Verbs / Arguments / Huck Finn

English 11 - We started working with Huck Finn today.  First, we reviewed the genres of American literature that we had talked about so far this year - American Romanticism, American Gothic, slave narratives, and regionalism.  I then walked through parts of the first four chapters and show how Huck Finn managed to bring in elements of all four.  As we move through the novel, the students will take over this exercise.  Tonight, they are looking at the next three chapters and focusing on one of the four genres.  I hope it will lead to some interesting conversations tomorrow. Working with students always brings out parts of the novel I miss and ideas I have never considered.

AP - We worked at the beginning of class on bring more precise verbs into our rhetorical analysis papers.  Too frequently, students make use of verbs that are very imprecise such as "says" or "uses".  I provided students with a sheet of more precise verbs and we worked on substituting in worlds like "examines", "defines", "points out", "criticizes", etc.  The rest of class was devoted to looking at argumentative structures.  Students tend to be more accustomed to five-paragraph formats and the three forms we looked at provide more mature academic frameworks for tackling arguments.  The students worked in groups to create an argument using one of the frameworks.  I'm looking forward to hearing all of them tomorrow.