Updated 12/16:

Thursday: Study vocabulary lesons 1-8 for playing VOCAB!  We will review fact vs. opinion and review vocabulary today.

Friday:  Study vocabulary from To Kill a Mockingbird and Animal Farm.  After Reading "The Gift of the Magi," we will play VOCAB with these words.

Extra Practice for the Exam--Optional 50 point assignment:

Read "The Scarlet Ibis"

Identify the following:

Major and Minor Characters--identify as flat or round/ dynamic or static

For the Major Characters identify an example of:

Direct characterization of each

Indirect characterization of each

pg. 174 has a good review of characterization.

Identify a symbol in the story and explain what it means.

Write out the theme of the story.  Write down one quote that supports the theme.

Do the story map on page 173 to help you identify the events in the plot and the conflict.  Make sure you can identify setting, inciting event, and climax.

Find an example of foreshadowing (there is more than one).

How does the storm contribute to the atmosphere?

The author repeats images of red over and over.  This is called a motif.  How does the author use this motif in the story?


You may also earn optional assignment points by doing the following:

* Read another book from the list and take a test after school ON MONDAY.
* Printing out the completed interactive grammar exercises from your study guide.

NOTE:  PLEASE MAKE SURE THAT YOU CORRECTED THE SG BELOW. 

-No logical fallacies

+Advertising techniques (like in the film you watched and the worksheet in your binder)

WRITING

TLQ method of quoting--we will review during short stories.

Proper format for quoting-- Sentence "quoted material" (#).

Book of Choice List:
You will choose one book below to read.  Due date is Friday 12/3.  You may read more than one book to accumulate extra literature grades.  Note:  I picked these books because they sounded like the "exciting" books you have been requesting.  However, some may contain language or more mature situations.  If you would like a "tamer" book, please email me and let me know.  I'll recommend another option.

Hiroshima, John Hersey

The true story of the aftermath of the atomic bomb.  If you like history, this is a good choice for you.

The Lovely Bones, Alice Siebold
This book has been very popular in past years.  We have copies in the Magnet library.

My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to him once about fertilizer. This is Susie Salmon. Watching from heaven, Susie sees her happy, suburban family devastated by her death, isolated even from one another as they each try to cope with their terrible loss alone. Over the years, her friends and siblings grow up, fall in love, do all the things she never had the chance to do herself. But life is not quite finished with Susie yet ..."The Lovely Bones" is a luminous and astonishing novel about life and death, forgiveness and vengeance, memory and forgetting - but, above all, about finding light in the darkest of places. 'Spare, beautiful and brutal prose ..."The Lovely Bones" is compulsive enough to read in a single sitting, brilliantly intelligent, elegantly constructed and ultimately intriguing.' - "The Times". 'Moving and compelling ...It will put an imperceptible but stealthily insistent hold on you. I sat down in the morning to read the first couple of pages; five hours later, I was still there, book in hand, transfixed.' - Maggie O'Farrell, "Sunday Telegraph".

The two books below by Laurie Halse Anderson speak to issues confronting teen girls.  They are very powerful, thoughtful books.

 Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson

This is the story of Melinda, a freshman in high school who starts the year as an outcast because of something that happened over the summer.  She is silent, shrinking further and further into her shell.  Through her art, she finally finds her voice again and is able to speak about what happened and find some resolution for the traumatic events of the summer.

Wintergirls, Laurie Halse Anderson

This novel explores the issue of eating disorders--their dangers and causes--and how girls can find their way out of danger.   

Samurai Shortstop,  Alan Gratz 
This author spoke at Magnet last year, and his books were very popular with our students.  Copies are available in the Magnet library.

*Starred Review* Gr. 8-11. Growing up in Tokyo in the 1890s, after the emperor outlawed the samurai tradition of his ancestors, Toyo was not trained in the old disciplines. He must find his own path between the old ways and the new ones, which are symbolized for Toyo by the sport he loves: baseball. In the riveting opening scene, Toyo watches his father help Toyo's beloved uncle Koji perform suppuku, asamurai ritual involving disembowelment and decapitation. Soon after this disturbing event, Toyo becomes a boarder at the most esteemed high school in Tokyo. His high hopes are tempered by a brutal hazing inflicted on the entering class, and the ongoing cruelty of the students in power. Under his father's tutelage, Toyo's growing understanding of traditional samurai arts enables him to grow in skill and self-discipline both on and off the playing field. An engaging protagonist in a harsh, difficult situation, Toyo must work to earn the respect of his father and his teammates, but he will have readers' sympathies from the beginning. Unfolding through the convincing portrayals of individuals in turmoil, the story culminates as most baseball novels do--in the big game. An appended author's note discusses Gratz's research and lists his sources. A memorable chronicle of boys' inhumanity to boys, and a testament to enduring values in a time of social change. Carolyn Phelan

Note:  The books below are books that I have not read.  I have been scouring the "Best Young Adult" and "Best Books for Teen Boys" lists on Amazon.com, and I have chosen these for their appeal to young readers and the reviews of publishers and readers.

