Ms. Neville's Class Resources

This week all seniors will be taking a pen-and-paper IHS Senior Survey soon in their English class; the point of the survey is to collect your observations about the school climate. It’s been very helpful over the past several years to evaluate this feedback from students.

In addition, I like to conduct end-of-course surveys to determine what kind of experience my students had specifically with my class (and, as a result, what I should keep doing or need to change). This year I’m conducting the survey online. It’s only ten questions long, so it will take just a few moments of your time to complete. You can take the survey by clicking here: Click here to take survey. If you wish to wait until school ends to complete the survey, that’s fine — just be sure to get it done.

I appreciate your honesty and thoroughness! The more people who take the survey and the more feedback each offers, the more information I’ll have to work with when planning for next year.

*** SOPHOMORES, don’t worry, there will be one for you in a few weeks. I just posted the senior course survey first so I could catch them all before they go on senior project. 🙂

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see more Lolcats and funny pictures

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Here are some study tips for your FINAL TEST ON FRANKENSTEIN:

• Be familiar with (and able to recognize support of) the themes we have followed throughout the novel

• Know all characters – keep in mind that some are referred to in multiple ways – first name, last name, role, etc.

EXAMPLES:

Alphonse = Victor’s father

Victor Frankenstein = Victor  = Frankenstein = the creator

Caroline Beaufort = Victor’s mother (her maiden name)

The creature = the monster = the creation

Clerval = Henry Clerval = Henry

• Be aware of the various pieces of literature alluded to in the novel, and the significance of each one

–       Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

–       Milton’s Paradise Lost

–       Goethe’s The Sorrows of Werter

–       Volney’s Ruins of Empires

–       Plutarch’s Lives

• Review your study guide! Many of the questions on the test are directly related to them.

• This test will be entirely objective (multiple choice, true/false, matching, chronology, etc.)

• A few vocabulary words may have crept onto the test…

• Understand the narrative structure of the novel and how the various narrators effect the progression of the plot

• Be aware of the various parallels that run throughout the novel

• Literary terms to know: epistolary novel, frame story, gothic novel, Romanticism, allusion, suspense

• Understand how Mary Shelley’s life experiences influenced her creation of this novel

• Be aware of the various critical approaches to the novel — mythological, feminist, scientific, psychological, etc. (refer to articles read on Tuesday)

HAPPY STUDYING!

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I’ve always found it strange how I love “lolcats” despite their characteristically  awful spelling and grammar. This one (posted this morning) redeemed them a little, however.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

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Sigh…
A former student informed me today between 8th and 9th period that J.D. Salinger died yesterday. I obviously didn’t know him, and know very little about him. But I honestly feel very sad about his passing. I feel like with each of the great writers who dies, we’re losing a little bit of connection to what makes us who we are.

You can go here to read several of his short stories.

The Catcher in the Rye has been one of my favorite books since I read it in high school, and I know many of my students love it, too. This year’s sophomores are scheduled to start reading it in a few weeks. It will be strange to no longer tell you that “the next book we’re reading together is by an author who is actually still alive.”

I don’t know what else to say.

…Sigh…

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English IV: We completed some pre-reading questions for Hamlet, and books were distributed. Act I scenes i & ii need to be read by tomorrow.

Pre-AP: We worked with some new vocabulary words, and began discussing Act IV Julius Caesar (we will continue with this tomorrow, so be ready).

English II: Everyone was present. The video I told you to watch is embedded in the post below this one.

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