Week 9 Syllabus: October 14

“WITHIN HIM WAS RAGING A WHOLE MOB… of desires.” So describes Gorky, portraying the transformational greed that strikes Gabriel. What hold does greed have over us? How does greed transform both Gabriel and Chelkash—both of them? Why is Chelkash so offended by Gabriel’s request for all the money? Why does Gabriel strike out and nearly kill Chelkash? And in the end, why does Chelkash come to despise Gabriel, and yet gives everything to him in the end? Finally, what does Gorky want us to know about humanity, via the description of nature in the last paragraph?

MONDAY, October 14

• Small group discussion groups, working on study guide questions on the introduction and part one of “Chelkash.” Answers do require direct quotes, punctuated appropriately.

• Re-listening to the “blue sword” passage in part two, and writing an answer to the discussion question posted in Canvas.

• Once done, we will listen to the ending of our story, part three, together in class.

• HW: Write an answer to the “blue sword” discussion question on Canvas. By class on Wednesday, you should have a) finished the first eight study guide questions, b) finished posting your “blue sword” comment in Canvas, and c) finished reading AND annotating “Chelkash.”

WEDNESDAY, October 16

• Crossword day! Bring on the vocabulary….

• HW: Have 30 clues solved by class on Thursday. I am collecting annotations to “Chelkash” in class on Thursday.

THURSDAY, October 17

• Guide to the parts of speech, online here.

• Small group review of parts of speech. We will watch the following, short video about verbs.

• Reading “Those Who Walk Away from Omelas.”

• HW: re-read “Omelas,” picking out a) physical descriptions of the people, b) physical descriptions of the city, c) descriptions of their culture, and d) specific, concrete nouns or active verbs that LeGuin uses to create this imaginary world.

Week 8 Syllabus: October 7

CLOSE READING requires that you very carefully, and slowly, examine what the author describes in detail. We will practice doing this with “Chelkash.” Gorky is a great writer, in part, because he’s thought a lot about imagery and symbolism. For example, in his introduction, the Odesa dock workers are menial, suffering workers who are crushed beneath the shipping company’s inhumane treatment. We see them “toiling” for a few, meager crusts of bread, oppressed by fellow humans and nature itself. All is ruined by the greed of consumption! Likewise, Chelkash is described as a fox, a predator who takes advantage of the weak and innocent, stealing from them to feed his insatiable hunger for gold, more valuables, more food.

MONDAY, October 7

• Posting your paragraph on Forster’s “The Machine Stops” into our classroom blog.

• More closely examining the imagery in the introduction to Gorky’s “Chelkash.”

• Then reading part one, wherein we see Chelkash described in great detail. He will meet a country bumkin (or rube)—a young, innocent farmer who travels to Odesa to make money, so he can purchase his own farm and marry the wealthy girl he loves.

• HW: Read through the paragraphs on our blog. We will revise these in class, Wednesday night. Our focus will be VERBS. Which writers are better at using verbs? Which overly rely upon the “to be” forms: is, am, are, was, were, have, has, had, could, would, should, be, being, been, do, doing, does?

• Also finish reading part one of Chelkash.

WEDNESDAY, October 9

• Revisiting verbs as a part of speech (and the predicate, the part of sentence that describes the action/being the noun is/does).

• Revising your paragraphs, changing THREE simple predicates to action-verbs.

• HW: In class tomorrow, we will dive deeper into subject/predicate, improving your ability to identify that part of the sentence(s). We will then also work on revision.

• Make sure you’ve finished part one of “Chelkash” for class. We will create a characterization focusing upon VERBS.

THURSDAY, October 10

• Shortened day due to late start.

• Short, concise review of subject/predicate rules via this video. We will start at minute 3:10.

• Revision expectations for the machine paragraphs, due Monday.

• Returning to part two of Chelkash. Here’s audio for our story!

• HW: Finish reading part two. Where are the symbols that Gorky uses in this part of the story, their journey into the bay, and the successful theft of goods?

• Also revise THREE “to be” helping/linking verb out of your paragraph, and repost the new version as a comment to your original post.

"The Machine Stops" Paragraphs

Post your paragraph on E.M. Forster’s short story here, as a comment to this blog entry. If you have any issues posting these, keep a screen shot of the issue you’ve encountered. We will revise the verbs in these during class Wednesday night.

Remember, your paragraph needs to take a stand on one side of the issue: Are machines helpful or harmful to society? Include a direct quote from the story, and an indirect quote from either the film Modern Times or Wall-E. You CAN acknowledge the other view, but do not “split the baby down the middle” in a Solomon-esque manner.

The above image, a still from Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, will take you to the audio to Forester’s 1909 short story.