Bonechiller, Graham McNamee (author of Acceleration)

In this supernatural thriller set in a remote Canadian town in the dead of winter, four friends encounter a cannibalistic creature that is hunting and killing teens. Out late at night, Danny, the narrator, is stung by the terrible monster and it begins to stalk his nightmares. As he becomes increasingly and mysteriously ill, he realizes that his life is in danger. The foursome, after a failed attempt to involve law enforcement, decide to take on the behemoth with stolen dynamite and guns "borrowed" from their fathers. In addition to the main story line, the novel has Danny coming to terms with his mother's recent death and reconnecting with his father. Each of the friends comes across as an individual. Danny's love interest, Ash, a girl boxer who is half Ojibwa, is a particularly dynamic character (Danny's physical reaction to riding with her on her motorbike will ring true with hormonal teens). It is from Ash that Danny first hears stories about Windigos, "big, ugly things…with a chunk of ice for a heart." The unrelenting pace, short chapters, and the idea of teenagers taking on a monster with a large amount of weaponry will certainly appeal to fans of horror novels.—Caroline Tesauro, Radford Public Library, VA 

 

The House of the Scorpion, Nancy Farmer

Farmer's (A Girl Named Disaster; The Ear, the Eye and the Arm) novel may be futuristic, but it hits close to home, raising questions of what it means to be human, what is the value of life, and what are the responsibilities of a society. Readers will be hooked from the first page, in which a scientist brings to life one of 36 tiny cells, frozen more than 100 years ago. The result is the protagonist at the novel's center, Matt a clone of El Patron, a powerful drug lord, born Matteo Alacr n to a poor family in a small village in Mexico. El Patro n is ruler of Opium, a country that lies between the United States and Aztl n, formerly Mexico; its vast poppy fields are tended by eejits, human beings who attempted to flee Aztl n, programmed by a computer chip implanted in their brains. With smooth pacing that steadily gathers momentum, Farmer traces Matt's growing awareness of what being a clone of one of the most powerful and feared men on earth entails. Through the kindness of the only two adults who treat Matt like a human Celia, the cook and Matt's guardian in early childhood, and Tam Lin, El Patron's bodyguard Matt experiences firsthand the evils at work in Opium, and the corruptive power of greed ("When he was young, he made a choice, like a tree does when it decides to grow one way or the other... most of his branches are twisted," Tam Lin tells Matt). The author strikes a masterful balance between Matt's idealism and his intelligence. The novel's close may be rushed, and Tam Lin's fate may be confusing to readers, but Farmer grippingly demonstrates that there are no easy answers. The questions she raises will haunt readers long after the final page.

Hoops, Walter Dean Myers

"Is your Wii haunted?" Enticing surprises in a souped-up video game draw the reader into the isolated world of bored teenager Reid Anderson, who is just about ready to accept that he has no genuine friends, and that a connection with his parents may never happen. A startling email leads him to like-minded teens in a world hidden from "normal" kids, condoned by complicit adults, and ignored by everyone else. Reid learns to question what is normal. With each mysterious upgrade of his new technology, he is upgraded too. He develops real friendships and a new sense of purpose. A warning to tender-eared teens and protective parents in denial: the players in this imaginative, well-written page-turner for young adults are believable sixteen year-olds who use realistic dialogue. Early in the book, I considered that we might have a new call for youth uprising on our hands. However, as the plot complication accelerated toward a climax, another message bloomed: adults need to do a better job listening to our kids. Outside the Box is an insightful, important book. I highly recommend it to older teens and all adults, and I look forward to the sequel.

