Literary AnalysisToday we discussed Figurative Language - language the author uses to create images of what something looks, sounds, or smells like. These word creations, or figures of speech, are much like an artist's selection of colors, a musician's choice or sound, or an actor's choice of voice and costume - they effectively communicate the message the author wants the reader to understand. We looked at examples of simile, metaphor, personification, and idiom. Students should review these definitions (hint: glance left now). As we read the Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! monologues aloud in class, we are learning how to recognize the use of figurative language in the narratives. This will help students gain a deeper understanding of the characters and their experiences and challenges in a medieval village. In addition to noticing the use of figurative language in each monologue, students should identify:
For homework last week the students read "Hugo, the Lord's Nephew". We reviewed the worksheet questions they answered at home and looked at the use of figurative language. We identified two main themes: fear of hunting the boar, and the challenge of a boy becoming a man. Hugo's character and monologue are very expressive and lively - I hope someone will choose to perform it! DialoguesNext, we looked at the two scenes in the collection that contain dialogues (speaking parts for two characters). Several students volunteered to read aloud. The Manor SettingWe spent the last 15 minutes of class brainstorming ideas for design of the theatrical set for our final performance. Students will design and build the set to resemble a medieval manor/village, incorporating the scenes and backdrops necessary for the monologues they choose to perform. We will use inexpensive, everyday materials and must be clever, innovative and creative to pull this off! Students will work both in class and at home on portions of the set and students will be organized into small groups to work on specific aspects of the overall design. We will continue our discussion of set design next week. To prepare, please review these two layouts of a typical medieval manor and think about what structures and physical areas you would like to include. HomeworkPlease complete the following for class next week:
with Kim Rodgers Exploring the Meaning of ChemistryIt was so good to be back in the swing of things! We started off our Chemistry class discussing the meaning of Chemistry. We read the first chapter from the Real Science 4 Kids Chemistry book, which talked about the smallest particles that make up matter, atoms, and how they are attracted to one another. We moved on to experiments involving water to show how atoms, which make up molecules, are attracted to one another. Using droppers we tried to make the biggest drop we could before it fell off the end of the dropper. It was almost as if the water droplet were saying, “Noooo...I want to stay with my friends!” as it finally fell. The kids made a drop of water on an index card covered with wax paper. We observed how the whole drop moved when we tilted the index card, not leaving a trace behind. The students took popsicle sticks and tried cutting the drop into two pieces. After a few tries they realized that they had to exert force on the droplet in order to break it into pieces. The droplet did not want to be separated! Once the drops were separated the students used the popsicle stick to bring one of the drops back to its original drop. They combined immediately. There was an attraction there. After recording our observations we took a cup of water in a clear glass and added a couple of drops of red food coloring to observe the fact that molecules in water are continuously moving. We didn’t stir the color in, but the water eventually became almost entirely red! We watched an animation of molecules in motion and drew our own picture to show this motion. And finally, to drive the point home, we watched a slow motion video of a water balloon popping. For several frames after the balloon is popped the water stays in the shape of a balloon, proving that the molecules have an attraction until the forces around it are more powerful than their attraction, in which case they fall apart. At the end of class we played a couple of games, which the students took home to play as well, which emphasized this idea of attraction. Ask them to show you how to play! For homework I gave the students a notebooking page labeled “Chemistry." I always think it’s helpful to have students reflect on what went on in class to encourage retention of what we learned. Each week they can write what they remembered from class, what stood out to them. At the beginning of the next class the students share what they wrote as we head into the next lesson. By the end of the semester they’ll have a nice compilation of pages describing their