Update from the Desk of Mr. Myers

hope you enjoy this little video and that your day break from me is great. see you all on Thursday.

- Mr. Myers

The beginning of The Piano Lesson

Hello all, welcome to a new 6 weeks. We are continuing to move forward towards the end of the school year and continuing on in literature. Next stop on our list is The Piano Lesson by August Wilson. Today, we got a lot of information and took a lot of notes. To ease this, I will put these files on this site so that you can have access at home to these notes.

Vocabulary 1 for The Piano Lesson

Copy the 10 words down with their definition. Once done, you need to write 10 sentences using these words and turn them in by Wednesday, March 17th.

August Wilson Biography

This information is necessary for this unit and will give you a good background on the information that will be on a unit test over this play.

The Piano Lesson introduction and family tree.

Here is the family tree for the Charles family that we will be studying during the course of this play. The names and relations are good to keep in mind because they can get very confusing.

Along with these presentations, there was a prediction writing assignment that is the last slide on the "Introduction and Family Tree" presentation. This short writing is the points for the day.

The "I am..." poem is due today by 3 p.m. with a physical copy or before 5 p.m. by email. My email address is: djmyers@willamette.edu and you can email me your poem today. After today, this will be a late assignment. Part of this assignment is recording the first two lines with me and this can be done after school at any time, just come and see me before hand. We will be moving on in curriculum so we will not be able to dedicate more class time to this project. Please get this in, it will be late after today and is a portion of my grades as well.

See you in class on Wednesday for our last class before Spring Break!

End of the 6 weeks

So, this is the end of the 6 weeks. Today was the last class and we recapped the Renaissance Exam. We went over the test as a class and discussed the grading scale used on the test.

For the journal today, we wrote about two Slam poets that I shared with the class: Mark Gonzalez and Taylor Mali. Their performances are really representative of the modern movement in poetry, which is performance art based. People standing and telling their story using the vocal rhythms and natural rhymes of language. The Mark Gonzalez poem is very similar to the Harlem Renaissance poetry that we read in class: embracing the struggles of a race and celebrating overcoming the oppression of a larger society.

We started watching "Against all Odds," a movie about the artist of the Harlem Renaissance and the awards that they were given and the struggles they had to come through.

We also began to record the "I am..." poetry projects. About half of the class came today with the poems to turn in. Those of you who did not bring that today, you need to bring it to class next time and record the first two lines. This is not only for your grade, but this is part of my work for my school as well.

For next class, bring your I.D. badges because we will be going to the library to check out The Piano Lesson, by August Wilson, our next unit will be over that play.

Have a nice 3 day weekend, and I will see you in class on Monday!

Recap of the Week and the Renaissance

Yesterday we finished up the Harlem Renaissance with our unit review Jeopardy! That was my first experience with Jeopardy in a class and I have to say that I think it went well.

I hope that you took from the game that there is certainly some information in the notes that I will be looking for on the test. Make sure that you are studying those notes over the course of the weekend and refreshing your memory on some of the lecture and activities that we did in class.

Monday will be the test over the Harlem Renaissance. Come prepared, this will be a large portion of your 6 week grade.

Unfortunately I ran out of time at the end of class to really explain the homework assignment over the weekend, so here is a brief synopsis of what I'm looking for:

• Write a poem (minimum 10 lines) about yourself.
• The poem does not have to rhyme.
• There needs to be at least one metaphor and one simile present in the poem.
• The first two lines need to start, "I am..." and should summarize the poem about you.
• We will record these lines and put together a class poem about who we are on Monday.
• Connect the poem to one of the themes of the Renaissance that we developed as a class.

For extra credit on this assignment, you can make the poem into a piece of art (decorate the page, draw on the page, do something more than just turn in a blank sheet). You can use more than one simile or metaphor. If there is a definite rhyme scheme, that will count as extra credit.

Good luck, I look forward to reading these next week! Have a great weekend!

Thursday's Class Was Not A Rolling Wheel

Today was a good day in class, I really enjoyed your participation with looking at "I am the Highway" by Audioslave. We looked at taking that next step with poetry and not only identifying the metaphor and simile in the text, but thinking about what the author means from the language. Poets, songwriters, playwrights, novelists don't just use metaphors and similes because; they use them to say something or to enhance the meaning of the line.

The line, "I am not your rolling wheel, I am the Highway" is a great representation of saying that the writer is not going to take being used anymore. This is the meaning that you came up with as a class! Great work!

We had a presentation about "Other Voices from the Harlem Renaissance," if you missed the notes, please get them from a classmate.

On Monday, we will finish the activity introduced today in class. Groups of 3 students each to analyze 3 different poems handed out to each group. Each group will be responsible for:

• Write out the main idea of the poem in 2-3 complete sentences (main ideas are not single words)
• Pull out 2 symbols (metaphor, simile, imagery) from each poem using text examples.
• Relate poems back to one of the 6 themes of the Harlem Renaissance that we developed as a class.
• How do the symbols link with the themes. Why would the poet choose that symbol?
• Write down 2-3 words you don't know from the poems. Tell me what you think they mean using the text to inform you. Draw clues from the text.

We will have class time on Monday to finish this project.

See you then!

Have a great weekend!

First Day

After the first day, I have a good feeling about the class. I enjoyed getting to know you all a little better and am really looking forward to this semester.

I began to read your "Who Am I" papers and you did exactly what I wanted. I really have enjoyed the few that I read and look forward to discussing the issues brought up in our next class! Make sure to bring something to write with and keep thinking about who you are and what you want to take away from our class! See you on Friday!

Welcome!

So,

You've found yourself smack dab in the middle of a class with a crazy student teacher! Lucky for you! After class today, I hope you have a better idea of who I am as a teacher. We are going to be on the semester journey together, I hope that we can learn from each other on a daily basis. This blog is set up for this class to help facilitate that learning in this new technological age!

Well, I'll let you know a little about the use of this blog. As a class, we will be discussing various books this semester and we will have a variety of in class assignments. This blog will be a great resource for you to use to keep up on things that you may have forgotten about from class. Check in for:

• Resources from class (websites used, online links to documents / useful websites)
• Recaps of the lesson from the day
• Forecasts of the next day's lesson
• Linked documents from class

Your parents can also use the blog as a resource from home to check on what we are doing in class!

Please feel free to check this blog and post questions that you might have as comments. This is a great way to get in contact with Mr. Myers as well!

Here's to a great semester!