Megan Lynch, September 30, 2016

Today in class Mr. Rivers was absent, however Ms. Dalia was there to give us practice with what we have been learning. Lately we have been going over literary and rhetorical devices or readings. We have learned that literary normally goes along with a story, and rhetorical is intended to persuade someone to something. Today to help us understand these devices we read a primary source document from the 1700s. This document was titled, "Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God" by Jonathan Edwards. This was a religious reading, it was written during a time where religion played a prominent part in everyone's life, and at the time people didn't always think for themselves. In the 18th century not a lot of people were educated, and were not really courageous enough to have their own thoughts, and speak up if something like this reading was all they knew. Edwards used his writing to create fear in his audience. We discussed in class how there was no logos, which is a rhetorical device, in this type of writing. He was biased however, he did go to Yale University for religious education, which gave the document ethos. We even found that there was religious allusions in this document. Not to be confused with "illusion", that means he further provided credibility to what he was saying by quoting the bible. An example of that wold be, “All that we can possibly say about it, gives but a very feeble, faint representation of it; it is inexpressible and inconceivable: For ‘who knows the power of God’s anger?’ “ from Psalm 90. There was also plenty of literary devices that we found in this document. For instance this piece of imagery, "We find it easy to tread on and crush a worm that we see crawling on the earth". After reading the whole document and scouting out devices we answered 5 out of the 8 questions on the last page of the pdf to practice without the help of a teacher identifying devices and how they are used in writing to create emotion with the audience. 

Example of the fear Edwards created to make people at the time always have god on mind.

9/30/16 - Elias Frieling

Today Mr. Rivers wasn't here, and we had Allen fill in as a substitute. Because of this we read a speech, Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God, by Jonathan Edwards. This was a very angry speech in which he is pretty much telling everyone they will burn in hell. Despite this, Edwards used lots of good literary and rhetorical devices to describe exactly how bad it will be burn in hell for eternity. This is especially true if they are Ben and vandalize things. The assignment is for us to work with our group and find 3 examples of literary or rhetorical devices, and write the answers on google classroom. Our group's examples were, 1. "...his wrath towards you burns like fire..." -simile. 2. "It is EVERLASTING wrath" -hyperbole. 3. "...with their hearts filled with love..." -imagery/metaphor. In all of these examples, Edwards uses literary devices to further describe the afterlife in hell after a life full of soon. In addition using what we learned yesterday it can be concluded that this speech is rhetoric as it does not tell a narrative, but is used to convince people not to sin by describing what happens if you don't.

Presentations

Shannon Kehoe
9/29/16
 During class today we continued with our presentations of devices that we use when we write.  The group that went today was Callie, Kayla, John and Kevin.  The first term that they introduced to us was an apostrophe. An apostrophe is when you give a nonexistent person or an object feelings making it seem like it could understand them.  An example of an apostrophe is when a person yells at their phone to work.  The next term was euphony.  Euphony is when there is a sentence and it has a euphoric sound to it.   An example of euphony would be the lullaby twinkle twinkle little star because the sounds and letters used in this lullaby sound very euphoric to the ear.  The next term is onomatopoeia.  An onomatopoeia is when a word  imitates the natural sound of something.  An example of an onomatopoeia is the bee was buzzing very loud.  The next term is polysydeton. A polysyndeton  is when you repeat a conjunction to emphasize the point.  The last term is alliteration.  An alliteration  is when you repeat letters or sounds in a sentence or sentences.  And example of an alliteration would be Peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,  the "P" sound is what is being repeated.

Conjunctiony Function

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4AyjKgz9tKg

Today in English Class, September 28, 2016

Nadir Hassan
Mr. Rivers/Ms. Dalia
English CP 11
28 September 2016

What Truly Occurred Today in English Class

Today started like any other day. We sat down at our respective desks with our Chromebooks. Everyone was talking about their day while preparing for English class by turning on their laptops and opening their notebooks. Then, we continued the Literary Toolbox Assignment. It went great! We finished up yesterday's presentation (See Sarah's post for notes). Then it was my group's turn to present. We went up to the front of the room as everyone stared. We loaded up the presentation and went through our five words (see below google classroom titled "Literary Toolbox" for all words). After presenting, Mr. Rivers talked to our group about our presentation and we split up to join different groups to help other people in case they were confused with any of the words. After sitting there awkwardly while the intelligent group zipped through coming up with examples, we were sent back up to analyze the examples. We went through the examples of all five words we were assigned. Our class is crazy. Whether it be from salt and vinegar pringles (There is a mini-debate on salt and vinegar chips vs. sour cream and onion chips, salt and vinegar chips was admitted the winner despite Mr. Rivers' cries for sour cream and onion) to Ludacris, the class was able to come up with, for the most part, correct and accurate examples for each of the words. We ended class today going through the examples that were made and talked about The Shining (The mini poster in the back of the room was a great example of anaphora and Anna and Mr. Rivers got in a mini-debate on where The Shining was created, Colorado or Oregon? To be honest, I do not really know, but it was a great movie that I highly recommend to everyone!). All in all, it was a jubilant English class that never fails to be a bore. 

