Dear Diploma Candidates:

If you are registered for all six IB courses and you are planning on registering as a full diploma candidate, you’ll need to write the ToK essay. Please browse these essay titles and begin to ask questions about which areas of knowledge and ways of knowing would be a good fit for the topic of your choice.

Theory of Knowledge May 2017 Essay Topics

If you are Mr. Ferlazzo’s student, he requests that you email (or share via Google Docs) a copy of your ToK essay.  mrferlazzo@aol.com

Also, Mr. Ferlazzo has posted the official essay planning document, feedback from examiners on our essays, etc. here:

http://theoryofknowledge.edublogs.org/2016/09/01/tok-essay-prompts-for-may-2017/

Kind Regards,

Mr. Coey

Greetings Seniors!

Three weeks from today we will begin another exciting year at LBHS; however, this year you will be graduating high school and likely heading off to college. With that in mind, I would like you to consider taking time over the next three weeks to begin checking off items on your to do list:

1. Ask teachers for letters of recommendation now! As you know, your teachers are very busy, but they are more than happy to write a letter of recommendation for you. Asking your teacher to write a letter prior to the start of the school year is a good way to take advantage of most of your teachers having free time. Consider helping your teacher write the letter by first providing information on this LETTER-OF-RECOMMENDATION-REQUEST FORM
2. Begin writing a first draft of your UC personal statement, which is now called called the “personal insight questions.” You will have 8 questions to choose from. You must respond to only 4 of the 8 questions. Each response is limited to a maximum of 350 words. Which questions you choose to answer is entirely up to you:  But you should select questions that are most relevant to your experience and that best reflect your individual circumstances. To see the questions visit the UC application page, click here.
   News and Review 2012 college essay contest
   Common Pitfalls to writing a personal statement
3. The best scholarship that I am aware of are Questbridge, a non-profit organization, which finds talented high school students and matches them with our nation’s top colleges and universities. Questbridge will PAY FOR ALL OF YOUR COLLEGE EXPENSES! The deadline is September 27! so don’t delay! Click here for information on how to apply. For information about the Sacramento Physicians for Social Responsibility essay contest, click here. The 2017 essay prompt will be available in January.

I hope you all are well, and I look forward to another awesome year with you.

Kind Regards,

Mr. Coey

As you approach writing your essay, it would likely benefit you to research your chosen Neruda poem.

• When was the poem written?
• What was the historical context and how did this shape Neruda’s approach and technique?
• What has been written about this poem already? In other words, are there academic papers which have already been published? If so, can you use these ideas and cite them in your essay? Do NOT use Sparknotes or other cheating websites.
• When conducting research limit your search to .edu if possible; otherwise, you run the risk of including a dubious source.

To properly cite your source, please use www.easybib.com and follow the instructions for completing your citation.

For your chosen Neruda poem, use the following citation:

Neruda, Pablo. The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems. Ed. Mark Eisner. San Francisco: City Lights, 2004. Print.

In order to help students further deepen their sense of context, after each interactive oral this IB literature course asks each student to write a short reflection in response to the following question:

“How was your understanding of the cultural and the contextual considerations of Pablo Neruda’s poetry developed through the interactive oral presentations?”

Your written response should be 300-400 words in length.

Please focus your writing on only one or two of the following interactive oral presentation topics:

Group A: Neruda’s Life: Who was Neruda? What did he do for work? What type of family did he grow up in? Who were the women in his life an how did they influence his poems? Which events in Neruda’s life most shaped is poetry? Which awards did he receive?
Group B: Neruda’s style and beliefs: What style of poetry did he write? What was Neruda’s involvement in the Modernista literary movement? What were Neruda’s political beliefs, religious beliefs, and economic status? How did these beliefs influence his writing? Which types of poems is he most well-known for?
Group C: South American Politics: Was Chile a democracy or socialist state? Which political events shaped Chile and in turn Neruda’s poems? Spanish politics (particularly during the time Neruda lived there, the 1930s) and the Spanish Civil War, particularly Neruda’s experience there and involvement in politics. Why is Neruda often associated with communism? How did he feel about that association?
Group D: Geography of South America: Show us the sights and sounds of Neruda’s poems: the ocean, the Andes mountain range, native animals (vicuna, condor), native plants (maize), native flora (lilacs, poppies). Help us to understand the terrain and the images that inspired Neruda to write. Make connections to specific lines/images in Neruda’s poems.

Due: Thursday, May 26

Also, I’ve recently used this essay analysis app, Expresso. It’s fascinating. I strongly suggest you copy your reflective statement into this app and review the metrics for editing. It can help you find problematic sentences and overused terms.

Please add your reflective statement with word count in the “comments” section of this post.

IB Juniors,

Many of you have asked about how to properly cite poetry, especially the line numbers. Well, these examples at Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab can help answer your questions.

For more information about Neruda, his beliefs, and his poetry, read this in-depth interview from 1970! It’s very enlightening!

Our Interactive Oral Presentations are Monday, so be prepared!

Have a great weekend!

Mr. C

Notes on The Sorrow of War

Think about your essay topic; read over my notes and select relevant quotes to support your ideas! See you tomorrow!

Also, feel free to print or save this document for further reference.

Sincerely,

Mr. Coey

A score 3 Reflective Statement is available to review in the comments section of this post.

Use the following questions to help you develop a Reflective Statement and please do not go over the word count:

Because of the “Interactive Oral Presentations,” which concepts or ideas do you now understand? Select only one or two concepts to write about. (topic sentence)

Which specific examples from the novel can you relate to this idea? Explain in several sentences of commentary how this scene/moment/passage exemplifies the concept. (Concrete detail and commentary here)

 Explain the author’s role in addressing this concept. Which choices specifically does Bao Ninh make to influence how we think about Vietnamese culture and history? (commentary on the writer’s choices)

 Which questions about Bao Ninh, Vietnam, or the Vietnam War are you left with as a reader?