learning. Back to the Middle Ages!In our Middle Ages class we started off reading about the first kings of England. We learned that the Vikings were pretty brutal and very feared! Britain was at a disadvantage because it was broken up into seven kingdoms at the time. They didn’t have a united army in order to fight the Vikings. For ten years the Vikings raided English farms, capturing kingdoms left and right, with no end in sight. They headed south. The kingdom of Wessex had heard of the Vikings and awaited their arrival with gold ready to hand them in order to keep their kingdom to themselves. The Vikings took their gold and left, but the people of Wessex knew that might not last long. They appointed Alfred, a nobleman, to be their leader. He began training the farmers to be warriors, but in the process, the Vikings mounted a surprise attack! The people fled, many of them to France, while Alfred hid in the countryside pretending not to be the king. He stopped at a peasant’s hut. The couple who lived there took pity on him and allowed him to stay with them in exchange for labor. One day the woman made some cakes. As they were cooking over the fire she went to collect firewood, asking Alfred to keep watch over the cakes. “Don’t allow them to burn!” she admonished. Alfred began worrying so much about how he was going to overthrow the Vikings that he forgot to pay attention. When the woman returned she scolded Alfred! Little did she know that she was scolding a king. Soon, Alfred thought of a plan. He waited until spring when he knew the farmers would have time to plant their crops. Then he sent out secret messages to meet him at his headquarters so they could gather an army to fight the Vikings. In the meantime the Viking army had shrunk. The warriors had become bored, or farmers themselves, and didn’t have time for fighting! By the time the two armies met, the English army was as strong as the Vikings, and they engaged in battle at a place called Salisbury Plain. The English drove the Vikings into a nearby castle and kept food or water from going in. Eventually the Vikings surrendered and moved north to settle down and farm their land. The surprising fact is that when King Alfred died his bones were buried under a cathedral in Wessex, and later moved to Hyde Abbey. When Hyde Abbey was destroyed, a prison was built over the top of Alfred’s grave. The prison was then destroyed as well. People forgot where Alfred’s bones were laid to rest. In 1999 archaeologists figured out that his grave lay beneath a parking lot! When they dug up his grave they found bits of his coffin, but no bones. No one knows what happened to them. In honor of Alfred burning the cakes (because his mind was busy with more important matters), we made our own Alfred cakes. The students paired up in the kitchen, sharing the responsibilities of measuring and stirring. Once the dough was assembled they each made cakes with their allotment of dough. Ten minutes later they popped out of the oven and after cooling were enjoyed warm and gently crisp. For homework the students have a notebooking page (which is to be used just as described above for Chemistry) and a map with mapping instructions. Feel free to help them with the writing, as the point of notebooking is to get their thoughts out, regardless of who actually writes it down.
Next week we begin an embroidery project. Let me know if any of you have small embroidery hoops as I’ll be going to Michaels this weekend to pick up some more. with Leigh Ann Yoder Class OverviewAfter a brief introductory video and key concept review of microscopes, cells and cell parts, students rotated through stations learning about magnification and microscopes. At station 1 students had the opportunity to use hand held microscopes and magnifying glasses to examine various pieces of cloth and newsprint. At the second station students used a simple (or stereo) microscope to examine insects. At the third station they learned the proper parts and mechanics of a compound microscope as they examined a variety of slides. They also had the opportunity to view living organisms in a sample of stream water brought in by a fellow student. At the final station students completed section 1 of the Technology Lab: Build a Microscope found in the textbook pg 14. This final activity demonstrated the basic design concept of the compound microscope. Egg-sperimental ScienceNext, students were properly prepared for their first project: Egg-speriment with a Cell, found in their notebooks. As a class we reviewed the lab requirements, set up a timeline for completion, recorded data and began the project. *Note - each student came home with a glass mason jar containing their egg soaking in vinegar. As I mentioned before, this project will require just a little parent involvement. Students should be measuring their egg daily and changing the liquid. Unforgettable Cells!
