After weeks and weeks of reading, annotating, and watching numerous versions of the film, we are finally finished with Hamlet. This play was probably the most challenging we have had to annotate, and because of that I think it helped us with our analyzing skills. There were a lot of little details that we could have missed if it hadn't been for the many discussions we had about it (such as all of Hamlet's double meanings), so it has definitely made me more aware of details that I may be missing in a piece of work.
Something different that we have been doing to start off the new semester was practicing multiple choice questions for the AP exam. After our first round a couple of weeks back, it became clear to me that I would need to practice this a little more. I found that I had more trouble with the long passages than the poems in this practice set. One main problem that I had was that I couldn't decide between two of the four answer choices, because it seemed like a few questions could have more than one answer. So I am going to have to work on that!
Another thing that we started doing during this new semester is editing our old Open Prompt blog posts. Looking back on the old posts that I did, I can definitely see how I have improved over the months. I find it easy to go back and revise the old posts and being able to pick out bits and pieces that need to be worked on more. Now that we started doing this, I can see the types of errors that I am making over and over again, and I can try to remember to stop doing that. I think that slowly my writing will improve a lot with this.
This past week, I was gone as a counselor for seventh grade camp, but I am assuming that we started a new play in class called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. When reading Hamlet, I saw these characters are shallow, and not trustworthy. They betrayed their long time friend, as well. When these things happened in the play, I didn't care much for these characters anymore, so I am interested to see how this play goes!
I agree that Hamlet was hard to annotate. Sometimes you wouldn't know what Shakespeare was talking about, and then you would have no idea what to comment about. But yes, I think we have come out of the fray a little better at annotating. :)
ReplyDeleteI too am worried about the multiple choice portion of the AP. I'm not sure if I will actually improve my critical reading skills, but I sure hope so.
Revising our old Open Prompts makes me feel like I have been doing better in AP Lit. These revisions also act as a timeline for how far we have come since September. This fact makes me very happy.
Your response is very thorough Mehar, excellent job.
Mehar, I have a feeling the AP practice will be the most important part of our class time for the rest of our time in class, at least as far as most of us students are concerned. I still have no idea if I can even get college credit for this course (or if I'm confident enough in my writing ability to try to skip an intro English course), so I don't know if my focus will be on the AP or not.
ReplyDeleteI think all of the plays have helped me to become a more analytical reader of literature, and specifically drama, a genre I didn't previously have much experience with. I bet all of us are getting better at this!
Your post does a great job touching on important, new and usual things that we've been doing in Lit (from blogs to annotations to AP practice) and in a way that will cause the info to stick in your mind. Great job!
Mehar, you did a really good job covering everything we have been doing in class. I am also pretty nervous about the A.P lit multiple choice questions, actually I'm pretty nervous about the whole test in general. Annotating Hamlet was kind of torture but I agree it definitely gave me a lot of practice when it comes to annotating. Annotating Rosencrantz and Guildenstern was a lot easier after all this practice. As time consuming and never ending annotating can seem I kind of enjoy it. I feel like it gives me a much better understanding of the play because you are looking closely at every detail. Overall, good job on the blog post!
ReplyDelete