready to share your description when we meet next.

37. Ethos Day Two: August 9th/10th How does the speaker establish credibility with his audience?

39. About the Author Toni Morrison was born Chloe ArdeliaWofford on February 18, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio to George and Ramah Wofford.   She had three other siblings and grew up in a working-class family. As a child, Morrison read constantly and her favorite authors were Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy.   She has two children.

40. Author's Professional Background • Morrison taught English at two branches of the State University of New York. • In 1984 she was appointed to an Albert Schweitzer chair at the University at Albany, The State University of New York. • From 1989 until her retirement in 2006, Morrison held the Robert F. Goheen Chair in the Humanities at Princeton University • WOULD YOU THINK THAT SHE IS A CREDIBLE WRITER? • Morrison received a B.A. in English from Howard in 1953 • She earned a Master of Arts degree, also in English, from Cornell University in 1955 • Morrison became an English instructor at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas (from 1955-57) then returned to Howard to teach English • She worked as a textbook editor she went to work as an editor at the New York City headquarters of Random House • played an important role in bringing black literature into the mainstream

41. READ IT! Toni Morrison • "I walk alone except for the eyes that join me on my journey. Eyes that do not recognize me, eyes that examine me for a tail, an extra teat. Wondering eyes that stare and decide if my navel is in the right place if my knees bend backward like the forelegs of a dog. They want to see if my tongue is split like a snake's or if my teeth are filing to points to chew them up. To know if I can spring out of the darkness and bite.

42. Inside I am shrinking. I climb the streambed under watching eyes and know I am not the same. I am losing something with every step I take. I can feel the drain. Something precious is leaving me. I am a thing apart.

43. With the letter I belong and am lawful. Without it I am a weak calf abandon by the herd, a turtle without shell, a minion with no telltale signs but a darkness I am born with, outside, yes, but inside as well and the inside dark is small, feathered and toothy. Is that what my mother knows? Why she chooses me to live without?"

44. Toni Morrison--from ‘The Site of Memory’ • [Fiction] is the product of imagination—invention—and it claims the freedom to dispense with ‘what really happened,’ or when it really happened, and nothing in it needs to be publically verifiable, although much in it can be verified.

45. “The work I do frequently falls in the minds of most people into that realm of fiction called fantastic, or mythic, or magical, or unbelievable. I’m not comfortable with these labels. I consider that my single greatest responsibility (in spite of that magic) is not to lie.” • HOW CAN A WRITER INVENT FICTION WITHOUT LYING? WHAT DOES MORRISON MEAN?

46. “When I hear someone say, ‘Truth is stranger than fiction,’ I think that old chestnut is truer than we know, because it doesn’t say that truth is truer than fiction; just that it’s stranger—meaning that it is odd. It may be excessive, it may be more interesting, but the important thing is that it is random. And fiction is not random” • WHAT DOES MORRISON MEAN HERE? WHY ISN’T FICTION RANDOM? WHY IS TRUTH RANDOM?

47. “Therefore the crucial distinction for me is not the difference between fact and fiction, but the distinction between fact and truth. Because facts can exist without human intelligence, but truth cannot. So if I’m looking to find and expose a truth about the interior life of people who didn’t write it (which doesn’t mean they didn’t have it) then the approach that is the most productive and most trustworthy for me is the recollection that moves from the image to the text. Not from the text to the image.” • WHAT IS MORRISON SUGGESTING--BY MOVING FROM IMAGE TO TEXT?

48. Narrative voice=ethos • Voice the writer puts forth to the reader • Credibility = Truth, not just facts • Ethos = How the writer understands himself AND how the writer chooses to present this self to others • Readers react to the ‘writer’s self’ or ethos—if it is credible—the reader is willing to listen to the voice of the writer to hear what the writer has to say.

49. Discuss It! • In groups of three or four, share your character sketch out loud: • Do you believe the sincerity of the speaker? Why is this believability important? How do you think the writer creates it? • Were you moved by a particular description or scene? What do you mean by ‘moved’? Why is being moved important? • Did you ‘see’ the person? What details helped you to ‘see’? • How did the details chosen (or the subject matter, or the language, or the sentence length, or the organization) influence how you see the speaker? • Do you trust the speaker? • Why do you find yourself accepting the speaker and his view of the world? • What makes this particular speaker plausible? • What could the writer do to strengthen the speaker’s credibility even further?

50. READ IT! Joe Brickhouse saw his dog get smashed by a garbage truck in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. He was twelve and smoked Luckies and had a glass eye. I won't tell you about the games of marbles, or how he hurt his sister, nor shall I discuss in the abstract his deep-seated contempt for authority or why he kicked my ass just because I was his friend and he loved me. For this is about a dog and a boy and has virtually nothing to do with Mark Twain and the rest of American Literature. It's about a garbage truckthat backed up over a beautiful Laband a white kid who wrapped his armsaround the dead animal and gasped for airand his face turned red then bluish,whose tears streamedonto the blood-caked fur of the dog,and who howled and screamed so loudat gray and porch-lit 5 a.m.windows all down Merrimac scraped open,and T-shirts, drawers, scrungy robeshobbled onto porchesto stare in wonderat a human beingwho had learned so younghow to talk to the dead.