Jake Vreeland 4/417

Today April 3rd, 2017 we got our computers out and set up our revised literature for our soapstone assignment. Before we got back to work Mr. Rivers wanted to remind us that we need to still have four claims from the text. Two claims were just needed with one soapstone and another two had to be with two SOAPSTone. (There is a picture to explain it better).  After Mr. Rivers talked to class he let us continue working on our assignment.  Today's purpose to make sure your text is completely revised and have all the claims done.  Basically organize ourselves so we can make our script or at least a planed idea for when we talked about our text. We need this done because tomorrow in class we will be able to learn how to record ourselves speaking over our work. Once we learn how to then we can record our final assignment.  I personally am not a fan of it because I hate my voice and it's even worse that we have to present our work in front of the class.  Luckily we will have time to practice and so our best job because the assignment isn't due til Wednesday at midnight like most of our assignments. Unless we don't have the program that records our voice at home because we are recording in class.  Today was a successful day like always hopefully everybody's recording goes well tomorrow in class.

Julia Orlando 3/30

Today in English class we did the same thing that we were beginning at the end of class yesterday. At the end of class, we were pairing up with groups or a partner who had different SOAPSTone topics as us. There are six topics which include subject, occasion, audience, purpose, subject, and tone. My original topic is subject and I talked about the ideal on how minorities dream, desire, fantasize, and want to be like the favorable class, white people, during the time. Yesterday, I not only began to gather information about the speaker and shaped my opinion on how the speaker not only reflects my idea but how he influences the idea. In summary today, I got together with a speaker person again and an occasion person to come up with claims that are located on Google Classroom. The ideals of this poem are not only a depiction of this time period but could be a modern depiction of our times. Langston Hughes uses occasion to address and have his poem stand out creating a strong, stand out point.

Samantha Russo 3/29

Today in class we started out by reading all of the SOAPSTONE claims that the class wrote yesterday about the poem “Let America be America Again”. Then, as a class we went over which three of the claims were the best and why. After that we paired up with members from other groups to to combine the claims and look through “a different lens”. We paired up with other people from different groups (each group was a different part of SOAPSTONE) to form a claim by combining them together. We did this because we will be starting a new assingment where we have to SOAPSTONE either a song or poem, and make claims based off the evidence. That is also where we will be starting off in class tomorrow.

3.29.17 Patricia Aldrich

Today in class we had a short class again so we tried to fit a lot in so we could get to discussing our claims in different groups, which we didn't get to do yesterday. The first thing we did was post all of our claims on the classroom page because only 11 people did the assignment at first. Once we all posted our claims then as a group we had to find the three that we thought were the best and rank them. My group chose Bayleigh's and Elias's. The class chose my groups claim, Bayleigh's, and Ben's group. My group's claim was "The speaker is ridiculing America for claiming to be the land of the free when in reality America is only free for certain groups of people." We then as a class said what made each claim so good and how it applied to the specific lens that each group was supposed to be looking at. Once we went through all three claims we then split up into separate groups. We had to go to a different table so that we could partner up with someone with a lens that was different from our own. Me and Coralyn partnered up but we ended up not being able to come up with a claim because by this time class only had about three minutes left so Mr. Rivers said we could start class of with that again tomorrow.

Olivia Agius 3/28/17

Today in class Mr. Rivers introduced us to a site called Kami, which allows students to annotate documents by using many tools. Also on kami multiple students can edit at the same time. Using Kami our class looked at the poem we analyzed on friday, Let America be America Again. Mr. Rivers passed out note cards with one of the aspects of SOAPSTone on it. Then we all went onto Kami and annotated it as groups. For examples, my group which was given speaker looked for who the speaker was, based off of what they say what do we know about them, what the text proves about the speaker, and so on. Then, we had to connect our findings to a claim. Also, we posted that claim on classroom.

Christina Bally 2/24/2017

Today in class we had a substitute teacher. By the time the bell rang we took attendance and then were instructed to complete the assignment that was on the google classroom. The assignment was titled "SOAPSTone this!". There was a poem attached to the assignment. This meant that we had to analyze the poem and check it for the qualities in which make up the letters of the word soapstone. This included addressing who the speaker is, what the occasion is, who the audience is, and the purpose, subject, and tone. On top of this we had to look for rhetorical and literary devices. We were able to annotate the poem by commenting on the certain sentence that had the particular quality. Doing this allowed us to grasp a further understanding of the text. We were able to analyze the poem word for word. The poem was titled "Let America Be American Again". In this poem, it is explained that America should be the way is used to be, free and the dream it once was. The speaker of this poem is a man named Langston Hughes and the audience was all members of America.

3/24/17 Elias Frieling

Today in English, something was wrong. Sitting at the desk was the not Sparta High School teacher of the year, Brent Rivers, it was a sub. Our assignment for the day was on google classroom. We had to SOAPSTone a poem by Langston Hughes, Let America be America again. The poem was pretty long, about 4 pages so there was lots of work to do. The speaker of the poem was not just one person but many. The speaker claimed that, “I am the poor white, I am the Negro, I am the red man, I am the immigrant.” The speaker is different than the author because obviously the author cannot simultaneously be white, black, and native american. After a quick google search to learn about the author was I found that Langston Hughes was a black poet in the early 1900s. As for the occasion of the poem it seemed to me that it was to highlight the injustices some Americans face. How some Americans do not experience freedom and equality. He talks about blacks being slaves, native americans being pushed off their lands. We continued to work all period on annotating the document with SOAPSTone finding the speaker, occasion, audience, purpose, subject, and tone. We also found and analyzed the impact of its rhetorical devices in the poem. Overall class today was fairly easy, we did not do anything new, just practicing SOAPSTone.