It’s here, really.

Continue reading over the sources for your support, refute, or qualify essay [click to download] this weekend.  We will work on your thesis statements on Monday, your support on Wednesday, and write the final drafts on Friday.  Normal article analyses will be due Tuesday and Thursday.  (Holy organization, Batman! A week planned in advance!)  Have a great weekend, enjoy the extra hour.

Edit: Great ironic inevitability!  Of course, as one of you so gently informed me, you do not have school on Friday.  So, the essay will be due at the end of class on Thursday, and the rest of the schedule stays the same.  [sigh.]

Edit 2: Here is the url for the essay download site: http://www.mediafire.com/?uz1ilncmiii.  Six of you have downloaded it so far, so it must be working at some point in the process.  Keep me updated if you are still having trouble.  There will be no article analyses tomorrow because the gods of organization have conspired against my best laid plans.  Work on your essays, come to class tomorrow with a thesis statement and some support.  [If you email a copy of your thesis to me before tomorrow I’ll smile warmly upon you.]

Sorry about the break in the image…

I’m wasting away here, guys.

Your assignment today was to begin annotating Martin Luther King’s "Letter from Birmingham Jail."  This is a near-perfect example of a solid argument, one that carefully balances the rhetorical triangle while employing a myriad of rhetorical figures. You’ve gotta love that.

Your job for tonight is to annotate passages you find interesting (see your handout "AP Review Through Vocabulary" for why this is important, as well as how to do it), and mark the appeals to emotion, to logic, and from Dr. King’s character.  (Highlighters work well for this.)

We will discuss our reactions in class tomorrow.

I’ve made two changes to the Windmills and Giants with hope that it will allow me to respond to your questions faster and keep you better informed when I update the blog.

First, a twitter widget at the top of the sidebar.  This will allow me to make quick updates, respond to  comments if I’m away from my computer (*gasp*—it does happen), and allow you to receive these updates on your phone if you really want to.  (Helpful if you have to share the computer with a sibling or parent who hogs the connection, or don’t have access at home.)

Second, a Feedburner subscription link in grey at the top of the page.  I realize many of you do not use RSS readers, so I thought this might help.  Basically, you click on the link, enter your email address and receive updates whenever I post to the site.  It’s like our own newsletter!

As always, let me know if you have any ideas to make the site better for you, or if any of the new widgetness isn’t working.