Hey. Why are we doing this now instead of at the end of the month? There's another half to this month!
The closed prompt practice was extremely helpful. I would love if we did even more of them to practice for the AP, which we probably will. I actually really loved the writing style of Cisneros, and I wish I could write in that style! Maybe with lots of practice I can. :)
After essay practice, we read lots and lots of info about Native American culture to prep for Ceremony. I'm embarrassed to say, but I didn't absorb a whole lot of the content. It's just so foreign to me that it's difficult to remember the details, but in reading I recall the references like "corn mother." But I don't necessarily remember the backstory and significance.
I feel a little lost in Ceremony. The more I read, the more I like it and adjust to Silko's style. She writes in a very wandering manner, and the third-person POV doesn't help me too much. Nonetheless, I do like the story so far and her style is growing on me a we read on. I'm looking forward to all the native culture we're being exposed to; At the start of this unit I was more than a little ignorant about this culture and had little background knowledge. I love learning about other cultures and values anyway. Hence, my running of the world language/cultures club.
Lastly, we discussed literary lenses. So... I somehow totally forgot about the assigned reading on the lenses, and then made an idiot of myself in class and disappointed Ms Holmes. So that sucked. Don't worry, though, team. I went back and caught up. And sorry, Ms Holmes. It was an accident.
Good luck, everyone, on keeping caught up with your reading of Ceremony! I'm still hoping Ms Holmes is going to say "I was just kidding; You don't have to annotate that whole book!" but we'll see...
Hi Mary,
ReplyDeleteLike you, I think the closed prompt practice was really helpful, and I loved Cisneros' writing! I don't thing my essay was particularly good (in fact, thinking about it more it was pretty terrible), but I'm always glad for the practice. It seems like we're getting more test prep as we get closer to the dreaded AP, which I'm incredibly glad for.
I also had some difficulty remembering some of the information we learned from the pre-reading we did. While reading Ceremony I could vaguely remember some of the related background, but I had to revisit the powerpoint a few times to get everything into my head.
I'm glad you enjoyed the new cultural knowledge that came with reading Ceremony, but it's important to remember that all the culture we're learning about is specific to the Laguna Pueblo! There are a lot of Native American tribes throughout the country, and each one has its own unique culture and traditions.
Overall, nice post!
Hey Mary,
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that writing a timed closed prompt was beneficial. I also really liked that we got into small groups in class to go over what we wrote; my essay was far from perfect the first time around, so talking to others about what I could work on really helped me better my essay for the second draft. And yeah, remembering everything that we read about Native cultures is hard since we don’t really learn about their cultures in most other classes. I think reading those articles (and that PowerPoint presentation that Ms. Holmes made) still helped me understand Ceremony a bit better, even if I couldn’t remember every detail. Similarly, remembering every aspect of each of the literary lenses is difficult (especially since we only went over them during that one prezi presentation), but discussing them in class in context of the works we’ve read helped me remember them a bit better too. And it looks like what you hoped came true: we didn’t have to annotate the whole book!