Sarah Haag

September 27th, 2016

• Reviewing literary terms from yesterday (September 26th)
• Simile
• Comparing something using like or as
• “You're as cuddly as a cactus, you’re as charming an eel"
• Foreshadowing
• Giving a hint of what's to come to the audience.
• The witches in Macbeth givies him his prophecy showing him and the audience what is to come in the play
• Oxymoron
• A figure of speech in which two with of opposite meanings are combined; ALWAYS two phrases
• Jumbo shrimp
• Assonance
• repetition of a vowel sound
• “I must plea, a tree is free if you see where you hit your knee."
• Rhetorical question
• A question asked without expecting an answer
• Are you kidding me?
• Next group
• Antithesis
• Literal meaning of opposite
• Love and hate
• Situational irony
• Has effect that is the opposite of what is intended
• A marriage counselor files for a divorce
• Personification
• A thing, an idea, or an animal that is given human attributes
• The cat cried
• The ink bled
• Paradox
• A statement that contradicts itself, or that must be true and untrue at the same time
• Less is more
• It’s a giant shrimp

• Metaphor
• A figure of speech without using like or as
• Cause, baby, you’re a firework
• We reflect and try to make examples on our own.
• Different group
• Anadiplosis
• Repetition in the first part of a sentence of a constantly used wrd from the later part of the sentence or a future sentence
• Fear leads to hate, hate leads violence
• Cacophony
• The use of words with sharp harsh unmelodious sounds
• Imagery
• Visually descriptive language in writing
• Her blue eyes were as bright as the sun, blue as the sky, but soft as silk
• Parallelism
• The repetition of a similar or identical words or sentence structures to give pattern and rhythm to literary work.
• Asyndeton
• A sentence that does not use conjunctions
• I came, i saw, i conquered

I learned that literary devices can help explain what you are trying to achieve in saying/describing.

Jess Esso  - 9/26/16

So today in class we started off talking about taking good effective notes just like class everyday.  Taking good effective notes in today's class was crucial for us not just as a class but as a student to be successful.  After the usual start to class we went on to talk about where we lett off on Friday.  Being on out groups we got 5 literary devices and we had to define them, and give examples of that device.  We went on to continue our work in our groups to start off about 25 minutes.  After those 25 minutes were up we started in a group decision about how these literary devices will be used throughout all of our time together this year.  Then going one group at a time we went on to present each of our words to the class so that not only us as individuals would be experts at them but everyone in the class as well.  We started off with the five words: simile, foreshadowing, oxymoron, assonance, and a rhetorical question.  Being as each one of these devices has a specific definition I will give them now.
Simile : comparing 2 dissimilar figurative things using "like" or "as"
Foreshadowing : when the writer gives hints or clues to what's coming later in the story
Oxymoron : two things that are opposite combine to always make a two-word phrase
Assonance : the repetition of a sound or vowel on non-rhyming syllables
Rhetorical question : a question you as without expecting an answer (no or no obvious answer)

This is an example of a simile, a representation of comparing two figurative things using "as"

From here on in the class we went on in our own groups again to come up with examples of our won for each device to make sure that we fully understood the meaning of each device to become experts.
We only got threw one group today, and I'm sure we will go back to it tomorrow, and right after this the bell rang and our time together was over.

Thanks for reading I hope it helped on your journey in today's class.

Kayla Edwards 9/23/16

Today in class, we started our first non-introductory unit. For our next unit we will be doing rhetorical analysis. This means we will be breaking down an authors argument and we will be making sense of them. This is similar to how we studied Malcolm Gladwell's argument in the outliers about how opportunity and legacy help become successful and how nobody actually comes from nothing. However, in order to do so we need to know and understand the language to do it. So, we began a class PowerPoint on literary devices, called the literary toolbox. Each group of tables got a list of 5 words to define. Then we had to look up an example and make up and example of our own. However we are not allowed to divide the words up among the table. We have to work on each word together so we all understand them. The words I got are apostrophe, euphony, onomatopoeia, polysyndeton, and Alliteration. This project is good because today I learned that an apostrophe is not only used as the grammar sign ', it is also a word that means when you tell at an inanimate object, like for example if I were to yell at my phone, "damn you phone, you're so slow". I found this interesting  because I do that all the time. However, it made me angry that they would call this an apostrophe when the word apostrophe is already used as the name of the symbol used to show possession. Then this made me think of how that must be confusing for people who's native language is not English. At my table we talked about euphonies and tried to make some. Callie's example was "peanut butter and jelly" however because just because the things are nice and delicious doesn't mean the words are. A good example would be "the humming bird floated in the air"

http://literaryterms.net

John DePreker 9/22/16

John DePreker
9/22/16
Blog

Success Summative (50 points)

Select someone successful: Is that person successful because of their individual efforts or because of legacy and/or opportunity?