New Trier Statement on Importance of Reading Literature

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Week 7 Syllabus: September 30

MARGINAL ANNOTATONS SHOULD REFLECT THE READERS dialogue with the text about meaning. For narrative works, that includes your questions about what you’re reading: questions of clarification and questions that develop your thinking. Readers should write out their observations about the theme within the story, identifying and explaining a passage’s importance—be that a character conflict, a symbolic description, or an extended metaphor that develops the writer’s theme. There are lots of ways to annotate. Most importantly, you should practice engaging your reading in a dialogue. What do you notice? What is the writer doing? What would good readers notice, and what do they think it means?

MONDAY, September 30

• Discussion of the short story, “The Machine Stops.” Who is responsible for the downfall of society?

• HW: Write an answer to question #4 on the last page of our short story. I will collect your annotations on “The Machine Stops” for class on Wednesday.

WEDNESDAY, October 2

• Returning to the Machine crossword for a bit, while I collect annotations from the story.

• Second half of class, reading, re-reading, and re-re-reading the introduction to the Maxim Gorky short story, “Chelkash".” Annotating for language that describes nature, objects, and people respectively, each reading. The audio for the story is here.

• HW: When class resumes on Monday, we will work on the worksheets on the introduction and part one. We’ll also read part two and complete a worksheet on part two.

Selections from Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times"

Watch the selected scenes from Chaplin’s masterpiece. As you watch, study the film and look for the relationship between machine’s and the title character.

Film Clip from Pixar's "Wall-E"

Click on the image above to watch a scene from Wall-E. Where, in the clip, do you see overtones and themes from Forster’s “The Machine Stops”?

Week 6 Syllabus: September 23

HOW DOES VASHTI’S EXPERIENCE ALLIGN WITH CAMPBELL’S hero journey? And her son’s, Kuno’s experience? There may be within any story multiple heroes, and multiple journeys which do or do not conform the the monomyth in varying degrees. Both Vashti and Kuno experience clear departures from the known world, moving into the unknown. Likewise, both experience a symbolic death-and-rebirth in a cave/tunnel like darkness—Vashti in the airship, travelling to see her son, and Kuno in the air-tubes that lead to Earth’s surface. However, neither return to the known world with an “elixer,” or new knowledge that saves either society or humanity. In fact, everyone dies! What, then, should we learn from this story without final truth?

MONDAY, September 23

• Checking in homework, study guide to “The Machine Stops.”

• Reading and annotating a New Yorker essay by Oliver Sacks, “The Machine Stops.” What argument is Sacks making about technology?

• Writing a discussion response in Canvas using direct and indirect evidence.

• Reviewing results from the STAR reading test, and how to interpret that data.

• HW: Read through other classmate’s responses. What did they capture that you missed? What did you add to the conversation that they missed?

WEDNESDAY, September 25

• Read and annotate Brautigan’s poem, “All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace.” We will do that by reading it aloud three times, first just to listen to, second time to take notes on what you notice, and the third time to look for patterns.

• What argument does Brautigan make about technology? In class discussion (NOT Great Books method). Add to your annotations.

• HW: Post your answer to the discussion thread in Canvas on the poem. After posting, read other scholars’ responses.

THURSDAY, September 26

• In the first half of class, watching selections from Charlie Chaplain’s epic quasi-silent film, Modern Times. We will start by reading an introduction to the film, written by Roger Ebert.

• In the second half of class, watching selection of the film Wall-E.

• Reading a poem, “Poem 114: Machines” by Michael Donaghy.

• Then, wordplay! In small groups, working on the crossword.

• HW: Finish your annotations and the Q&A on “The Machine Stops” for class on Tuesday.

Week 5 Syllabus: September 16

HAVING FINISHED ALL THE ADMINISTRIVIA of classroom expectations, the academic integrity policy, and the STAR reading assessment, and having covered our classroom routines in respect to classroom discussions, submitting, discussing and revising our writing, we can get into our short story unit. We are starting with a 100+ year old science-fiction story by the great English author E.M. Forster, author of A Passage to India. We will examine the story through the lens of Campbell’s hero journey, while practicing our annotation techniques: a) circling vocabulary, b) writing our questions, and c) taking written notes on the HJ and its parts in margins. Later we will read “Chelkash” by the Russian author Gorky, LeGuin’s classic “Those Who Walk Away from Omelas,” and others.

MONDAY, September 16

• Lecture on annotating, carefully re-reading the last two pages of part one. What are the allusions to “blind”ness, humanity’s cultural history, and the grandeur of nature?

• Re-reading part one with the audio and annotating together.

• In small groups, students will begin working on the study guide questions.

