Though I was absent much of this week, I still feel as though I grew as a student. Reading the Miss America article really opened up my mind to how much our nation has yet to grow. Our class discussion was very insightful, and I feel as though talking about world issues like this actually helps us grow as readers. In this day and age, many students lack the ability to critically read the news and focus on what articles are asking them, and what they are presenting to us besides just a piece of paper. By doing the AoW on relevant topics, I feel we are more prepared to be active citizens in our world. When I'm 25 I'll know how to pick up the paper and actually digest and discuss the news.
                    Another aspect of our AoW I've benefitted from is the cross-curriculum opportunity it provides. In our AP Gov class we're assigned 2 academic writings to do each marking period. These are short responses to articles in publications like The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times that we relate to either personally or with the subject we're covering in class. By doing the AoW in AP Lit, I've had great ease in conveying my thoughts about what I've read and Mr. Hicks noted the promise my writing shows. This news was really pleasing. Being an honors student you hope that the hard work you do will show in other areas too. It's nice to know it does!
                    Going forward I have high expectations for myself as a writer. I plan to really utilize exercises like out AoW and PoW to hone in on skills that have gone untapped until now. Reflecting on my weeks work really brings things to the larger picture, and that it I'm a blossoming learner.
                    I leave you with a video where teachers from many subject matter discuss cross-curricular activities and their pros and cons. Enjoy!
                    

What is Literature? 
That's the question our class has been called upon to ask. My group chose "Characterization" and "Point of View" to focus heavily upon. To me, characters are pivotal to a story. Without a decent set of main characters, what is your reader going to take intrigue in? Reading the Characterization excerpt given, I realized I knew more about it than I'd originally thought. Most of it was things we mentioned in H. English 10, such as "flat" vs. "dynamic" characters. I'm thankful for this prior experience, and hope that it will help me with this project.
     Unlike Characterization, I know very little about the element "Point of View". Though it sets the mood for the story, it's not an element I'd ever really taken into consideration. Through my close read of the PoV excerpt I learned quite a bit, and I'm glad we close this in our group. A lot of what we learn in school tends to feel like rehashing old ideas until we know them so well, it stops feeling like learning and more like busy work. By choosing our own elements to focus on, it gives us a little more control over our learning. This to me feels similar to what you hear of peers doing in college. You're given guidelines but not exact instructions, allowing you to seek out the knowledge you need to gain. I'm excited to learn in an environment like this because it's what I've been seeking out most of high school. I hope to learn more about PoV as time goes on, and really explore the connections I can find.
     Point of view was a big role in our "Poem of the Week." Langston Hughes gives us a poem where the speaker is talking about his parents, and his unresolved feelings as to his own fate. I loved explicating the poem this week because I was able to uncover the underlying story the speaker was telling. Poetry isn't always an easy concept for me to grasp, so this week when I finally did I was pleased with myself. I'd recently watched "The Butler" and I really connected the two pieces. Both the speaker and the butler share a mixed past, and to me that helped me reach the conclusion of slavery perhaps being a subject. When you're little we always tried to make "Text to Text, Text to Self, Text to World" connections in order to better comprehend our works. I was pleasantly surprised to find out it still worked at age 17 as well at age 7. This to me showed how education is truly a full circle process.
 

Attached: I found a YouTube video from a teacher who explained PoV through a lecture/doodle format. This was neat and engaging, so I found it worth the share.

