The AP Experience

My fourth period class is an AP class. I really enjoy the students. I find they are lazier than I had expected and hoped!! I have introduced them to many short stories. We are reading The Awakening by Kate Chopin. In correlation with this novella, we have read "Story of an Hour," "The Yellow Wallpaper," and "The Astronomer's Wife." We also read Wordsworth's poem that inspired "The Astronomer's Wife." The students are writing comparisons papers with the novella and short stories. I had them write one with the poem and the short story, but they didn't quite "get" that yet. We will try again when we study poetry more in depth. Overall, I have a great class, and they are eager to learn. They don't quite get the feminism in each story. They find it hard to relate to other periods of time. I played a song for them. The song is called "Soulshine." This song discusses moonshine and sunshine (all images we are discussing) but the most important aspect is to let your soulshine. I hope they understood that these women just want their souls to shine--to be free!! They liked this too becuase they saw a side of me that was not just "teacher!" I'll let you know how the rest goes!!

COMIC STRIPS

Another thought I just had! My class created comic strips of the first section of Beowulf. I did this to help them learn to sequence so they could keep up with the events in the poem!! I might add I have some very talented artists in my room!! I will post pictures of this!!! Again, they really seem to be responding well to the story!!! I hope "our pilgrimage" into the Canterbury Tales goes as smoothly!!

The Epic Poem
We are reading Beowulf right now!! The students seem to like it...or they are good at pretending. I have many low readers so in order to accomadate them we are reading out loud in class. They like reading out loud, and they seem to respond better also. I also played some of the story on an audio tape. My inclusion especially responded to this!! I would stop along the way to discuss metaphors, alliteration, etc.!!