• HW: Finish the study guide questions for part one on your own, typing them up. These will be submitted on Canvas once we are done with the entire story.

Grover explains the concept of "near" and "far," two ideas that Kuno has grasped.

WEDNESDAY, September 18

• Students will listen to part two of the story, “The Machine Stops.”

• In small groups (or individually), students will begin working on the study guide for part two.

• On the passage, “man is the measure of all things…”

• HW: Finish the study guide questions on part two.

• Spend 45 minutes this weekend working on the crossword. No more time, no less. You MAY work with other scholars (or those not enrolled in our class)

THURSDAY, September 19

• As we did with part one, we will examine a selection from part two for close reading and analysis.

• Q&A around parts one and two. Something you didn’t understand? Want to know more about?

• Moving into part three. Once done, we will work on the study guides.

• HW: Study guide is due in Canvas on Monday.

Audio for the E.M. Forster story, "The Machine Stops"

Week 4 Syllabus: September 9

JOSEPH CAMPBELL’S MONOMYTH was first presented in his book The Hero with 1,000 Faces. He describes many of the common features of myths from around the world, building on his work with Carl Jung (who developed the idea of archetypes) and Jung’s teacher, Sigmund Freud (the father of modern psychology, who developed the idea of the id, ego, and superego). Campbell’s monomyth—also known as the hero’s journey—is grounded by the idea that all stories worth telling have some common patterns. He describes a hero undergoing departure—leaving the known world, initiation—transformational challenges and changes, and return—re-entering the known world with the prize won during the journey. We will learn the basics of the hero journey this week.

MONDAY, September 9

• Lecture on Campbell’s theory. We will review an outline created by Christopher Volger in his book The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers.

• We will review several clips that illustrate the concept of departure (the call to adventure, and crossing the threshold), and one clip that illustrates death and rebirth.

• Ending class by reviewing the homework….

• HW: Transfer your notes on the Campbell-Moyers interview into top-half of the 11”x17” note sheet provided in class. Do NOT do the bottom half—we will do that together, in class.

WEDNESDAY, September 11

• Safety day. I will review what we do (and where we go) in the even of environmental, building, or human emergencies.

• Star reading assessment: https://global-zone50.renaissance-go.com/welcomeportal/737639

• Once done, review these examples of hero journey illustrations. You will create a version of these for Haroun’s hero journey,

• HW: Students will create their own visual illustration of Haroun’s hero journey, based on Volger’s outline of the monomyth. Finish your illustration of Haroun’s hero journey. Use words. Use visuals. Make it your own interpretation of his journey! Due Thursday in class, on paper.

THURSDAY, September 12

• We will write an in-class analysis of Haroun’s hero journey—specifically his departure and crossing the threshold—before we move into our first short story.

• STAR reading assessment.

• Reading and annotating “The Machine Stops,” a dystopian sci-fi store from the early 20th century.

• Finish reading part two of the story, annotating while you read for the stages of the hero journey.

Joseph Campbell's "Hero Journey"

Joseph Campbell, seen below in the 1950s, breaks reporter Bill Moyer’s brain in an interview about his “hero journey” concept. For homework, watch the video linked below, and take notes on Haroun’s experiences, and how they fit into Campbell’s concept, the “monomyth.”

Annotation advice from NT reading specialist

Week 3 Syllabus: September 2-5

WE WILL FINISH GOING OVER some of the administriva of learning at New Trier this week. We will practice annotating by re-reading chapter three of Haroun and the Sea of Stories, “The Dull Lake.” We will vote on, discuss, and then rewrite the paragraphs on the poem, “Doors Opening, Closing.” We will also write our second paragraph, this one about Haroun and the hero journey. We will also review course expectations and discuss “academic integrity,” a phrase here which means, “cheating.”

TUESDAY, September 3

• Reading aloud a NYT article on the attack on Rushdie, practicing annotation technique:

  • Circle vocabulary words;

  • What questions does the writer pose or discuss in the article?

  • What does the article say about the importance of story-telling or censorship?

• Watching the third interview with Rushdie, this one from last week’s 60 Minutes about the attack and his new book, Knife.

• Practice annotating, this time from the summer. Students will listen to the audio from the novel (click here) while re-annotating chapter three of the novel. (Chapter three begins at 42:30 in the above track, and goes until 1:04:30)

• When annotating, students should a) circle vocabulary words—not just words you don’t know, but also words that Rushdie is carefully choosing for a purpose; b) write our questions that you have, as a reader, about what you’re reading—preferably about theme, not plot; and c) what this chapter says about story-telling and censorship.

