Week 3: We're All In This Together

   This week we finished up our Summer Reading Essays and peer edited with a group that read a different pair of books. We gave and received constructive criticism and were able to fix what needed improvement, such as mentioning the page numbers for the themes we used from How To Read Like A Professor. Earlier in the week, we took a look at a sample essay from the AP Lit test. The topic was the poem XIV by Derek Walcott. The question asks you to analyse the story told by the poem and what makes it effective. We learned how to do so concisely while still touching all of the bases. The method we use is TPCASTT, a guide to poem analysis. We start just by judging what the title might foreshadow for the piece, then break down the poem and gradually pull out what we think may be the meaning of the piece. I believe this week's theme was working together.
     We also had a peek into the project we will be starting soon. The name of the project is What Is LIterature? and I think that captures the idea very well. We have plenty of pieces to pick from that we can analyse and I am very excited.