Assignment checkpoint and deadline

Here is our finalised assignment for the connections assessment. 

This table can help you organise your ideas.

This week the expectation was that everyone had read their fourth text by Wednesday 13 March.  In class this week we have been working on thinking about the connections between our texts and taking notes.  We want to finish this week with our notes ready for writing our draft connections reports.

I want to be able to give feedback on your drafts to ensure you know how to get the highest possible grade.  I am moving the deadline for both the draft and the final assignment so that no one is penalised by me being absent for part of week nine.

The report draft is due Thursday 28 March, by the end of period 2.  The more of your draft which is written, the better feedback I can give.  If you are ready for feedback on a complete draft earlier than this, please let me know.  I know some of you will want to get this assignment finished before the new due date so you can then turn your attention to assignments and tests in other classes.

The final report is now due Friday 5 April, 11.59pm.  If you think you have grounds for an extension, please ask me for an extension request form BEFORE the due date.

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Last week we learned to form connections statements, and explored ways in which our statements could be broken down into four parts for discussion.  Each part might connect two texts - you don't have to connect all four texts across every sub-part of your connections statement.  Below are some of the screen grabs from our work last week:

Work for Wednesday 6 March 2019

Today, you have two choices.
1. You can keep reading the novel or short story or poem(s) that you have chosen yourself to extend your knowledge of war literature OR
2. If you forgot to bring your book, or would like to try another poem from WWI, then have a look at Wilfred Owen's Anthem for Doomed Youth.

Owen also wrote Dulce et Decorum Est, which we watched earlier in the term:

There is a lot of analysis of these hugely powerful and famous poems available online to give you some more ideas to think about in relation to the poems, and to war literature, and perhaps to other texts on war that you have read or are reading.

This discussion focuses on the sound techniques used in Anthem for Doomed Youth, and offers a specialist perspective on the use of rhyme and rhythm in poetry (why not learnt to pepper your conversations with phrases like iambic pentameter?)  On the same poem, this shmoop summary may be of interest.

This profile of Wilfred Owen and discussion of his poems may be useful.  One connection between Tim O'Brien's work and Wilfred Owen's work that is worth considering carefully is the role of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Read.  Think.  Write down your thoughts, and feel welcome to email me questions, or tag me in a comment on your work.  Your role is to think about war and literature in lots of ways, and consider how each text approaches this topic and what we learn from each text - about the characters, about war, about ourselves.

War in literature: analysis and resources

A big thinking day today:

1. Making connections across Sassoon poems
2. Exploring ideas about war in literature - wider reading
3. Gathering a range of texts for our individual text choices for the assignment

Starting with a range of word prompts, we will each write about how one or more of these words was significant, or explored in Sassoon's poetry.

Then we will swap work to share ideas with someone in a different group, as assigned on the side whiteboard.

Next: some wide reading and recommendations on war in literature

• This discussion about women in war literature has some great recommendations, and a link to this opinion piece on the under-representation of women in war in our literature.
• A list of the 30 best war novels.
• Another list of the greatest war novels
• Comfort women in literature
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