• HW: Finish writing your paragraph at the end of the article for class on Tuesday. Remember, include at least one quote from the article, and at least one from the novel.

• “Reading Assessment” questions on chapter 3: 1st period, these are due on Thursday. 3rd period, these are due on Friday (you will receive them in class, on Thursday).

THURSDAY, September 5

• Starting class by reading through the “Academic Integrity” policy. We will review the student handbook and talk about cheating. After, students will sign off on the official, “I know where the policy is” form. We will also watch various film clips on the theme of “cheating.”

• Listening to an NPR interview about Salman Rushdie, the author of our summer novel. That story is here.

• Moving into Joseph Campbell’s hero journey, and thinking about how his stages of departure, initiation, and return apply to Haroun’s adventure.

Post your "The Man Who Swallowed a Bird" paragraphs here

On the back of the poem, you have already written a bit about the poem, what it means and what the audience for the poem should get. What is the poem about? What should we learn from it?

Type what you’ve already written (or write about what the poem means) —having reviewed and corrected mistakes that you see—and then copy it from a Google doc and share it on this blog entry.

Post that as a comment below.

Remember to type your full name (whatever you go by in class) and your NT email address. Leave the URL space blank and then select <Post Comment>.

Audio for summer reading, Haroun and the Sea of Stories

Click on the image above to access the audio files for the novel. If not already complete, you should have the summer reading finished asap.

Week 1 & 2 Syllabus: August

WELCOME TO NEW TRIER HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH. Each weekly syllabus will begin with a short paragraph that describes where we’ve been, what we’ve learned, where we’re headed, and what’s the big picture. The first two weeks, we’ll establish routines—how to annotate, how to participate in discussions, how to submit writing here on Squarespace or on Canvas. I will also include reminders—such as this: bring your copy of Haroun & the Sea of Stories to class starting week two. If you haven’t finished it, get it read sooner than later.

WEDNESDAY: August 21

• Introduction to Canvas & Squarespace.

• How to read a poem.

• Reading and annotating, “Doors Opening, Closing.”

• HW: re-read the poem, and annotate for a) What do I notice? and b) What does it (the poem) mean?

THURSDAY, August 22

• Picture day!

• Reviewing poetry rules.

• Lecture on “Great Books discussion method”

• Discussion of poem (practicing routines, pre-post discussion writing, note taking)

• HW: If you have not done so, finish reading Salman Rushdie’s novel over Friday and the weekend.

MONDAY, August 26

• Reviewing course expectations, and posting your signed form into Canvas, as an assignment.

• Killer Kane and the growth mindset.

• In-class writing assignment; ¶ on “The Man Who Swallowed a Bird”

• Using Squarspace to submit your (and to read others’) writing.

• HW: Use “Genius Scan” after taking a picture of your signature of the Course Expectations, to submit the assignment into Canvas. More on “Genius Scan” and how to use it can be found here.

• Also, post your paragraph on “The Man Who Swallowed a Bird” onto Squarespace. Read ALL of these paragraphs, and choose the three best (in your opinion—from either 1st or 3rd period).

WEDNESDAY, August 28

• How we share (and comment upon) writing, publicly.

• Reading and circling vocabulary (annotation technique).

• Voting on “best” paragraphs on the poem, and reviewing those.

• HW: For homework, scholars will review an Rushdie essay about the novel’s connection to Frank Baum’s children’s novel The Wizard of Oz and the American film by the same name. Read page 9 through the middle of page 16 in “The Wizard of Oz,” by Salmon Rusdie.

THURSDAY, August 29

• Reviewing argument structure in body ¶s—”What I think, and why I think it.”

• Reviewing the ¶s we already read in class.

• Once done with our three, in class, writers, we will look at three ¶s from other class, in small group.

• Revising your new paragraph.

• Watching two videos about our summer reading author, Salman Rushdie.

• HW: Post your revised paragraph as a REPLY to your first draft. If you haven’t finished reading the selection on “Wizard of Oz,” do that.

Greetings, Class of 2028!

Searching for books that you will need for our English class? Seek no further. You can purchase these here, via our NT bookstore.

Finals

Plan on arriving at the room for the final 15 minutes early. That will give you time enough to get a snack, water, use the washroom if needed, and relax before the test. Please bring pen (for annotating) and pencil (for the scan-tron multiple choice portion of the test). You should also bring a book for silent reading for when you are done with the test.

Final room and times are as follows:

Summer Reading

Yes, you have been assigned summer reading for the 24-25 school year. Click on the image below to access that assignment (most of you are enrolled in Sophomore English 2, three level). Apart from that…keep reading! For fun, for information, for investigative purposes. Nary any other skill will serve you lifelong as reading will. Practice.