October 9/10, 2008

English 1 -- Today in class, students took their reading check quiz over chapters 12 and 13 of TKAM. After discussing the two chapters, students viewed a powerpoint presentation about the Scottsboro Boys Case, the real life court case that took place in Alabama in the 1930s. This case, in which 9 African American young men were wrongly accused of raping two low-class white young women, is most likely the case after which Tom Robinson's trial is modeled in Harper Lee's novel. After viewing and taking notes over Scottsboro Boys information, over which students will have a quiz next class, students filled in a review packet over chapters 1-5 of the novel. Next class we will complete a review of chapters 6-11. These packets will serve as handy study guides for the test at the end of the novel, and they should be pretty easily earned points for students who have been keeping up with their reading homework.

English 1 Homework
Read chapters 14-16 of TKAM

chapter 14

1. What do Scout and Jem find under Scout's bed? Why is this surprising?
2. How does Jem break the "kid code"?
3. What does Dill tell Scout about his mother and her new husband? Why does Scout not understand this?

chapter 15

1. Why does Atticus go to the jail in town?
2. According to Atticus, how does Scout get Mr. Cunningham to "walk around in my shoes"?

chapter 16

1. Where do the children sit during the trial? How is this fitting with the rest of the events of the novel?
2. With whom do the children sit during the trial?
3. Who is the white man who lives among the black people?

English 2 -- Today in class, students wrote in their Writer's Notebooks about two different groups cultures, or communities to which they belong. Next, we read "The First Day" by Edward P. Jones, which is a short story about a young girl's first day of kindergarten, a day when she encounters her first lesson on the different communities people of the same race, ethnicity, religion, and even family can belong to. After reading the story, students created an extended Venn Diagram through which they made comparisons and found similarities among several other short stories we have read in class. To end class, students learned about and experimented with different ways to make their writing more powerful, through techniques such as vivid verbs, verbal phrases, similes, and metaphors.

English 2 Homework

reevaluate the verbs in your personal narrative. Be sure to add vivid verbs, similes, metaphors, and verbal phrases to your story before next class.