HomeworkMandatory:
Project: Egg-speriment: Follow class instructions and timeline. Record measurements each day and change your liquid as directed. Read Section 1.3 Chemical Compounds in Cells Study Guide: Chemical Compounds in Cells Compounds in Foods (pg. 30 of text) Optional: Online Activity pg. 26 of Textbook Enrichment: Modeling Cell Structures (found in your notebook enrichment section) Welcome to Class!Greetings fair ladies and gentlemen! So good to see you all at long last! We began with a brief overview of the structure and content of the class. What exactly will we be doing over the next 14 weeks? Students will be engaged in learning across three integrated areas:
The Feudal LifeStudents learned that feudalism became the primary structure of society during the Middle Ages. It was a system that tended to give power to a few in command and limited those beneath them severely. A basic pyramid type structure illustrates the king at the top, with nobles/lords, knights, and peasants/serfs beneath. We discussed the term vassal (a person in a subservient position to another, granted land or the use of land in return for loyalty and protection) and fief (an estate of land, given on condition of feudal service and loyalty). To illustrate the realities of life in feudal society, we played a simple game. Students were randomly assigned role cards (king, noble, knight, or peasant) and 10 candies each (representing crops from their harvest). We then imagined a typical scenario where each vassal would be required to give a certain portion of their crops to the individual above them - peasant to knight, knight to noble, and noble to king. The distribution of candies at the end of the simulation helped illustrate the inequities of the feudal system. Barbary the MudslingerWe read our first monologue together from Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! (Barbary the Mudslinger) and discussed the theme of the piece (adversity and regret). Students worked in pairs to answer questions about the author's use of language to convey the theme. We did not have time to fully discuss, so please continue to think about these questions at home - and re-read the monologue. Does this seem like a character you'd like to perform? Students should keep in mind that although Good Master! Sweet Ladies! is not a lengthy book, the material it contains is very rich. This is not a book that is meant to be read quickly and put down, but rather read and re-read for deeper meaning and nuance. We will be spending time searching for the themes of each monologue, understanding the authors use of figurative language, and discovering for ourselves the emotion underlying each character - all of which will be necessary to truly bring these medieval personalities alive in our dramatic performances. HomeworkTo prepare for class next week, students should:
with Angela Harris The Call is Answered Our final class on The Call of the Wild ended with a brief discussion of Rudyard Kipling's The Cat that Walked by Himself, our customary three-minute free-write, and a 'round-the-virtual classroom sharing of our quiz answers. I think everyone did pretty well, but it definitely proved a little tricker than I had planned. Check with your students to learn their scores if you are keeping track this year. Reviewing the answers gave us a great opportunity to discuss things we did not understand fully the first time around. That really should be the goal of testing, in my view! Darwinism, Nietzsche, and Jack LondonTo wrap up our study of Jack London we learned about two of his influences: Charles Darwin, the English naturalist, and Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher. London read voraciously and took with him to the Klondike Darwin's On the Origin of Species, although Darwin's greatest influence on London was really through the writer, Herbert Spencer. It was Spencer that coined the phrase "the survival of the fittest" (even though those words do appear in Darwin's work), and it was this theory that most appealed to Jack London, as he incorporated it into many of his short stories and novels. We also learned that London ascribed to Social Darwinism and was a racialist. He thought that certain favored races were destined for survival, particularly the Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic races. London was also heavily influenced by Nietzsche's writings, in particular, Thus Spoke Zarathusa. Nietzsche advocated the idea of the individual to the point of describing a "superman" or beyond-man" that was perfect in every way (mind, body, strength, intelligence) and not encumbered by religious teachings or social considerations. London would later write an indictment against this philosophy through his novels, The Sea Wolf and Martin Eden, but also embrace it to some extent through his work, Burning Daylight. London felt that individualism would fail without cooperation (or in his view, socialism). Having a basic idea of an author's philosophies can give the reader a much deeper appreciation of the works that writer is creating. This is by no means an exhaustive profile on London's philosophies, but a little window into the ideas that shaped his thinking. Thesis with TensionIn