Category: English 10 Regents (2016-2017)

Interstitial instruction, feedback, and discussion for students in English 10 Regents for the 2016-2017 school year.

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10/11 Post-Writing: RE10

  By English 10 Regents (2016-2017)

*The header image again comes from the original ten Rorschach inkblots.

Descriptive Post-Writing

Using last week’s descriptive paragraphs, you are going to learn how to evaluate and, as necessary, revise your writing. Start by clicking this chessboard image:

Google Drive

Opens in Google Drive

All writing can be processed through the tools in this folder, which we collect under the name bishop composition. Today, and likely for the rest of the week, you will be learning these components by running a post-writing protocol on the paragraphs you wrote.

Before we do anything else, I want you to note that this “post writing” analysis can be applied at any point after you’ve produced enough writing. Without grades, you aren’t beholden to a score for this step of the process, and the process is more important than the product.

Start by reading this document in full:

googledocs

Post-Writing: Guide

Then load the modified template given to you in Google Classroom. It will ask you to complete Step #1 and Step #3. Follow the directions below, and make sure you replace the filler text in the template. This is a test of your ability to follow directions as much as a breakdown of your descriptive writing.

Step #1: Process Reflection

Print a copy of your paragraphs. Set that aside, and turn off any devices you have. For the moment, you are assessing exactly what you have — no more and no less.

The first step of any post-writing work is to assess how you spent the time allotted for the assignment. In this first step, you are also determining the extent to which you meet the criteria for a fourth-tier GAP score. This is not a completion check, however. Some of you will have negotiated a slightly different assignment by speaking to your teachers; that negotiation meets the threshold for a “student-generated feedback loop,” which is a significant part of these higher profiles.

Many of you will not have completed your assignment, and you will not have spoken enough with your teachers to excuse that lapse. You will have wasted time in class and failed to complete the work at home. This is evidence that we must process in order to help you improve.

Right now, any of you who do not have a finished assignment are locked into the third tier of GAP scores. You can unlock passage into the fourth tier through renewed assiduousness and a kind of academic makeover — change that creates a new version of you that does your work and advocates for your learning.

If, however, your habits do not change, that is a failure to take this feedback and apply it. At that point, you are likely locked into the second tier of profiles. You can see the logic for this by reading the first tier again and noting its focus on amenability and improvement.

Step #3: Metacognition

After you’ve taken stock of your work ethic and time management, you can move into a concerted analysis of your writing itself. This was a descriptive assignment, which means that we are primarily focused on the first three most important elements of writing: the meaning you derived from these images, the details you used to describe what you saw, and how you arrange those details into a paragraph. Answer the questions and follow the prompts in this post-writing protocol. Annotate your printed paragraph. Look for patterns, and try to balance your analysis between strengths and weaknesses.

While you are annotating, work with a peer or teacher on one more element from the rubric: grammar and mechanics. You will catch basic mistakes yourself. Letting a peer or teacher look over your writing will help you identify more errors. The goal isn’t perfection, but the development of control.

When you have enough insight generated, write the metacognitive section of the post-writing assignment.

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Rorschach Inkblots

  By English 10 Regents (2016-2017)

*Header image is one Rorschach’s original inkblots.

Descriptive Writing Work

In this lesson, you will write in your first mode of discourse. The lecture that precedes this work — read it here — uses artwork and optical illusions to demonstrate how your brain processes information and creates meaning. This process is at the root of everything you learn, from the way you compile grade abatement evidence to the way you relate to a literary character to the way you make a three-dimensional cube flatten into a diamond-like shape.

Multistable/Necker Cube

Now we will look at descriptive writing, for which we will use another kind of visual: Rorschach inkblots, which will be the subject of your first writing assignment.

Click here to load the Flickr set of all ten original ink blot plates. As you look at these, you should consider more than what you initially see; consider also how best to describe the image to a stranger looking at the same ink blot. Description is the first mode of discourse you will practice this year, and while it is the simplest, it is also a chance to practice word choice and basic sentence construction.

Our in-class discussions will center around the variety of interpretations that are possible for each of these—and, perhaps most importantly, the way you can shift your peers’ understanding with effective description. This kind of thinking, also called divergent thinking, asks you to solve a problem in as many different ways as possible.

Your assignment: For each inkblot, write a paragraph describing what you see. You should write at least 5-6 sentences, but you can obviously write more. Start this writing by hand, so that we can continue to balance digital instruction with pen-and-paper work.

When you have a paragraph written for all ten images, you can type them in a Google Doc, share them through Google+, be metacognitive about your word choices, and so on. Don’t worry if you haven’t done that before. You will go slowly through the process with us before moving into the actual writing. Look to Google Classroom for the formal assignment.

For now, focus on writing the most descriptive paragraphs you can. We will do the rest together over the next few days.

