Ind Rdg Booktalk

AP Lit Independent Reading

Lit Analysis Booktalk

Assignment:
Prepare and give a 10-minute booktalk in which you give a BRIEF synopsis of your book, analyze an element of the book, and show how the author uses that element to create his/her theme.  This should be essentially what you did for your first process paper, only you’re doing it orally.  This means you still need evidence. Rather than having to write, go through the process, and be confined by word count, you’re challenged with the task of making it comprehensible to your peers in only 10-15 minutes.  Therefore, focus on ONE aspect of the novel, just as you did in your lit analysis essay.

Objectives:

• Continue working on lit analysis (theme, analysis of an element, and evidence to back claims)
• Apply critical lenses to a novel
• Demonstrate excellent public speaking skills

Items to be Sure You Include:

• Title and author
• BRIEF plot synopsis
• Analysis of the element you’ll be focusing on
• Argument of the theme of the book and how your element contributes to it
• Evidence from the text to back up your claims

Critical Lens Aspect
To help deepen your analysis, you’ll also need to apply critical lenses to your reading of the text.  EVERYONE will be using reader response (you can’t avoid it) and formalist (because this is AP Lit and ALL interpretations MUST be grounded in the text).  In addition, you should consider your novel from another perspective:  historical, biographical, feminist, psychological, Marxist, etc.  Use the lens to help you better understand the argument the author is making by considering the context or what he/she may be saying about society.  

In order to do this well, you may need to do some brief research on your author, the time period, psychology, etc.  If you use outside sources to help deepen your understanding and to give more credibility to your analysis, you should cite your sources ORALLY during your booktalk.

Grading
I will grade you using the rubric found here.

RJ Conferences

It's about that time--end of the 1st quarter!  That means you need to check over those RJs and be sure you have all of them completed (including the left hand side) and that you have some things to say about your critical reading skills.  The RJs you have for 1st quarter include your two summer books, your Nabokov re-read, and your Frost re-read.

Remember that any claims you make about yourself in a reading journal conference must be BACKED UP with evidence from your reading journal.  If you say you're great at noticing details, then show in your RJ where you picked up on important details.  If you say you reread a lot, then show what you were able to better understand after rereading.  If you say that you don't do a very good job with the dictionary, then show where you misread or misunderstood something in your RJ because you didn't know what a word meant in that context.

What to cover in your reading journal conference:

• Where you are as a critical reader according to Nabokov's rules.  Which rules are you following (your strengths)?  Which rules are you ignoring (your weaknesses)?  Show evidence from your RJ to back up these claims about yourself.
• How comfortable do you feel with poetry at this point?  Have you improved?  In what way?  Where are you still struggling?
• Set one or two specific goals for 2nd quarter to help you become a better critical reader.  These can be specific rules you're going to work on (i.e. rereading) or related areas (i.e. time-management).

How will I grade this?  If you sit down with me, have your RJ, cover what you need to thoroughly but concisely--showing evidence from your completed RJ--you get an A.  If you don't have much in the way of specific evidence, you'll get an A-.   If I have to prompt you to make sure you cover it all or have very little evidence, you'll get some type of B depending on how much prompting you require or how sparse the evidence is.  If you require prompting but can't even answer what I'm asking for OR you clearly don't have a completed RJ OR you just have absolutely no evidence for your claims, you'll end up in the C range.

Groups and Poets

Kristina, Lauren and Dani:  XJ Kennedy
Emma, Donald, Hannah, and Jessie S:  Theodore Roethke
Dan, Zitxw, and Zach:  William Blake
Ryne, Taylor, and Sam:  e.e. cummings
Krista, Shannon, and Cameron:  Emily Dickinson
Kim, Amber J, and Naty:  Margaret Atwood
Amber H, Kaitlin, and Natalie:  Gwendolyn Brooks
Peter, Ben, and Tyler:  Keats
Ally, Jessica I, and Katie:  Elizabeth Bishop

AP Lit In-Depth Poet Study

AP Literature 

In-Depth Poet Study

Now that you have studied all of the ways poets use language to express meaning, I'd like you to spend some time studying one poet in-depth.  Doing so will give you an opportunity to critically read a number of poems, practice your own analysis and interpretation of those poems, do some research (both critical and biographical) on the poet, and present your findings as an "expert."  In addition to the practice this project will give you in analysis and interpretation, I also want you to begin to see and understand the way an individual poet develops a style, common motifs, or comes back again and again to the same forms and poetic devices.

 

You will be working in groups for this project, but only the presentation will be a group grade.  The major portions of the project will be individual, though your group can work as moral support.

 

The Steps:

 

• You've already chosen your poet.  See the previous blog posting for your assignment. 

 

• Read a representative sampling of the poet's work--that means enough that you can see the kind of poetry your poet writes, including the various motifs and poetic devices your poet explores.  This is all about increasing your exposure to poetry--the more exposure you have, the more practice you get working with all the poetic devices you just learned about, the more experience you have in analysis, the more comfortable you will feel when presented with it in the future.

 

• Discuss the poems you read with your group.  Work together to understand them, to analyze them, to bounce ideas for interpretation off of each other.  You all know by now how helpful class discussion can be for any piece of literature, so use your group to help you better understand your own ideas.

 

• Individually, complete a formal write-up that synthesizes the poet's background, literary importance, and style.  Also include the poetic devices, forms, etc. (all the stuff we covered in your textbook) the poet seems to use, favor, etc.  Also include common motifs and/or themes they write about.  Make sure you cite examples from their various poetry as evidence of these claims.  There is no length requirement for this write-up.  Your criteria is that it be long enough--long enough to do a good job, make a comprehensive study, and cite evidence for your claims.

 

• Conduct research to help you accomplish the write-up above--biographical, critical, literary contributions--and compile a works cited page that documents those sources.

 

• As a group, present your findings to the class.  Be prepared to share with the class some of the poet's work and your synthesis as the experts on that poet.  You will have 15-20 to present your poet as experts and everyone in your group should contribute equally to the presentation.

 

  

Poetry Exam

Mulitiple choice section

The first part is what I call the easy part.  There are questions over the chapters in your book that cover terminology and interpretation of poetry.  If you haven't read the chapters in the book this section might not be so easy.  If you have been staying up with your assignments and asking questions in class to clarify what you don't understand then you should be fine.

The next part is actual AP exam questions.  You'll have a poem to read and questions that follow.  These will obviously also ask for your knowledge on terminology and interpretation.

In-class essay

This will be an AP exam prompt in which it gives you a poem to read and a prompt to answer that asks you to analyze and interpret the poem.  You should essentially write an explication.  Refer to the examples in your textbook for what that will look like.

To study I would recommend studying your terms and making sure that you know how to analyze a poem, looking for all the devices that your textbook has covered.