Students will understand the characteristics of an effective synthesis essay in preparation for writing one of their own.
Students will demonstrate their ability to write a rhetorical precis.
Students will learn to work through difficult text using Shakespeare's, Macbeth.
Standards
- Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.
- Determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of the text.
- Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text (e.g., the choice of where to begin or end a story, the choice to provide a comedic or tragic resolution) contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact
- Analyze multiple interpretations of a story, drama, or poem (e.g., recorded or live production of a play or recorded novel or poetry), evaluating how each version interprets the source text. (Include at least one play by Shakespeare and one play by an American dramatist.)
- Analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the structure an author uses in his or her exposition or argument, including whether the structure makes points clear, convincing, and engaging.
- read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, in the grades 11–CCR text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.
- Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness, or beauty of the text
- Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
- Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach.
- Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others
Background
Students began the year writing the synthesis essay. We have spent the last (almost) two months now reading model essays and clarifying understanding of what makes an excellent synthesis essay. Skills needed involve the ability to develop a good line of inquiry, close and critical reading of sources and clear and concise expression of ideas. To cover these skills, we have been working with the rhetorical precis. Students have written precis for each of the essays they have read and have completed a comparative metacognitive reflection on their own process and product. Students also witnessed an actual inquiry by watching Shakespeare Uncovered, during which Ethan Hawke investigates the question (among others): What would an actor who was going to play the role of Macbeth need to understand in order to be successful? Students are reading Macbeth intermittently and watching the PBS video (analyzing directorial choices) as a break from the heavy work of the precis and inquiry. Find below a skeletal plan of activities this week. AP Lang is a living, breathing entity and subject to change and develop daily.
Monday: Membean Vocab Practice, Preparation for Parent Teacher Conferences (Reflective Writing) and Independent Reading (Book Love).
Tuesday: Rhetorical Precis Due. Reflective Writing. Act I Macbeth Questions Corrections.
Wednesday: View Act I.
Thursday: Research Question Feedback. Reading of Macbeth Act II.
Friday: Act II questions and video.