The ink blots can also be loaded below. Use this if the earlier link does not work.

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Writing Background: Gestalt

  By English 10 Regents (2016-2017)

*Header image is a 100-year-old optical illusion (that might tell a lot about you).

Before We Write: Some Background

Each of you enters this English classroom with a different history and different goal. Some of you love to read and write, and you look forward to improving your skills and experiencing new texts. Some of you, on the other hand, have hated English classes since you became aware of them, and you want only to escape — by climbing out the back window, maybe, if that’s what it takes.

This class is designed with all of you in mind. In fact, it is the mind itself we are studying, because the purpose of this course is not just to have you read and write; it is, more than anything else, to have you think, and to think about how you think. This idea, thinking about thinking, is metacognition, one of the focusing terms for our entire course.

To begin to analyze how you process information and create understanding, we have spent a few weeks looking at grade abatement, which collects the other focusing terms. Now we move into our first writing assignment.

Before that, though, let’s talk about the Gestalt effect. This is a term you only need to be familiar with — it won’t appear on any tests — but the idea of it is easy enough to remember. It’s related to two more terms: inference and implication, which are important skills in reading and writing.

In order to read beyond the superficial details of our texts, and in order to write fluently and effectively, it helps to understand a bit about how the brain creates meaning. The simplest way to approach this is to use that not-so simple term: Gestalt. This is a German word that can be translated into English as “shape,” and it refers to the part of your brain that makes meaning from sensory data.

When we study ourselves, the Gestalt effect is about our perception of the reality in front of us. You process the information given to you in subtly different ways from the people around you, and in here, those differences are important. We will work together to understand what each individual reads and writes. It will be a collective effort.

This initial exercise won’t seem at first to have anything to do with reading or writing, but you are going to work on applying these concepts to the rest of the year’s work. These are analogies, another term you should recognize. An analogy is, to take the definition verbatim from its Wikipedia entry, “a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject (the analogue or source) to another particular subject (the target).”

Below are several kinds of Gestalt systems taken from various sources, with commentary folded in.

1. The Whole Picture

The above image usually has no meaning for us until we are shown it upside-down. Click the image to flip it, and then read the footnote at the end of this sentence for the title1.

The image perceived as a whole, all at once, after you are given some direction. This is the guiding principal for how we read and write: You piece together meaning component by component, and sometimes it is only in the end that the full picture snaps into place.

2. Filling in the Blanks

In this next example, a triangle will be perceived in picture A, although no triangle has actually been drawn. In pictures B and D the eye will recognize disparate shapes as “belonging” to a single shape, and in C a complete three-dimensional shape is seen, where in actuality no such thing is drawn. This is reification—the way we fill in the blanks to flesh out a complete idea.

The triangle may be easiest to see. The rest are helped by the language we used to name the objects. This is an example of the power of naming: By naming, we grant shape and form to the nameless things around us. Here, B is a black worm wrapped around a white pole; C shows a sphere covered in spikes, much like a mace; D is a snake or sea monster swimming through water, buried beneath the surface at two points.

Recognize that your mind can’t not see these images that way now — not without a supreme effort to break your own Gestalt grouping mechanism and unsee them. In the same way, it’s only through awareness that you can you break your mind’s habits and forge new ones.

3. Flexibility

Next is flexibility (which is technically called multistability). It is best illustrated by optical illusions like these two. Unlike the reification of an image or text, multistability requires flexibility. One must be able to see both the vase and the two faces; one must be able to see both the old lady and the young woman in the optical illusion located here; one must be able to see that Griffin in The Invisible Man is a victim and the villain, or that Romeo and Juliet are victims of fate and, at the same time, responsible for their own deaths; one must see both sides of an argument in order to defend one or the other. Nuance should be the word we keep in mind when we apply this concept to our study of writing, thinking, and reading.

As we move forward, keep the way we discussed these visual examples in your mind. We will move next into descriptive writing, where we will focus on metacognition and word choice.

  1. Title: The Dog. ↩

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Time to Understand

  By All Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 10 Regents (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

*Header image from the video for “The Horror,” a song by RJD2. 

Interstitial Discussion, Take Two

A week ago, I gave you this post:

Time Enough at Last

Over the week, the comment counter never moved from zero, which led me to rethink my approach. You need a space to ask questions about grade abatement, and it makes sense to make that space open to everyone — i.e., to give tenth graders the ability to hear the questions asked by AP students (and vice versa).

You should still use the comment section of the original post to ask questions about its contents. This post, however, is devoted solely to the GAP tiers you were given in class:

 

GAP Tiers

GAP Tiers

This document is the same for all levels and all students. Its application changes — obviously, AP students face higher standards than tenth graders — but the logic never does. Your job is to understand that logic.

