Chloe Rippey 1/19/17

Hello all!

Tonight is a weird blog, in class today we had a sub while Mr. Rivers was in a meeting. In case you were all wondering today we worked on our summative essay whether or not The Great Gatsby is Romantic or Modern. Everyone came into class prepared with quotes and material to write about. You could either start your pre-writing today or get right to the point of writing your essay. Most people began writing their essays. Tomorrow we will continue to work on this summative. Do not forget that your Narrative writing will be due Sunday night, so be sure to get that finished! If you did it alone its 500 word minimum, and every other person you add to your group will be an additional 250+ words. I wish everyone the best of luck writing your essay tomorrow!

~ Chloe

heres a link to when Myrtle got hit by the car :) such a Romantic Tragedy 

1/18 - Justin Rhodes

Hello class,
Today we started out by discussing what will be going on for Thursday with the summative coming up, which will be a summative based on whether The Great Gatsby was a Romantic , or modern novel. You could also argue that it has both qualities of these styles in your paper. You will be required to use quotes, as well as showing strong knowledge of having read the book, with good evidence for your argument. After discussing the summative, we began to work on the Formative that will be due on Sunday. In the formative, you had to pick a character from the Great Gatsby, then select a passage involving that character. You would then rewrite a new passage from that characters perspective, creating new dialogue, as well as revealing what the character may have thought when they had been put in that situation. If you are doing this by yourself, you only have to write 500 words. For each extra group member, you have to do an extra 250 words in the assignment. In the assignment, you should have smooth transitions, as well as a good amount of dialogue within your rewritten passage.

1/17/17 - Julia Orlando

Welcome back to the classroom! Today we just did the same thing as yesterday, which was to continue and draft out narrative for Gatsby. If you were not here yesterday or today then it is to rewrite a part of Gatsby under the idea of a new narrator. For example, I am doing running over Myrtle in Gatsby's perspective and I will include his chat with Nick. The next thing we have to include is 500+ word count and 250+ words for every other person you are working with - the limit is 4. It has to be double spaced as well. The final thing is it needs to have romantic, modern, or include both of those qualities. There is not really much to discuss since it has been mainly an individual assignment for me. Happy narrative writing! It is due Sunday night ( 11:59).

1.12.17 Sarah kokoszka

Yesterday I was absent in class therefore when I came into class today I saw that we were starting class where we left off yesterday. Our topic today as was yesterday's was tragedy. What we specifically discussed about was the tragedy of Gatsbys death and all the factors that enhanced Gatsbys murder. We did some close reading in the text starting off at the part where nick goes to visit Wolfsheim. When Nick goes to visit Wolfsheim things were very sketchy. No one was in sight besides Wolfsheim and his assistant; Nick told his assistant that he wanted to see Wolfsheim but his assistant lied and told nick he was not home---- he clearly was. Once Wolfsheim realized it was nick at the door he allowed nick to come in and have a discussion. Wolfsheim told nick about how he basically takes credit for making gatsby who he was and how he cared dearly for him, but oddly did not want to attend Gatsbys funeral. He continues on how Gatsby had nothing and by the help of Wolfsheim he now had everything. This specific part enhances the tragedy of Gatsbys death because it shows how Gatsby had nothing in his younger years, and now at his death he still has nothing/nobody. Continuing on with our close reading we discussed Mr. Gatz, Gatsbys father. Mr. Gatz comes into town and starts to make things personal. Throughout the whole book we do not have a single character related to Gatsby, we have no one to tell childhood stories but once his dad comes into town for his death even more ideas get revealed. For instance, the fact that his dad calls Gatsby "Jimmy" enhances tragedy because it shows that Mr. Gatz and Gatsby had a type of realationahip, it shows that this was a pure, personal, father son relationship. Lastly we ended our class discussion talking about the last scenes of Gatsbys house. This huge, beautiful, elegant million dollar house that once held extravagant parties was now vacant and cold. Vandalized and empty the house no longer  was the place people made party memories. This emphasizes Gatsbys death even more because it shows that no one really cared for Gatsby genuinely and now his house of extravagance is now dead along with him.



An iconic photo of Jay Gatsby in the motion picture film

Lauren Zanetakos

1/9/17

P. 8

Today we started off class with the question which part of the book did you focus on. East egg, To/ from NYC or NYC
Our task was to interpret our assigned sections  and fine a high and low points of certain characters. My group focused on what happened when in New York City  . The main character of this section are Gatsby, Daisy and Tom. in the heat of the chapter the reader finally get the Tom, Gatsby duel that was just bound to happen. The truth finally comes boiling to the top and  Gatsby & Tom engage in a screaming match covering everything from Gatsby’s secret  income flow to Daisy’s affection towards both men. In this chapter we find that Nick is playing more of a spectator rather than a vocal narrator. Another event that happen at the end of the chapter was the death of Myrtle. She was killed by a hit and run driver. Tom and learns that the car that killed Myrtle was in fact Gatsby’s yellow car. When Nick confront Gatsby about the car, Gatsby admits that Daisy was the one driving. Let the record show that all day the characters were drinking non stop throughout the day.

1/9/17 - Colin Higdon

Today in English class, we were missing a lot of students due to a deca trip. There was also an assembly on Friday so Mr. Rivers's other class missed out on what we did that day. So, Mr. Rivers was kind enough to let us watch a part of The Great Gatsby movie. We started it right before the start of chapter 7 and then watched all the way up through chapter 7. We then had to answer the following question on google classroom: "What would Fitzgerald think of this film? Be specific."

Ryan Ryersen 1-6-17

Today in class we continued our study on The Great Gatsby, specifically chapter 7. We looked at chapter  7 in a document that was shared with the class. We were split into three groups one group focused on the beginning and end of the chapter specifically when they are in West Egg, one group focused on the car ride into and out of NYC and the third group focused on the time spent in NYC. I was in the group that focused on the car ride into and out of NYC. Everybody was supposed to identify specific parts of the chapter that represented a character’s high point and low point. We were looking specifically for high and low points because going from high to low is what we deemed to be tragic. On Thursday our class defined a tragedy as a rapid downfall from good fortune to bad fortune in a very short amount of time. So, we tried to analyze each character’s fortune in the beginning of the chapter compared to the end ot the document. We tried to cover each of the seven characters. For example, I focused on Tom’s low I focused on a section where Tom was talking to the policeman and Tom, usually an arrogant macho man becomes nervous and timid as he tries to cover his story. While this is bad for Tom in the scheme of things this not as bad compared to some of the other characters due to Tom’s immense amount of good fortune. In class other people focused on more tragic characters such as Gatsby who has a tragic downfall as he is now taking the blame for murder.