"Black Girl Magic" and "How It Feels to Be Colored Me"

During block day this week, we read "Black Girl Magic" (by Mahogany Browne) and "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" (by Zora Neale Hurston). If you were absent on block day, copies of the handouts can be found in the green crate.

Here is How It Feels to Be Colored Me: (audio)
Click here to view the text of "How It Feels to Be Colored Me."

 

Black Girl Magic: (audio)

"If We Must Die" and "My City"

Here are the annotations for the poems we read today:

 

Langston Hughes Poetry Annotations

Today, we begin our study of the Harlem Renaissance by reading and annotating the poetry of Langston Hughes.

Click here to see a copy of today's annotations.

Fear Essay: All The Pieces

Here are links to all the pieces:

The Crucible - All 4 Acts

"Nature" and "Self-Reliance" by Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The Landlady" By Roald Dahl

"The Devil and Tom Walker" by Washington Irving

"The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls" and "A Psalm of Life" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

"Declaration of Independence" by Thomas Jefferson

"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" by Jonathon Edwards

Speed Dating with Transcendentalist Poetry!

On block day this week, we did a "speed dating" activity with some poetry. To download a copy of today's handout, click here.

Basically, we took turns annotating the poems "A Psalm of Life" and "The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls" which are both written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. We annotated using the TPDASTT method.

If these poems confused you and you need some help understanding them, click here to see my annotations of these poems.

Today, you also received a handout to help you gather citations for your Works Cited page for our next piece of writing. Click here to download the handout. Do not throw this handout away until we are done with the essay! Keep it with you these next few weeks.

Puritan Background Notes and "Upon the Burning of our House" by Anne Bradstreet

Today, we started studying Puritan literature.  As we start to learn about the Puritans and their literature, you will see that they were very religious. As a consequence of that, you'll notice that our academic vocabulary for this unit will be a bit different than we're used to. We are studying the Puritans, and because religion is something they valued, you will notice we're going to be using a lot of religion-related words. Under normal circumstances, we do not usually discuss religion at school. In English III, we study American literature, and some of the first English-speaking people to populate North America were the Puritans.

Here are the notes from today:



Click here to download the student notes for this presentation.

After we took notes, we read "Upon the Burning of Our House" by Anne Bradstreet and we paraphrased it together.

Homework: Answer the question on the back of the poem handout. Read the poem and think: What did the Puritans value? Cite 2-3 short pieces of text evidence in your answer.

Due when you walk into class on Tuesday.