How to Use This Post

We will talk in class this week about grade abatement, even as we move on to new units and assignments. In tenth grade, we’ll turn to descriptive writing; in eleventh grade, you’ll focus to varying extents on reading, empathy, and politics. You’ll have time to talk to me in class about GAP scoring and evidence during those studies. I’ll draw your attention to these tiers repeatedly. But you really need to start asking questions in an interstitial forum, where the questions are frozen next to my responses.

So your assignment is this: Ask questions about the tiers of grade abatement below. You should be able to sign in with Google+, which means you can link your questions to your school account. Regardless, make sure I know who you are. You will want this evidence for the end of the quarter.

This will force us to make this website work for us, which may take some tinkering on my end. Report any bugs as soon as you find them.

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Gathering Evidence: English 10

  By English 10 Regents (2016-2017)

Header image is one panel of Francis Bacon’s triptych, Three Studies For A Portrait Of Lucien Freud.

Preliminary Evidence

We’ll spend the first part of this week talking about evidence. Grade abatement is an evidentiary process, which means it is also objective and aggregate in nature. In other words, you begin with nothing, and over time you collect the evidence of a particular profile.

You can use the previous post to read more about GAP scoring, but I would suggest that you focus your attention on our in-class discussions, which we will continue online through this post. You are collecting evidence of your learning process from last week, when you read about empathy through this post and the article by Chad Fowler. Use the comments below to ask me questions about the evidence you’ve gathered before you submit it through Google Classroom.

We will set a deadline for this evidence based on what you manage to submit to Google Classroom on Monday. Focus on asking questions about the process; deadlines are important, but the process matters more.

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Time Enough at Last

  By All Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 10 Regents (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

*Header image from “Time Enough at Last,” an episode of The Twilight Zone. 

Daily Checklist

Here is the list of skills and traits assessed through grade abatement:

Triptych To-Do List

Triptych To-Do List

This is in the form of a daily checklist1. That image is the QR code embedded at the end of the checklist; if you activate it (here’s how), it takes you to an explanatory document:

Triptych Annotated

Triptych Annotated

That is an explanation of each of the elements of the checklist. Read it carefully. It is just one of the many guides available to you that explain these profiles:

GAP Tiers

GAP Tiers

That one, for instance, is crucial: It explains the four tiers of grade abatement, with notes on how to move from one to the other. You already have a single-sheet version of the profiles themselves; this is the set of directions you must follow to meet the requirements for each one.

How to Read This Post

You are being given all this, no matter which class you are taking, because

  1. reading complicated writing helps improve both skills;
  2. reading my explanations for these systems helps you enter a conversation about them;
  3. these are the guidelines for your quarterly score, no matter your age and ability level.

Take your time, read through these documents, and ask questions below. Think of this as a lecture, after which you are given time to ask questions; to say nothing means you understand all this perfectly, with no need for clarification. There are 140 of you this year. At least one of you needs clarification.

As questions are asked below, I’ll answer. Read those answers, too. AP students should take the lead here. Tenth graders might do more lurking. Everyone has an equal stake, however, and I expect some back-and-forth to emerge quickly this week.

  1. If you missed the hard copy last week, see me in class. Remember that we are aiming for a responsively paperless classroom; these documents are certainly important enough to be printed. ↩

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The Brain Unfolding

  By All Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 10 Regents (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

The Assignment1

Your success in this course depends on the work you do. That’s obvious — and true of any class — but you already have a sense that we learn differently. In here, your success depends on evidence.

In the opening-day materials you are (still) reading, you should have come across these documents:

The profiles will be the subject of many lessons as we move forward. That last document will be revised and adapted for you, and it will dictate how you structure your learning. Note that it has sections for “internal artifacts” and “external artifacts” — i.e., the stuff you make. Some of that making happens inside you. Some of it happens externally, through essays, conversations, etc.

We’re going to focus for a day or two on the easiest way to meld the internal and external stuff of growth. To put it another way: This is how to succeed in here. Load the following:

That Google Form gives you questions and prompts that are metacognitive or reflective in nature. You shouldn’t need more than one or two 40-minute chambers, as we’re defining your learning time, to evaluate last week’s learning, from the schoolwide activities on Friday to the contents of the course syllabus.

You will notice that there is a minimum character count for each answer. If you don’t meet that minimum requirement, you can’t hand in the assignment. This is not a class where your work is checked in mindlessly; you need to gain something from every assignment, and only by writing enough can you start to dig into some useful metacognition.

Be mindful, too. This is your first real interaction with the materials of the course, and you are delivering those thoughts and insights directly to me through an interstitial mechanism. That’s a complicated way of saying that this is your first written impression.

Ask questions below, if they arise, and make sure you mark the assignment done through Google Classroom when you’ve finished.