preparation for our next session, which will cover the Expository Essay exclusively, we revisited the concept of creating thesis statements, but this time we learned how to create a thesis with tension. After giving a couple of examples and sentence starters, the students were then read a list of interesting topics and tasked to pick four. Their assignment at the end of class was to simply develop four questions around their topics (one for each topic). It could be a question that they have, or that they think someone else might have about the topic. We'll pick up this exercise at the beginning of the next session on Wednesday, February 25, so please make sure you have those four questions written and available for our next class. Also, all final projects are due by February 25. See you then! Next book: My Antonia by Willa CatherI'm really excited about our next novel--another American masterpiece that will cover topics such as westward expansion, immigration, and the role of women in pioneer America. Can't wait! Please view the synopsis video and make sure to secure a copy of the book before the 25th. It's available for free on-line or through any of your e-reader apps. Let me know if you have any questions! Due to yet another cycle of wintry mix forecast for our area, all classes are cancelled for Monday, 2/9. Please note the revised spring semester schedule: Feb 16 - Jun 1 (No class 4/6 & 5/25) with Angela Harris Gary Paulsen and The Iditarod This week's lesson was all about American author, Gary Paulsen, the Iditarod dog sled race, and a wonderful prose poem by Paulsen called "Dogteam." First, we started with our weekly three-minute journal question/free-write. The topic was "cold." Students were asked to describe a time they were so cold, it hurt. Could they feel the cold air tingling in their lungs? Did their hands hurt from the cold? Were their fingers stiff? Did their nose sting from the wind? They were to be as descriptive as possible in preparation for a later exercise! Back to Gary... After a quick history lesson on the Iditarod, we met Gary Paulsen (author of Hatchet and Brian's Winter) who is considered by many to be a modern day Jack London. London inspired much of Paulsen's work, and in reading through his bio, we soon found out why. Although he was never a dedicated student, Paulsen developed a passion for reading at an early age. After a librarian gave him a book to read — along with his own library card — he was hooked. He began spending hours alone in the basement of his apartment building, reading one book after another. Running away from home at the age of 14 and traveling with a carnival, Paulsen acquired a taste for adventure. A youthful summer of rigorous chores on a farm; jobs as an engineer, construction worker, ranch hand, truck driver, and sailor; and two rounds of the 1,180-mile Alaskan dog sled race, the Iditarod; have provided ample material from which he creates his powerful stories. Living in the remote Minnesota woods, Paulsen eventually turned to the sport of dog racing, and entered the 1983 Iditarod. In 1985, after running the Iditarod for the second time, he suffered an attack of angina and was forced to give up his dogs. "I started to focus on writing the same energies and efforts that I was using with dogs. So we're talking 18-, 19-, 20-hour days completely committed to work. Totally, viciously, obsessively committed to work, the way I'd run dogs....I still work that way, completely, all the time. I just work...I'm just this way...." Sound familiar? Yes, we agreed--a lot like Jack London. I then read "Dogteam" by Paulsen. The story is an account of the night runs that he used to make with the dogs that he was training. "Dogteam" is an example of prose poetry. This type of poetry is meant to be read aloud; has rhythms, rhyme, assonance (repetition of similar vowel sounds), and consonance (repetition of similar consonant sounds) present in many other forms of poetry; vivid imagery and emotional effect; there is a continuous sequence of sentences without line breaks. After discussing the meaning of some of the more descriptive, if not obscure, phrases, we learned about Sentence Fluency trait. Gary Paulsen gives us a chilling, powerful example of the Sentence Fluency trait. He alternates very quick and concise sentences and phrases with lengthier, very descriptive, almost rambling sentences. We are trained to recognize and create sentences that look correct, with capital letters, subjects, predicates, commas in all the right places. But the trait of Sentence Fluency teaches us that every sentence doesn’t need to “look correct” in order to fit. Prose Poems Using Sentence Fluency Trait We then practiced writing our own prose poems using Sentence Fluency trait. Remember that free-write on "cold?" Using some of our free-write, or starting from scratch, we set out to create some prose poetry. I rolled two die four times to create four sentences. Whatever was rolled was the number of words each sentence could contain. We were hoping for a nice, random mix of long and short sentences, but the odds were a bit against us. Still--the students wrote some beautiful prose, and I'm happy to share it with you here. These are based on die roll of FOUR/SEVEN/FIVE/TWELVE. I want to add that they had to write these in about five minutes. Enjoy! My fingers are burning. The heat is spreading throughout my body. But it isn’t quite right. Something is different--wrong--because this feeling is not hot, but cold. -- A.R. My fingers were numb. My lips, cheeks, and nose were burning. My toes felt like icicles. Every step I took I felt myself growing more and more tired. -- K.I. Winter wind is alive. It lives within the very first snow. Forever unchanging, never the same the open forest waits for the wind, stretching to the watercolored sky. -- C.B. Rudyard Kipling
