Kevin Berlin

Blog

In today's class, we worked on annotating our song, monologue, etc. The song I chose to use for this assignment is Dreams by J cole. I chose this song because the lyrics really do tell a good story. So detailed you could probably write a movie about it. The song is about one girl he really liked but he barely even knew her that well, which is why he questions himself throughout the song as to whether he’s crazy or not. Throughout the beginning of the song, J Cole talks about how much he likes this girl. However, because he doesn´t really know her he can't find a way to talk to her. Towards the middle of the song J Cole talks about how he followed her home, just because he was curious to where she lives. Including other things that most people would consider strange behavior, that he thinks is justified. For example; ¨ Oh s***, she passed me on the boulevard
Ay, tell me is it stalking if I follow her like all the way home without her knowing?
Nah, n****, I'm just curious where she stay at
Besides when I'm with her, this gon' be the spot we lay at
And maybe I'll just drive by occasionally¨
   
    At the end of the song, J cole talks about how his dream girl is now with a new guy. He than sings about his plans to kill the new guy to make sure he isn't going to be replaced. The song lyrics are; ¨ So I find out the n**** name, know exactly where he stayin'
Find out when he leave for work, "Hold up n****, is you sane?"
I'mma follow in my car; I'mma cut in front of his
Run him right into the wall, maybe even off the bridge
I give her a little time, then console her while she crying
She gon' take that as a sign; finally she will be mine
I'll be king, and she'll be queen when I hit her with ring
At the wedding, who gon' sing?


https://d39smchmfovhlz.cloudfront.net/TQMUBtJZExokysL1qXeIxW9v6MAAeaMuCvQ7uT0MHFLwOsni.pdf

Jaxon Mase 3/30

         Today class was 20 minuets long due to the PARCC testing schedule. We looked at the poem “Let America be America again” by Langston Hughes. We have been dissecting this poem using SOAPSTone.

S- speaker

O- occasion

A- audience

P- purpose

S- subject

T- tone

SOAPSTone is very helpful for looking deep into pieces of literature to see what the author is using and how they are using it to display their perspective.

We then used Kami (an online interactive group based website) to dissect the poem together and get feedback from other students. It is a very helpful and fun way to improve each other with constructive criticism and analyzation. LINK - https://web.kamihq.com/web/viewer.html

We then went on to improve on the claims our groups had made on the poem "Let America be America Again". We used SOAPSTone to analyze the poem further and improve on the claims about what Hughes is talking about and how he uses his background of living in the great depression of America in the 1930's. I personally greatly improved my claim using SOAPSTone. Creating three different claims was interesting because it was awkward rewording it but it gave me good options rather than just one when it comes to deciding the best one.

"Make America be America Again"

Callie Bevacqua 3/30

Today we had a shortened class period because of the Parcc testing schedule. In this class we have been learning the process of analysis with using S.O.A.P.S.Tone. THis has been very helpful for me and understanding what I am reading on a deeper level.  We have also been reminded to use literary devices to help us.

S- speaker

O- occasion

A- audience

P- purpose

S- subject

T- tone

We have been dissecting a poem by Langston Hughes called, “Let America be America again” with our group members. Mr. Rivers has given us a great resource called Kami; which displays the poem online, and you can annotate it. Mr. RIvers assigned each group with a different component of Soapstone. My group was assigned with Speaker. We had to annotate the poem and find speaker qualities. Then we had to make a claim. My group’s claim was; The speaker has grown up in America, disappointed in the tragedy's he has witnessed, and has high hopes for the equality in America's future.

Next we met with other groups and we put our claim ideas together. When my group and another put Speaker and Tone together we came up with; The Author Langston Hughes has an angry and disappointed emotion towards America considering he has grown up witnessing many tragedies. When my group and another put Tone and Occasion together we came up with; The Author Langston Hughes feels hope for America throughout the Great Depression.   

