Conference+Guidelines


 * AP English Lit. ** **Guidelines for Journal Conference**


 * PURPOSES OF CONFERENCE: **


 * --to reflect on your strengths and weaknesses as a reader/thinker **
 * --to articulate to yourself and to me what you have learned about reading literature over the semester **
 * --to discover the skills you have developed on your journey to becoming a discerning reader **
 * --to demonstrate this change/growth using the journal as evidence **
 * --to connect insights and discoveries re: literature as art (Nabokov, Calvino, Foster) **
 * --to demonstrate your consistent, thoughtful dedication to nightly journaling **

Your conference is 10 minutes in length. You are in charge of the time; therefore, you must prepare carefully both to identify the points you want to make about yourself as a reader and to offer evidence for those points. Think about the conference as a conversation that you lead. I will ask questions occasionally (and you should be able to answer them thoughtfully with references to the right side of your journal) and I will offer comments where appropriate. You, though, have to manage your time wisely in order to cover everything you need to say. While I will allow you to go over a minute or two, I must stop you at 12 minutes. Practice your conference, then, with a parent or a friend. An **OUTLINE** for the conference would be a good idea; also, post-its are a beautiful thing for marking spots in your journal for evidence.

Just as we have looked for patterns and recurring motifs in our fiction pieces all semester, you are now turning that critical eye onto yourself. What patterns do you see about yourself as a reader? Perhaps the best organizational plan is the **skills-focus** method. Consider the skills we have worked on this semester and the progress you have or have not made with some of these skills. These skills include the following: //drawing inferences, reading for significant detail, organizing non-linear texts, analyzing complex characters, recognizing personal bias in reading, picking out allusions (both Biblical and mythological), recognizing patterns/motifs, discerning narrative voice and bias, identifying author’s tone, attending to diction and figurative language, recognizing irony and symbols, understanding the importance of context when ascribing symbolic meaning, and connecting it all to the author’s universal message.// Pick a few of these skills where you are certain you have shown some growth. Give evidence of this by referring to your journal. Note how you have changed in your understanding and abilities of these skills, __offering evidence from the right hand sides of your journal and from your notes the Nabokov, Gioia, and Calvino essays and Foster chapters__.

It is perfectly acceptable to discuss a problem you are having with an area of reading or with a text. Or you may find yourself missing subtle details. You still might not fully understand something in Nabokov, for example. Bring that up in the conference. This conference should be an honest one. After all, if we are to improve your critical reading skills, we have to first identify areas of difficulty.

A good way to finish your conference would be to refer to Nabokov and Calvino and Foster to explore how you have changed your approach to reading this semester. How are you growing in your understanding of literature as art? What does “the grand conversation” mean to you? How are you now defining classics? What do you realize now about literature that you did not know at the beginning of the year? I expect you to find at least one salient point from Nabokov or Calvino and at least one reference to Foster will be worked into the conference. This would be a good way to synthesize your learning for the semester. This is a requirement.

==== You must cover your responses to these texts in the conference: //A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Awakening//, //Dubliners//, //Light in August, Sound and Sense//, the Nabokov, Gioia, and/or Calvino essay, and chapters from //How to Read Literature like a Professor// (Foster). Also consider the Biblical and Mythological tales, the Flannery O'Connor story, the Faulkner story, the critical essays for //The Awakening// and //Dubliners//, and any related articles we read as supplements to the larger texts. Basically, anything we read together is fair game for your analysis and insights.====

Your grade is based on the conference. Remember, though, that you cannot possibly have a full discussion without a thorough journal -- period. If you have not kept up with your journal, if you have not written full answers in full sentence to all of the questions asked, if you have not integrated class notes, if you cannot demonstrate a consistent work ethic with your journal, do not expect a grade above a C.


 * SCORING GUIDE FOR JOURNAL CONFERENCES **


 * A ** Your reading growth was identified immediately in these conferences. They were well-organized and followed a logical format/ outline. The essays of Nabokov, Calvino, and Gioia and the chapters of Foster were the source of critical reading skills in these conferences. You dealt with all the required texts and did that most effectively with rich support for all of your claims -- through passages from both the right and left hand sides of the journal. In other words, you backed up your generalizations about your reading with specific evidence from the journals. These conferences moved away from elementary concepts of critical reading (using the dictionary, rereading) to more sophisticated ones (meeting the author halfway, a more profound understanding of the “grand conversation”, growing recognition of motifs, increased awareness of inferential reading, and more sophisticated understanding of symbols--to name a few!) and avoided any discussion of character and plot development. You had exceptionally well-organized, coherent oral essays. Your insights were fresh and illustrated personal discovery as well as a growing understanding in the art of reading literature. Your left-hand pages of your journal appeared carefully and thoughtfully completed, and you gave me your 1-page summary overview of your work with //Light in August//.


 * B ** These conferences were thinner than the **A** conferences. The major difference between **A** conferences and **B** conferences is depth and organization. You perhaps made generalizations about your reading habits but did not back them up sufficiently with text support from your journal. For these conferences, you may not have used your journal entries effectively as support. You may not have integrated critical reading points of the essayists or explained a holistic understanding of the literature as art. Or perhaps you had to be prompted to discuss a particular text. Finally, these oral essays may not have had the level of organization and coherence of **A** essays. The left-hand sides of your journal and/or your summary essay for Faulkner might have seemed hastily completed or lacking in depth.


 * C ** These conferences were problematic in one of more of the following areas:

°You did not deal with critical reading improvement, but dealt instead with plot development or character analysis.

°You made no mention of Nabokov, Gioia, Calvino or Foster in terms of your reading growth... until prompted to do so.

°You ignored one or more of the main required texts completely.

°You did little to explore or prove the particulars of your critical reading growth.

°You did little to prove that you had completed the left-hand journal assignment; or you did not complete the 1-page summary of your Faulkner note-taking.

°You did not use a clear system of organization to deliver your information, or you had trouble finding things and wasted much time with silence.

(Based on handout from C. D’Agostino, New Trier High School, Winnetka, IL presented at Northwestern Summer AP English Workshop 2006)