• Please integrate evidence from reputable sources to support your claims.
• Include a link to any digital resources at the bottom of your essay.

      

        Today in class, students were assigned the following directions. Having said this, we all got to work picking people that were successful and researching them online for evidence or having             pre-researched which was advised. In my own personal writing, I choose the most well know hip hop artist of our generation, Drake. Now to me, drake perfectly fits the position for this prompt. I mean, he made $40 million last year alone... not to mention 15 tracks on the Billboards top 100!

    

                          In our essays, we were expected to write papers including the following:

• Introduction
• Claim
• Evidence
• Conclusion
• Work cited 
• Correct punctuation    

     As well as incorporating all of this, you were faced with the decision to prove whether the person you choose was successful individually or because of the efforts of others or opportunity. In my case drake seemed to get successful his own way, because his music brought him to where he is now and the music he makes are to show for it. After concluding your essay you are to put any and all links into the paper that you used to compose the essay. After composing all period, eventually sharing the document with Mr. Rivers had brought us to the bell.                                              

practice blog? maybe..

Aloha - HN

Callie bevacqua 9/21/16

Callie Bevacqua
Wednesday, September 21


                   Todays class was shortened due to the activity schedule for the book chat.

1. Mr.Rivers opened the class with a discussion about the summer reading book chat. 

A chart was put on the board of what worked about the book chat and what didn't. He asked us our feelings about it. We discussed that although some students didn't read their whole books, it was still not a terrible experience. It worked because we as students were not forced to read a specific book for a grade and the teachers weren't forced to discuss a book they didn't enjoy teaching. The reason I enjoyed this style of summer reading is because as students we have it drilled into our heads that we only do an assignment if it is graded, however we were given a long list of books just to read as a learning interest for pleasure. I sure hope the summer reading remains this way in the future!

Here is a summer reading statistic^^^^^^^^^^^^^

    2.  Mr.Rivers reviewed the summative for Thursday.

The summative is an argumentative essay about a specific person's legacy that leaded them to success through motivation and opportunities. The class asked questions such as if there should be a works cited page and if the specific person can be a family member. There should be a works cited in the sense that the quotes should have in text citations and the website links should also be included in the end. In text citations should include the title of the article in quotations and author both in parenthesis. The person should most likely be well known because we have to find specific evidence. Personally I will be confident in this essay as long as I get my pre writing done!

    3.  We practiced evidence as a class

In our class groups we integrated evidence from the given topic sentence; Coffee can offer people a variety of health benefits. We first Introduced the quote, then cited it, then we did the analysis. The analysis connects the topic sentence to the evidence.

Kevin Berlin

9/20/16
Blog

In today's class, we started off learning about how to have a good blog. We went over 6 guidelines to keep in mind when writing a blog to make it the best it can be. The 6 guidelines include; adding your personal reaction/ point of view, give detailed description, make connections with your audience, use strong verbs, speak in first person, and add multimedia. After we stopped talking about blogs, we went into our lesson on strengthening our claims and thesis by integrating evidence. Mr. Rivers used one of his previous students introduction about star wars to show us what a good and effective introduction is suppose to look like.

“Despite Star Wars: The Phantom Menace’s superior creation of believable action scenes, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope ultimately serves to create a more expansive and believable science fiction story through the interactions between its characters, coupled with its superior use of lighting and colors to assist in characterization.”

We learned that an introduction should include a strong thesis, a claim, at least one active verb, and establishes the topics. For practice at the end of class, we joined our table members and created a thesis about legacy and opportunity. My table wrote something along the lines of legacy is what leads you to success from your opportunities and motivation. Mr. Rivers then advised us to start our pre-writing for our upcoming “success summative” that will be written during class on Thursday.

Our Class Blog

Hey, Gang!

Welcome to our class blog. I realize that it looks pretty empty right now, but that's where YOU come in! You will be responsible for filling this blog with quality writing! Someone in our class will be responsible for posting a blog by 10pm EACH NIGHT! 

A Quality Blog...

• Reflects on the work that we have done in class that day (including objectives and inquiries)
• Uses titles, paragraphs, and stylistic choices to compose a clear and specific account of our day
• Draws in SPECIFIC examples from individual experiences/activities (including your first name and last intial (e.g. Bilbo B.) 
• Includes some form of media (image, YouTube video, etc.) that connects to what we talked about in class

FINE PRINT:

Your blogging will make up your entire homework grade. Each post will be worth 5 points for its ability to accomplish the objectives above. Blogs posted after 10pm on the day they are due will lose 1 point, and after midnight they will lose 2. Please be proactive with the schedule; if you have to work on Thursday and are scheduled to post on Thursday, then talk to another student (AND ME) about switching spots on the official calendar. Please make sure that you post in the proper class. Don't forget to click PUBLISH!

To login and post your blog, follow the instructions on the YouTube Video.