Alexis Reeder 3/30/17

Today in class we strengthened our claims by focusing on not only the speaker but the tone, occasion and purpose. We focused on how to turn our claims into a good strong essay. We also worked with other groups who focused on different SOAPS and combined our claims to make strong topic sentences. The goal for today is to make 3 strong claims about the poem using these:

• Your claim with one lens
• Claim with two lens

• Claim with two lense

In my group we came up strong claims such as:

My claim:

America gleams on the outside but tarnished on the inside.

Purpose in Occasion:

Langston Hughes wrote his poem “Let America be America Again” during times of turmoil known as the Great Depression in which he uses polysyndeton and anaphora to emphasize irony in calling America “the homeland of the free” in times of such desperation for different minority groups.

Purpose in Tone:

In his poem “Let America be America Again” Langston Hughes establishes his goal to call attention to the irony in calling America “the homeland of the free” criticizing and disapproving of America during this time period through the use of polysyndeton and anaphora.

Kevin Berlin

Blog

In today's class, we focused more on SOAPSTones. We started off reflecting on our responses to the google class assignment from yesterday. My group thought that the best claims were made by Nadir and Hannah because they were arguable and detailed, giving enough information to support their claims. Mr. Rivers showed Nadir’s response to the class and together we analyzed it. His claim in his response is “Langston Hughes writes this to give the people hope that America will one day be as great as people claim it to be.”
This is an effective claim because it can be argued and supported with evidence. Another response that we went over as a class was Kayla’s. Her response included literary terms along with rhetorical devices. The final response we went over together was Hannah’s. Her response showed excellent diction and established tone.

After this, Mr. Rivers put two sentences on the board and asked the class the difference between them. “America should be more equal.” and “ Hughes argues that America should be more equal.”  The differences between these sentences is that one is a rhetorical analysis and the other is just a claim.

At the end of class, the students got in groups to try and create more claims using this information. The more claims you have, the more arguments you are able to make.

  

March 28, 2017

Jess Esso

Today in class we started off by getting a new website that allows us to use different tools to annotate and read different pieces of material as a class.  It is much like google docs but yet also different at the same time.  This website is called Kami.  first we downloaded it to our google accounts so we can access it from any computer wherever we are so that we always have our classroom material at our disposal.  Then with the second link that Mr. Rivers posted we went to a shared document with the entire class.  Mr. Rivers then proceeded to show us how this cite worked and the different tools that can be used to help us annotate our document as then groups instead of a class.  There are tools that allow you to create text boxes, one that allow us to draw on the document, one that allows us to erase things we don’t want there (even the text itself) we then went on to soapstone the poem we looked at last friday, “let america be america today again” by Langston Hughes  and using Kami, we as a class proceeded to soapstone this document.  Each group got a different device and had to annotate the document based upon which device we received on the card Mr. Rivers gave to us.  After this we came back together as a class and picked out the main literary device we have been using the past couple of weeks such as : parallel structure, anaphora, polysyndeton, rhyme, personification,  all of the devices that we have been working with to help us more fully understand soapstone.  

Kayla Edwards 3/27

Today for class we continued learning about rhetorical analysis. We first reviewed SOAP and then talked about STone. An important thing to help differentiate between purpose and subject when doing a rhetorical analysis is that purpose is what the text does. So, the purpose is described using verbs. The subject is a thing that the text is talking about so it should be a noun. Tone is the attitude the author has about the subject. The best way to figure out the tone is to look at the diction used by the author. Diction is just a word that means the word choice used by the author. When talking about word choice it is important to know the difference between connotation and denotation. Denotation is the dictionary definition of a word. Connotation is the social perception of the word. To illustrate the difference between denotation and connotation we looked at the difference between the terms "jock" and "student athlete". Both jock and student athlete have the same denotation because they mean the same thing: a student that plays sports. However, student athlete has a more positive connotation because when you hear student athlete you think of a hard working athletic and smart kid. Jock on the other hand has a negative connotation because when you hear jock you think of a very strong person who has no brains. Next when identifying tone, instead of referring to the tone as positive or negative, you have to make it more specific. This can be done by thinking of more specific adjectives to describe the author's attitude about the text.