 Word count: 300-400 words

Due: Monday, April 11th at 7 p.m.

1. Type your reflection into a word document or cloud storage. Save. Then, read aloud and proofread.
2. Upload it to this website by clicking on the “comment” link at the bottom of THIS POST.

Greetings IB Juniors!

I sincerely hope you have had a restful spring holiday, and I imagine that you are now starting to think about returning to Luther Burbank High School. Again, I want to commend you for all of your hard work and your willingness to embrace these challenging novels and writing assignments. You are all doing well, and I expect when you leave for college, which is actually not that long from now, you’ll be well-prepared.

For the remainder of the year, we will adhere to this new grading policy, which is an incentive to turn in your work on time, complete, and well-written:

1.Work turned in on the day due is considered “on time.”

2. Work turned in one day late and up to one week is considered “late” and shall be docked 10%.

3. Work turned in after one week and up to two weeks is considered “very late” and shall be docked 20%.

4. All work turned in after two weeks shall not be accepted unless a parent conference is arranged and Mr. Coey deems it in the best interest of the student to complete the assignment. A passing grade may be awarded.

This updated grading policy addresses the current lack of such a policy and hence the problem of inconsistency with grading and various advantages and disadvantages for turning in work on time. I hope you understand the need for this update and for those of you who have turned in your work on time, thank you very much.

Given my recent series of absences, I’ve taken some leniency with late work; however, starting from this date the new policy will be applied.

Those of you still writing your first draft Murakami essays will have until Wednesday, March 30th to meet the “very late” qualification.

I’ve just finished reading the first 100 pages of The Sorrow of War and wow! is it a great novel! There is so much for us to consider and discuss when we meet on Monday.

Kind Regards,

Mr. Coey

Good morning!

I’m writing to you from my hotel room on the 11th floor of the Hotel Kabuki, located in San Francisco’s Japantown. Last night, given our current reading of Murakami’s novel, I was curious to see if the hotel had a room 208. So, just for fun I went to the second floor and looked for the room. You can’t believe what I discovered! I’m not making this up. There was a room 207 and a room 209, but no room 208, and where there should have been a room 208, instead there was a baseball bat leaning against the wall. Crazy! I can tell you more about my experience when I return tomorrow.

By the way, please be sure to thank Chief Coyne for all of his support (I’m assuming he was your substitute teacher, but if it was someone else, please let that person know you appreciate him or her)

Writing a Conclusion: For the purpose of this literary essay about an author’s choices, I recommend the following approach:

1. Related to your essay topic, what did Murakami do in his novel?

2. Related to your essay topic, how was this conveyed? Through imagery, motif, setting, historical context, symbolism, flashback, diction, tone, and so on.

3. Related to your essay topic, why did Murakami make these choices? Was it to convey an idea, knowledge, raise questions, express feelings? And to what extent was this successful, and do you appreciate his choices? (this is an evaluation)

Conclusion: the length of the conclusion will vary, but it will probably be 4-5 sentences.

Proofreading:

1. Read your essay aloud! This must be done.

2. Have a trusted friend or parent read your essay and comment.

3. Ensure you have avoided dead words: stuff, a lot, very, many, different, things, good, bad

4. Look for strongly worded active voice present tense verbs: see our list of “verbs for literary essays”

5. Use transitions effectively to show relationships between ideas: For example, In addition, Furthermore, Moreover, However, On the other hand, In contrast, Similarly, and so on

Final Thoughts: I will see you tomorrow, Thursday. I’m looking forward to having the Interactive Oral Research Team lead a final discussion. Simply remind us of your topics, clarify any ideas, and facilitate a discussion about where we have seen these ideas since our last interactive oral.

Thank you for all your hard work! You are all awesome!

Mr. Coey

Greetings! I’m writing from my hotel room in San Francisco, and I’m so pleased to see all of the great ideas and questions you have posed! Look for my reply to your comments.

Today our focus is on the introduction and specifically the idea of “orienting the reader,” which means telling the reader what you hope to accomplish with your essay. In the United States, we often write objectively, yet internationally it is more common to write (at least for part of the essay) from the first person point of view. We are writing to an international reader, so let’s adhere to international standards.

Introduction Paragraph:

1. Identify the author, novel, and central conflict. Be sure to italicize the novel’s title.

2. Identify the central question your essay hopes to answer.

3. Explain the approach you will take in your essay and why you believe that this approach will best satisfy your central question.

4. Share a brief or abbreviated answer to your central question. (This is your thesis statement!) If you don’t have your thesis statement at this time, it’s okay. You can return later and insert it here in your introduction.

Body Paragraphs:

1. Provide the answer to one of your supporting questions (you worked on these yesterday)

2. Develop support of your interpretation with specific references to the text. Remember to write with your book open and cite examples. Provide the context (who, what, when, where, why) PRIOR to your concrete detail. You need to guide the reader to your example.

3. Comment on your example (1-2 sentences)

4. Comment on Murakami’s choices (1-2 sentences)

5. Repeat steps 2-4 as necessary. You should have a balance of context, concrete detail, commentary, and author commentary in your essay.

Exemplary Essay

If you haven’t already, I strongly encourage you to read Nick Peters’ essay, which scored a perfect score from the IB examiner. You’ll have a good sense of what you’ll need to to do. Keep your voice academic and sustain your interpretation.

I’m so glad to know that you having success with starting your essays! What a relief!

Kind Regards,

Mr. Coey