1. Congratulations!  Happy Birthday…

2. Housekeeping  Dual enrollment 45 th day roster check.  Is your grade correct? Please keep your grades monitored in IC, and alert me immediately to any discrepancies.  Archiving your work for the portfolio— it’s in green on the course calendar.  The Daily Course Calendar is regularly updated, and posted on the class website  Writing contests are now posted on the class website; optional credit is available for submissions—see me for details.  Making up work? Need to see me? Please make an appointment.

3. AZ Merit Test 1. The scores are used to determine the efficacy of the curriculum and teaching and to measure both proficiency and student growth relative to state standards. 2. Yes, students are required by the state to take the exam. The attorney general has issued a formal statement TWICE that there is no “opt out” option for students. 3. The test is not currently tied to graduation, however, if students are here, we are required by law to have them test. 4. The most important information for them – particularly for sophomores and juniors – is that the new ACT and SAT (Both new this year) are formatted in a startlingly similar way, and those exams are a key component in college admission and scholarships. If nothing else, they can think of these exams as free practice tests where they can become accustomed to a brand new style of testing.

4. Paz de Christo Food Kitchen I slept and dreamed that life was joy. I awoke and found that life was but service. I served and discovered that service was joy.  Rabindranath Tagore  Can you give three hours of your time to prepare and serve a meal to approximately 150 needy and homeless people ?  Let me know if you want to work during spring break, March 11. I will be out of town.  Thank you for your kind hearts and altruism:  Nazmina A.  Nicole B.  Alyssa C.  Hannah L.  Makenna L.

5. AP Language and Composition Thursday, 24 March 2016  Time will pass; will you? 41 school days remain in the spring semester.  Today:  Three American Poets

6. Coming Due—do not squander time— that’s the stuff life’s made of!  Monday:  Vocab Log #13  Bio bullets and poem annotations: Frost/”Mending Wall”  Wednesday  Bio bullets and poem annotations: Emily Dickinson

7. Today’s Class:  American Poets Unit Introduction  Robert Frost (1874-1963), pg. 652  Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), pg. 352  Walt Whitman (1819-1892), pg. 326  Reading/Notes:  Robert Frost’s biography  Annotating—definitely, think first, then research a little… “Mending Wall” is due Monday for discussion

8. Close Reading:  Close Reading: Defining an author’s purpose, and identifying and analyzing the techniques and strategies employed to achieve and support that purpose.  NO talking—and, do you really need to go to the bathroom that badly?  Vocab Log #13 out?  Term logs out?  30 minutes, questions  7 minute group discussion. Circle two questions from each set to discuss with your group—these are the only four questions you can change, but only after discussion.  Score and turn in

9. You’re killing us… so says the college board…  Goals:  Create strong writers who will have the necessary skills to write effectively in their college courses and in their personal and professional lives  Foster reading “between the lines”—extracting the connotative meanings of words and the cultural, political, or historical contexts of various texts.  Encourage students to be informed citizens and consumers who understand the manipulation of a variety of media by advertisers, politicians, and institutions to impact them in their daily lives.  Course Outcomes:  To evaluate, practice, increase proficiency, and master at an individual rate your ability to be a creator of and an informed receiver of language and all forms of communication both verbal and non-verbal but with an emphasis on written language  To demonstrate sound logical thinking and critical judgment drawing on research, knowledge of the world, and personal experience  To develop to proficiency effectiveness of persuasive and argumentative writing and independent thought  To practice to proficiency rhetorical analysis of both fiction and non-fiction across time and culture, evaluate argument, and create an argument with sophistication and nuance  To master all elements of composition including content, focus, conventions, and style  To experience regularly and practice to proficiency a timed environment for both multiple choice and writing assessments

10. What is rhetoric?  The traditional definition of rhetoric, first proposed by Aristotle, and embellished over the centuries by scholars and teachers, is that rhetoric is the art of observing in any given case the “available means of persuasion.”

11. Rhetoric—Whose idea was it?  Socrates: 469-399 B.C.E. Socrates  Father of Western philosophy and Mentor to Plato. Epistemology and logic.  Plato: 424-348 B.C.E. Plato:  Student of Socrates and founder of “The Academy” Philosophy, logic, ethics, rhetoric and mathematics.  Aristotle: 384-322 B.C.E. Aristotle  Student of Plato, and teacher to Alexander the Great.