Response to Course Materials Oct. 7th

     Now in class, we've covered a lot more of things that were talked about in Foster's. We've talked about the different time periods and how the literature changed, who the well-known authors of those time periods were, and what the major themes were. We talked about the story of Oedipus, read The American Dream, and did a group project where we split up things like the Old and New Testaments, and basically studied the stories/symbols/themes and presented them in front of the class. Every day we begin class with a student-led discussion with a different exercise that deals with DIDLS - Diction, Imagery, Details, Language, Syntax...we also have tone exercises. 
     I liked doing the last group project, because I've never really been one to go to church, and so I don't really know many Bible stories or their meanings. From what we've learned in class, the Bible stories  are important to know in literature, because almost all works in literature relate back to the Bible. I think starting every day with the student-led exercises is one of my favorite things. It makes me feel more...mature, I guess? I feel like by senior year, we as students are ready for a lot more responsibility in our classes, and I think the leadership we have through these exercises are not only helpful for the AP exam with helping us learn to annotate and read into poetry/prompts/etc. faster and more effectively, but it helps us just in general in the classes. We're going to be in college next year, so stepping up in taking control of your education is a big deal. What I'm mainly confused about right now is The American Dream. It's probably because I was gone for the two days we read it in class, so I read it on my own, but I didn't really understand the point of the play at all. Any of it, basically. I'm not sure if we talked about it in those days when I was absent, but I hope in the future before we do any assignments or essays over it, we can talk in depth about it so I can understand it better. The notes we took on the different literary movements were partially new and partially a review from BritLit last year. The other day we were handed a chart where we had to fill out for each movement/time period who the heroes were, what were the themes, things like that. The chart was really helpful to show us how we should be studying for tests. Not just taking notes and then reading them over or making flash cards, but taking the notes and rearranging them into groups and categories that help us to better understand and organize the information in our minds in a way that makes it easier to memorize and that makes sense to us.