  1. What exactly is the look that Tesla is giving the camera in that picture? Why does it feel like he’s staring into my soul? ↩

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Orientation: September 7, 2016

  By All Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 10 Regents (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

After all this time1, you know what to expect from this first day of school. You know what mixture of exhaustion and nervousness and excitement you’ll have. You know you’ll see a half-dozen course syllabuses and classroom expectations. You might do an icebreaker or two. Usually it all blurs together, because (barring variations in clip art), it’s just another variation on the rules, regulations, and grading policies that you’ve seen since middle school.

Our course will hit many of the same notes, but the tune is going to be quite different before we’re done. Or, to switch to a culinary metaphor:

Molecular Learning

That links to a Medium essay I wrote last year to explain the course you are now taking. It is the first of three essays in this opening post. None of these essays is required — more on how assignments work in a second — but they all will help you with the most important step you can take over the next few days: getting to know your teacher.

The written word is the primary means of instruction here, and these opening-day materials are your first lessons. You must read carefully, because I have written carefully, and in the writing are the answers to questions and concerns you haven’t even had yet. The writing will also model strategies and techniques for you. It will tell you a lot about my style and personality, too, which is just as important at this early stage.

Course Syllabus

You’ll notice that this post addresses all of you, whether you are enrolled in AP Language as a junior or taking English 10. This collective address will be rare as we move forward — note the menu that lets you select your class posts above — but you need to recognize that you share this digital space. That’s no different from sharing our physical space, and you’ll see soon enough how important it is to pay attention to the needs and impact of those folks.

This is all by design. All English instruction address the same universal skills and traits, and you develop those traits in the same sequence. There is much to gain from observing what your peers do, even if you are not given the same assignments. And when there is opportunity for alignment or collaboration, you’ll gain much from talking to each other.

Whenever you load this website, you should use the menu at the top of the page to look for class-specific lessons and feedback. If a post isn’t tagged for your course, you can still read it, but it’s not required. This is the digital equivalent of homework or notes written on a chalkboard.

Load your specific course syllabus below:

Read your syllabus over the next few days. Let me know immediately if one of the links is broken, won’t open, or leads to the wrong syllabus; errors are almost guaranteed in this kind of extensive, interstitial writing, and I’ll need your help to correct them.

Google Classroom

Your assignments will always be sectioned out by class period and posted to Google Classroom. You must register for the right section to see those assignments, of course:

  • Period 2 [AP Lang. & Comp.] — joqb9v
  • Period 4 [English 11] — 21n73p
  • Period 5 [English 10] — 15wtqr
  • Period 7 [AP Lang. & Comp.] — s1epxu
  • Period 9 [English 11] — 1y60dxk

Use those codes to register for Google Classroom. If you have never used Classroom before, enlist a peer or talk to your teacher about what to do. Right now, each classroom stream is empty; on Thursday, you’ll get your first reading and writing assignments.

A Typical 24 Hours

As you complete your first assignments and work with me and your peers, you will experience firsthand what the typical day in here looks like. You will see what each part of the interstitial classroom is for and learn more about how grade abatement functions. You’ll begin to learn what the interstitial classroom and grade abatement are.

You learn by doing in here. To help clarify what a typical day looks like, however, you should read this essay:

Circadian Dynamics

This is the basic idea of how each day’s period works. The background lessons and texts are provided outside of class, which frees us up to do more with these brief 39 minutes. We might circle up some days; we might talk in groups or meet individually; we might take practice tests or take a shot at timed writing. Without grades, there is enormous freedom to do what is needed, and you will direct most of the lessons yourself.

Your job, then, is to know what you are doing each day and to waste no time in doing it. That is the most important part of this course: When we are together in our classroom, you must be ready to work.

The interstitial/online elements are there to support this (and to make the Sisyphean grind of high school a little more manageable). Grade abatement is there to free you and empower you. Still, technology is only a tool. There is no replacement for the learning that occurs through discussion and collaboration when you share a learning environment with someone.

This essay explains more about how crucial our face-to-face work is:

Head Training: The 36th Chamber

(It also lets me reference Wu-Tang and Grindhouse kung-fu movies, which is important stuff.)

If nothing else, I want you to be able to answer these two questions each and every day:

  1. What are you working on?
  2. How can I help you?

If you can’t answer either, that will be an issue, because you will always have work to do. If you believe you’ve discovered a day without work, let me know, because you are wrong.

This week, you might need time to go over the syllabus with me. You might need help setting up your Google account. Or you might know that you need to do your first writing assignment in class, because you won’t do it at home over the weekend.

You face no risk right now, so ask questions and try things out. The more you experiment and the harder you work over these first few days, the easier you will find it to begin generating evidence for your grade abatement profiles — a concept that will be second nature to you soon enough.

  1. Look to The Onion, as always, for some perspective on that time. ↩