Analysis Chapters 6-7 with Angela Harris We started our class with a journal prompt on the subject of deja vu. If we could remember a specific instance, did the feeling make us uneasy? Or was it reassuring in some way? Are these experiences related to instinct? We agreed it's really difficult to write about just one experience, as the sensations are fleeting and tend to occur at odd moments, so we wrote more generally about how these sensations make us feel. Of course, we related this discussion to our protagonist, Buck the dog, and the pull of his ancestral beginnings, which could perhaps resemble the feeling of reliving experiences over and over again! We then proceeded through our standard analysis of the prior week's reading (another book finished!) by listing the steps Buck took to become "fully wild" after hearing the call of his brothers in the forest. I was happy to hear that most students were pleasantly surprised that they enjoyed London's novella as much as they did...always a good sign! Literary Analysis: Plot & Themes The last two elements of literary analysis that we are discussing this session are Plot and Themes. Remember for the final (multiple choice) quiz, you need to be able to identify/define these elements. Refer to these notes to make sure you are comfortable with the material. The final quiz will be emailed after February 4 and will need to be completed by the last class of the session -- February 11. We will go over the answers in class. In addition to book content, the final quiz will cover these literary analysis elements. Please also study your Key Facts handout. Plot The author crafts a plot structure to create expectations, increase suspense, and develop characters. The pacing of events can make a novel either predictable or riveting. Foreshadowing and flashbacks allow the author to defy the constraints of time. Sometimes an author can confound a simple plot by telling stories within stories. In a conventional work of fiction, the peak of the story’s conflict—the climax—is followed by the resolution, or denouement, in which the effects of that climactic action are presented. The Call of the Wild is told chronologically without any flashbacks. The reader witnesses Buck’s transformation from the contented, civilized pet of Judge Miller to the “dominant primordial beast” who kills his rival, endures hunger and fatigue, and eventually answers the call of his wild ancestors. As another journal prompt, we pretended that John Thornton survived the final massacre. Do we think Buck would stay with Thornton, or would he still follow the wolves into the forest? What might London be suggesting by killing Buck’s beloved master? I loved that we got a good mix of different answers. The beauty of lit analysis is that it should largely be up to the reader to make decisions about what they believe the author is trying to convey. I try to avoid "dictating" certain points of view, even though they may be accepted as fact in academic environments--you never know when someone may have a thought that is new, interesting, and revealing! Themes Themes are the central, recurring subjects of a novel. As characters grapple with circumstances such as racism, class, or unrequited love, profound questions will arise in the reader’s mind about human life, social pressures, and societal expectations. Classic themes include intellectual freedom versus censorship, the relationship between one’s personal moral code and larger political justice, and spiritual faith versus rational considerations. A novel often reconsiders these age-old debates by presenting them in new contexts or from new points of view. We have covered many of these themes already in Animal Farm and The Chosen, and will be tackling racism and maybe even a little unrequited love before the year is out. As an exercise in identifying themes we did a very simplified version of finding the theme in a work of literature. Students were given five "stories" that were one paragraph in length and then challenged to state the moral or lesson (theme) and then provide an explanation for that statement using the text. This will help prepare them for our upcoming essays in Sessions III and IV. The Yukon and Alaska
Homework and Final Projects
In light of the impending blizzard, all Mosaic classes are cancelled for tomorrow. While the forecast calls for only light snowfall in the morning, the storm is expected to begin to intensify in the afternoon hours making it imprudent to hold 2nd period classes. Stay safe and warm and we will see you next Monday (2/2)! |
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