November 15 -19

AP English
I will return your essays to you on Tuesday. You have improved your writing capacity. We will move on to Asserting (the practice of stating opinions vigorously, thereby giving argument clarity and direction). We will write a timed persuasive essay this week.
French I/II
This week you will take the test over vocabulary Chp. 3. Since there were so many absences on Friday, I moved the date to Tuesday of this week. On November 23rd we  we will prepare French dishes and participate in a classroom fete. We will continue to write in French as well as practice pronunciation of phrases to request something, to ask how much something cost and to ask directions. I will continue with the PowerPoint's for practice, because I thought that these engaged you in critical thinking.
English 11 
BRING YOUR BOOK TO CLASS EACH DAY. We will continue to work with the poetry of the early 20th century
Imagism, Symbolism, Pound, Eliot, William Carlos Williams, ee cummings and T.S. Eliot
You will  write a descriptive essay pp. 679 in class on Thursday.
Senior English
WHERE WERE YOU ON FRIDAY???????????????BRING YOUR BOOK TO CLASS EACH DAY. This week we will continue to work with  literature in the Middle Ages, however we will take a little turn to the South, to Italy, and read Federigo's Falcon a tale from the frame narrative The Decameron. This tale uses the literary element of situational irony. Situational irony is a relationship of contrast between what an audience is led to expect during a particular situation within the unfolding of a story's plot and a situation that ends up actually resulting later on. One element that defines the Middle Ages is the movement of the Bubonic Plague across Europe. Coming out of the East, the Black Death reached the shores of Italy in the spring of 1348 unleashing a rampage of death across Europe unprecedented in recorded history. By the time the epidemic played itself out three years later, anywhere between 25% and 50% of Europe's population had fallen victim to the pestilence. Some thought that moderate living and the avoidance of all superfluity would preserve them from the epidemic. They formed small communities, living entirely separate from everybody else. They shut themselves up in houses where there were no sick, eating the finest food and drinking the best wine very temperately, avoiding all excess, allowing no news or discussion of death and sickness, and passing the time in music and suchlike pleasures.This is represented in Boccaccio's Decameron (1350).  Others thought just the opposite. They thought the sure cure for the plague was to drink and be merry, to go about singing and amusing themselves, satisfying every appetite they could, laughing and jesting at what happened. They put their words into practice, spent day and night going from tavern to tavern, drinking immoderately, or went into other people's houses, doing only those things which pleased them. This they could easily do because everyone felt doomed and had abandoned his property, so that most houses became common property and any stranger who went in made use of them as if he had owned them. And with all this bestial behaviour, they avoided the sick as much as possible. As you can see this catastrophe had an unprecedented effect upon the European population.
When studying the arts of any period it is vitally important to examine the political, social and economic factors bearing down upon aesthetics. We will watch a history channel documentary of the effects of the plague on the whole of Europe, since we will be examining Boccaccio's Decameron (1350). Additionally, you will be composing a piece of creative writing yourself! This tale will be due on Friday Nov. 19th. We will share the tales in class and determine the best tale.
Myth and Legend
This week we will begin the study of Bram Stoker's Dracula. BRING YOU BOOKS TO CLASS EACH DAY THAT WE MEET. I would like you to consider these questions: What is the appeal of Gothic Horror? Why do we continue to be intrigued by the Myth of the Vampire? The contemporary commerical success of the vampire themed fantasy romance series  Twilight  reiterates this assumption. But my question is why? Why does Gothic horror continue to be so popular with readers? Scholars believe that the Victorians turned to this type of novel for emotional and physical release from a world controlled by a repressive moral code. I hardly think that that argument holds water in the 21st century. Think about these questions and be prepared to discuss in class. We will use a study guide/questions/vocabulary to work through the text.