AP Lit Students Tackle Complexity with PlayDoh

This week in AP Literature, students studied the concept of complexity as it pertains to making sophisticated literary arguments. As part of the lesson, students made visual representations of complex relationships and attitudes out of PlayDoh. Some examples included "contrasting complexity" as represented by a parent and child who love each other but get on each other's nerves. A combination of "layered" and "paradoxical" complexity was also represented by a snowman whose bottom ball represented the Earth, middle ball represented the sky, and top, flattened layer represented the heat of global warming. The fact that the top layer was melting represented the relationship between the overheating climate and the Earth and it was paradoxical because the snowman was melting. There were many excellent examples created, and the entire class had a blast playing with the PlayDoh on a gloomy day.