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!