Week 7 - Getting Going with Gatsby
- Mrs. Irving
- Sep 12, 2016
- 3 min read
Terrible alliteration, isn't it? The title, I mean. Just terrible. The hyperlink on the word 'alliteration' back a few sentences ago demonstrates much better use of the sound device. Anyway, that has very little to do with the point of this post.
Aheam, let's get back on track here. Gatsby. Gatsby Gatsby Gatsby. No wait, we aren't quite ready for that.
Monday - Today, we have a slightly unpleasant but necessary task: the FFA benchmark. We will take four of these this semester, and they are designed to tell us what skills we need to focus on more heavily before the Milestone EOC, which is 20% of your overall course grade. The county assesses them and pushes them into the gradebook - I do not control them or the grade reporting that follows them. DO WELL on this one! To reiterate: It will go into the gradebook.
Tuesday - To begin discussing Modernism and The Great Gatsby, we will read a startling poem that reflects the disillusionment that permeated early 1900s America. We will discuss the Modernist era and the civil and social struggles people fought during, before, and since the Roaring Twenties. We will look for commonalities in Gatsby's stories, modern and classic film, Harlem Reanissance poetry and art, and so much more. We will overview all of it via this PowerPoint (and take THESE NOTES) and dig a little bit by analyzing this poem.
Wednesday - Time to finish typing and upload your exoneration essays. I will walk everyone through how to hyperlink the Word file for your essay.
You will need to include this information in the body of the blog post: (1) An overview of your essay's contents; and (2) what you learned during the development of this piece of writing.
Once your essay blog post is posted, find a review of the film your group chose to watch and analyze. Read the review, and in a new blog post, list the arguments the reviewer makes. What does he or she appreciate about the film? What does he or she not appreciate about the film? Make sure to hyperlink the review in order to give credit to the movie critic!
Good movie review websites:
Thursday - We will watch an incredible TedTalk called "The Danger of a Single Story" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Throughout the unit, we'll explore how seeing only a single story in others can interfere with our collective right to the "pursuit of happiness". Afterward, we will finish our PowerPoint notes contextualizing Gatby and, with time, read before tomorrow's quiz.
Friday - The first 2 chapters of Gatsby are due. Quiz time! Afterward, we will finish the movie critic's argument delineation from Wednesday.
Next week: We will begin the week by reviewing Modernist concepts relevant to the novel and exploring a chosen concept individually: Modernism, the Jazz Age, Flapper culture, the Harlem Renaissance, or the Hemingway Hero. Find a 1920s poem that reflects the concepts relevant to whichever you decide to research. Write one fully developed paragraph analyzing the poem according to that concept (See model here). We will then move into our film analysis unit, studying symbolism and camera angle purpose before watching and relating individual films to the Modernist concepts we discuss.
OVER THE WEEKEND: Read chapter 3, and find yourselves a good Modernism-relevant poem to analyze when we get back.
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