CONGRATULATIONS! You made it to the last blog of the year!!!

Give next year's AP Language and Composition class some practical advice for next year!!! Use rhetorical devices and appeal to logos, pathos and ethos.

Satire is on the Menu at ECCHS!

Write a piece of satire, the subject is.......your high school!  Remember, (or look up) the elements of satire when you are writing!  Have fun.

The Third Way

Watch this 35 minute video
The Third Way
After watching the video, I want you to respond to it.  What is your reaction to the film? Is there anything with which you disagree? What did you learn that you did not know?  What is the church's position on people with same sex attraction?  How is this argument structured and from where did the title come (you might have to research a bit.  It is an allusion to something).

It's the Real Thing!

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2013/07/its-real-thing.html

The following letters constitute the complete correspondence between an executive of the Coca-Cola company and a representative of Grove Press. Read the letters carefully. Then in your blog analyze the rhetorical strategies each writer uses to achieve his purpose and explain which letter offers the more persuasive case.

Creativity Anyone?

Authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman published “The Creativity Crisis” in Newsweek.com in July 2010. They reported that the Torrance Test, a test of creativity that has been administered to millions of people worldwide in 50 languages, indicates that the public’s “creativity quotient” has steadily crept downward since 1990. In their article, Bronson and Merryman cite the claim of Professor Kyung Hee Kim at the College of William and Mary: “It’s very clear, and the decrease is very significant.” Kim reports that it is the scores of younger children in America—from kindergarten through sixth grade—for whom the decline is “most serious.” Bronson and Merryman state that “[t]he potential consequences are sweeping. The necessity of human ingenuity is undisputed. A recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the No. 1 ‘leadership competency’ of the future. Yet it’s not just about sustaining our nation’s economic growth. All around us are matters of national and international importance that are crying out for creative solutions, from saving the Gulf of Mexico to bringing peace to Afghanistan to delivering health care. Such solutions emerge from a healthy marketplace of ideas, sustained by a populace constantly contributing original ideas and receptive to the ideas of others.” One possible approach to this reputed decline in creativity is to explicitly teach creative thinking in school. Write to your school board explaining what you mean by creativity and arguing for or against the creation of a class in creativity.

Read the following essay, "Superman and Me" by Sherman Alexie.
"Superman and Me"

It is both an eye-opening account of what life was like for an intelligent child on an Indian reservation and a skillful rendering of the moments surrounding language acquisition, the spark for reading and writing, and the influence on a child of a well-loved parent.  Use any or all of these avenues for discussion of the essay.

 Also comment on what rhetorical devices Alexie uses in the essay.  For example, by using the analogy of a paragraph to a fence, Alexie is providing a visual connection that all readers can understand in order to express his moment of epiphany that opened him to the world of reading: an understanding that words "worked together for a common purpose".  The use of this visual analogy between a paragraph and a fence lends meaning to the extension of his analogy in the remainder of paragraph 3.  As Alexie explains his understanding of the reservation as a paragraph within the country, his home and neighborhood as paragraphs on the reservation, and each member of his family as a separate paragraph yet part of a larger "essay of seven paragraphs," the reader grasps Alexie's inherent desire to write and his identity as a writer.  This is just one example.  You should find and cite at least two. Do your best not to repeat the devices used by other students.

Come Holy Spirit!

YIPPEEEE! It is confirmation weekend!  You officially have a vacation from the blog so that you can really celebrate this important sacrament.  All I ask is that you listen to this presentation some time before you get confirmed on Sunday.  When you have finished, just log on and type, DONE.
Congratulations to all of you!  I love it!
Mrs. Messineo
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/810680/LH27_9_Dr.%20Pitre_Confirmation-The%20Sacrament%20of%20Evangelization%20and%20Martyrdom.mp3

It is around 40 minutes.