Sunday, September 9, 2012
Response to Course Materials #1
The first week of school was not particularly heavy in learning in lit. The bulk of it was going over our summer homework. I think that making the PowerPoint over Foster's book will be useful in the near future because now we have a firm understanding of the different symbols authors use and it will be easier to be aware of them while reading. Not only did it reinforce the ideas, but we actually had to think about examples in popular culture which is practice for looking for them. Another thing we went over in class was forum posting which was important because we're going to do a lot of those and we need to do them correctly. It is necessary to provide insight in your posts and responses and not just summarize what you read/say "I agree." The last thing we did during the week was take a lit terms test which I got totally wrecked by. I studied for a long time to make sure I understood the definitions but my skills in identifying them were still pretty weak apparently. I took solace in the fact everyone did pretty bad. However, it's easy to see how you would need to be able to identify the terms in context. This is AP Lit which is all about picking part text and connecting them to explain the big picture. All in all, I think everything we did was to help prepare us for the work to come.
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Hi Santos! I agree that the summer work did a great job preparing us for the year. I'm glad that we got introduced to Spruz because I've never used it before, and it gave me time to get used to the format. I also agree with you that the Foster Powerpoint assignment was very helpful because now I'm much more aware when I read. For example, every single time there's someone having dinner together, I know that it's more than just dinner. In regards to the forums, I was really surprised at the level of maturity of all the different posts and responses. In my previous lit classes, students never really participated or contributed their deeper thoughts. However, after reading the posts this summer, I knew that this year would be much different.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you guys on the idea that the summer work was a good way to introduce us to the main point of AP Lit. It's all about analyzing the text and connecting it to a bigger picture, as you said Santos, and I hadn't had much practice with that in my previous classes. Even though now, applying these newly learned skills seems pretty difficult, like in the Terms Test, I am sure that as the school year goes on, the skills will come easier for everyone.
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