Week 2 of this course came with lessons of understanding. This past week I feel we learned how to, through our own exploration, deeply understand text and what it has to offer. Using the reflection part of our note books, we took a brief moment to think on ideas we'd covered through the week. Giving just a short blurb of what you thought helped solidify our learning. With both the AoW and the PoW we learned that through close reads and explication we could seek deeper understanding and begin to ask questions that would (hopefully) provide us with thought provoking answers. We shared some of our ideas with the class in small groups and as a whole, which I liked. This, for me, kept last weeks idea of communication at the forefront. Through communicating ideas that we've gathered with close reads, I think our ideas were more focused and had more gravity to them. By continuing the exercise of close reads on our own with "Reading the Story" we were able to have lively class discussion on what distinguishes literature from commercial fiction. I feel that our class came to the conclusion that literature vs. commercial fiction is a spectrum, not a line in the sand. This topic sparked a prime example of a focused, weighted, and engaging classroom dialogue . If you define it using black and white terms, I feel that strips it of the ability to be art. Art requires interpretation was a discussion point that really helped me grasp the difference in Lit vs. CF. Taking the idea of a spectrum definition, we read two short stories and decided on our own what elements of commercial fiction and literature were present. I was absent Friday, so I'll have many questions on my reading come Monday. A personal goal of mine is to always remain an active participant in class, and I feel I've done that this week. I do wonder if there is a better way to explicate text, and hope those answer will come in the next few weeks.

I found the video below and used it to really validate the ideas we learned in class. I like this video because as the instructor is speaking, ideas are scrolling along the bottom. This engages both the sights and hearing, making it a great learning tool.

 This week I feel that we began to delve into what it means to be a college level reader and writer, and also what it means to effectively communicate. When we wrote the "You as a reader/You as a writer" passage on our Weebly I began to see how my own personal experiences have shaped who I am as an ELA student. Though this was our first week in class, I feel like I've been learning for much longer due to our summer reading. The reading kept my mind firing, so once week one came along I felt my mind was more prepared for learning. Many people don't enjoy reading outside of class, but I feel that as long as it serves a purpose I can't complain. Personally, I get busy and find the time difficult to spare, but know it must be done.
    After reading "How to Read Literature Like a Professor" I felt more knowledgeable for our forum discussion with Dr. Borsheim-Black's class and really expand upon what my ideas were. Literature to me feels like works that really involve analytical skills, and I'm eager to see how the college students posting to this forum feel too. I enjoyed our other forum discussion too, and thought how we both watched and discussed Shaped by Writing: The Freshman Experience was an interesting way of learning that I'd never experienced before. The forum way of discussion really appeals to me because reading and writing requires communication of ideas. By communicating in the classroom often like we have this week I feel that communicating our works will become easier and more effective. Through exploring my classmates comments I noticed that I'm not the only one who has issues with conveying their own ideas in a concise manner. The freshman at Harvard also in a way felt that, and I suppose that through time we will all feel more at ease with our writing just as they have. I enjoyed how large emphasis was laid on the fact that our classroom has to be a comfortable sharing environment. In life sharing won't always be easy but I feel that if our classroom keeps an open mind that learning to effectively share and communicate will become easy so when the time does come we will all be prepared.
    Communicating ideas will also be easier with the help of Weebly. I appreciate that this is going to be an ongoing portfolio for us to communicate to our classmates (and potentially other people) about our growth, thoughts, major break throughs, and general learning experiences. I'm excited for the year to come, and hopefully I can grow a lot as both a reader and writer.  I am hoping to grow as a student with what I read and how I write. I know I'm an adequate writer, but I would like to be an excellent writer. According to what we've discussed, this course will give me those tools. I hesitant when it comes to reading literature because there are many times where the reading swallows me and I drown in the text, rather than dive in. I'd like to gain the tools to dive in head first, confident that I'm able to understand the authors' intentions. I've already learned I'm not at the level I thought I was, and to be truthful last years English course was a little lax which didn't give me a full view of this fast paced course. I hope that for my sake, you're able to work with me on an individual basis, because that one-on-one communication is something that really aids me as a learner.
    Thank you for a wonderful week of class, and reading my thoughts and ideas!
-Annie
 
Attached, I found a video from TexasTech University about an Agricultural Communications Professor who has come to use Twitter professionally and in her classroom. This related to our discussion this week about how though you may not be an English major, communication is still important to your work.