We’ve just spent four classes working on writing the paragraphs for their student blogs. We worked back in the classroom today, with the understanding that students who are slightly behind in writing their paragraphs will work on them outside of class time to catch up.
To end this unit, The Unknown, we will have a unit exam next week. Students were given this class to organize their binders, skim over the literature, pick out the major aspects of the course they should focus on, and create a “cheat sheet” on the recipee card given to them today. They can bring it into the class with them to write the exam.
Some major parts to focus on will be found in that original handout from the beginning of the year, the Skills Review Sheet.
Today was the second day of watching the movie of the novel. The court scenes are especially powerful. (For some students, watching someone’s interpretation of the novel’s events helps the whole thing come together, even though, as some were pointing out, several major aspects of the novel were not included in the movie. Amy questioned this, but for a larger audience the movie focused solely on the racial inequality, rather than themes like “tradition” or “maturing”.
This movie is one of the most beloved and famous in the states. It won several Acadamy Awards when it was released and, as I’ve discussed with the kids, I can’t see it ever being done as a remake since it holds so much heart in the original version. We will spend two classes watching it, from where we left off from viewing the beginning before.
This was period four of working on the blog paragraphs. Students started the class by indicating to me which number paragraph they were on and I explained I was going to check with them at the end of the class. Most of them did a fairly good job of showing progress during the class.
For those needing more writing / typing time, they will have to continue outside of class time, whether at home or at school during noons, etc. We’ll move on for a short while to give them that catch – up time and then work for another period where they copy and paste their paragraphs into their newly created blogs and add the details, like links, photos, and videos.
We had to use some of class time today to go for the H1N1 shots, but returned to continue reading Chapter 24.
Students will be missing both Monday and Tuesday’s class, for CWEX and a field trip, but are asked to read and answer the questions for Chapters 24, 25, 26.
We’ll be finishing the novel soon and they’ll begin the process of writing their Dynamic Characters essay. They’ve been taking notes and finding examples of internal growth and new understanding for the characters of Scout and Jem, so writing their essay should be rather simple.
Now that we have finished reading the novel and discussed some of the themes found in it, we are going to compare and contrast the plot and themes of it to the movie The Village. It has so many similarities, but still have quite original storylines. Specifically, we are going to look for evidence of the following points:
The conflict between the ideas of the young and old.
How both societies live by “fear of change”.
Both societies protect their borders from attacks from “the others”.
Some members of the group are “different”.
Both groups have an explanation for why bad things happen.
The patriarchal leaders (the two most influencial men) are similar yet different.
We were interupted by having to go down for our H1N1 shots. We’ll continue on Monday.
We have finished reading the novel and are going to spend some time analyzing it now. We studied and broke down the meaning of a song called “The Crown of Creation” by Jefferson Airplane that was written in response to the novel.
Then we studied a handout that listed several themes present in the novel. As a class, we filled in the boxes of the handout that asked for an explanation for how that theme existed in the novel, and listed a specific reference to support it. Some of the newer themes students may not have encountered before were ones like “man’s inhumanity towards man” or “hypocrisy”. We’ll review them again before they have to write their Chrysalids exam.
We took a few minutes, though, to watch a movie trailer some English students made for the novel. It’s pretty accurate and definitely follows events of the book, but it’s hillarious to watch. Check it out.
We got into reading several chapters together last Friday and students were to have finished some reading over the weekend, so today we spent some time discussing the questions for those chapters, Ch 19-21.
