October 28-November 14
We completed the short story Civil Peace after creating a brainstorm list of items we would need for a happy survival after a disaster. As we noticed from the story, the characters were able to be happy with much less than what we would need. We also considered the poem The Conqueror Worm by Edgar Allan Poe. In addition, we began working on our iEARN projects and brainstormed ideas for the projects sent to us from Moldova and Pennsylvania.
October 7-24
After completing Everyday Use, we began to analyze how the setting of a story can have an emotional effect on the characters in the story. We used this knowledge to apply to the characters in the story The Teenage Bedroom. Not only did we focus on setting for this story, we took notes on direct and indirect characterization. We highlighted our notes in the text and wrote annotations in the margins to focus on the characterization examples.
September 29-October 6
We completed our paraphrasing lessons and will now apply this knowledge in class. Upon review of the short story structure and active reading strategies, we read our first story, Everyday Use by Alice Walker. We also discussed possible project ideas to sponsor for our iEARn project.
September 15-26
We completed our presentations, and what a treat that was! Everyone was so enthusiastic, and we were able to see how a little boy fared after an appendix operation and what The Outsiders looks like in the 32-Second Macbeth style. We then started our first strategy for the year, the Paraphrasing and Summarizing strategy. We reviewed the TM-D process of identifying topics, main ideas, and details and began practicing this in our exercises. We then literally learned this strategy backwards when we introduced the D-MT progress. We are working on completing this strategy and finding out how it can be useful in testing situations.
Welcome Back to your First Assignment!
I know you all worked very had this summer reading your two, (or more), novels. As we saw from the 32-Second Macbeth example and the Reduced Shakespeare Company's Macbeth, it is possible to take a large novel and turn it into a simple presentation. Your job is to take your summer reading novel and turn it into a manageable, and entertaining, presentation for the class. Use the sheet you were given in class as a reference for what information you need to include. Be as creative as you want with this. Write a poem, a song, a paragraph, a dialogue, make a video, create a storyboard, role play your story in your video games and show us the results. The possibilities are endless, but see me if you get stuck or overwhelmed.