The Last Days, Scott Westerfield

Something horrifying is bubbling up from the earth, and vampires stalk the streets of New York--but in this electric sequel to Peeps (2005), Moz and his buddy Zahler think only of forming a band. One night Moz, with the help of passerby Pearl, rescues a Fender Stratocaster guitar. Like Moz, Pearl is a musician, and a band is born. Soon the band recruits a singer, a Peep with her parasite mostly under control, and a drummer who literally sees the music and the terrifying things it attracts. Eventually it becomes clear that the new band will play a key role in the coming struggle against the powerful evil. Westerfeld continues his captivating, original vision, improving it in this tightly plotted sequel. The new characters are engaging, and the breezy dialogue is graced with both unique slang and a touch of humor. Teen will savor the picture of a band finding its sound while saving the world. Both new readers and Peeps fans will eat this up. Lynn Rutan, Publisher's Weekly

The Feed, M.T. Anderson  

In this chilling novel, Anderson (Burger Wuss; Thirsty) imagines a society dominated by the feed a next-generation Internet/television hybrid that is directly hardwired into the brain. Teen narrator Titus never questions his world, in which parents select their babies' attributes in the conceptionarium, corporations dominate the information stream, and kids learn to employ the feed more efficiently in School. But everything changes when he and his pals travel to the moon for spring break. There Titus meets home-schooled Violet, who thinks for herself, searches out news and asserts that "Everything we've grown up with the stories on the feed, the games, all of that it's all streamlining our personalities so we're easier to sell to." Without exposition, Anderson deftly combines elements of today's teen scene, including parties and shopping malls, with imaginative and disturbing fantasy twists. "Chats" flow privately from mind to mind; Titus flies an "upcar"; people go "mal" (short for "malfunctioning") in contraband sites that intoxicate by scrambling the feed; and, after Titus and his friends develop lesions, banner ads and sit-coms dub the lesions the newest hot trend, causing one friend to commission a fake one and another to outdo her by getting cuts all over her body. Excerpts from the feed at the close of each chapter demonstrate the blinding barrage of entertainment and temptations for conspicuous consumption. Titus proves a believably flawed hero, and ultimately the novel's greatest strength lies in his denial of and uncomfortable awakening to the truth. This satire offers a thought-provoking and scathing indictment that may prod readers to examine the more sinister possibilities of corporate- and media-dominated culture. Ages 14-up. (Publisher's Weekly review)

 Senioritis, Tate Thompson

Capturing the diverse voices of a group of discontent teenagers, Thompson explores the very real problems of today's high schoolers. Unlike a lot of young adult novels, which only dance on the edge of serious issues, this novel directly addresses sex, depression, racism, abusive boyfriends, and disappointment in hypocritical adults. The novel pulls no punches in dealing with these issues, yet ultimately celebrates the amazing resilience of today's youth. With seven narrative voices coming together to tell a fast-paced story, everyone will find a character to identify with. Each of these narrators must successfully complete the after-school program in order to graduate, but this is only a starting point for all the internal strife and external drama that engulfs the students as they begin to move beyond high school and into a new world where they must discover their own values and voices. From Nakiesha--a sistah with serious attitude--to the intellectual Gemini--who sits in a desk "pondering the ramifications of my recent juvenile impulsiveness"--these are all characters who immediately jump off of the page and into the reader's heart. As a lover of young adult fiction, I was thrilled to find a book that actually captures the voices of real young people--black and white, male and female. This is quite an accomplishment by Tate Thompson, and Senioritis is a book to be read, read again, and shared with friends.

The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins

In a not-too-distant future, the United States of America has collapsed, weakened by drought, fire, famine, and war, to be replaced by Panem, a country divided into the Capitol and 12 districts. Each year, two young representatives from each district are selected by lottery to participate in The Hunger Games. Part entertainment, part brutal intimidation of the subjugated districts, the televised games are broadcasted throughout Panem as the 24 participants are forced to eliminate their competitors, literally, with all citizens required to watch. When 16-year-old Katniss's young sister, Prim, is selected as the mining district's female representative, Katniss volunteers to take her place. She and her male counterpart, Peeta, the son of the town baker who seems to have all the fighting skills of a lump of bread dough, will be pitted against bigger, stronger representatives who have trained for this their whole lives. Collins's characters are completely realistic and sympathetic as they form alliances and friendships in the face of overwhelming odds; the plot is tense, dramatic, and engrossing. This book will definitely resonate with the generation raised on reality shows like Survivor and American Gladiator.  Book one of a planned trilogy. Jane Henriksen Baird, Anchorage Public Library, AK for School Library Journal

 

 

* Photostory 3 project (2-3 minutes long)--Please bring a flashdrive or e-mail it to yourself.  You will e-mail it to me during class to turn it in.

* TYPED script with documentation in place.  Use your MLA heading.

*E-mail me your document with picture documentation.  If you prefer, you may print and turn in.

 Sections for binder:

at front--Procedures, class phone list, hall/homework pass sheet, point sheet

Grammar--DOL, Parts of Speech sheet & notes, irregular verbs work

Vocabulary--All definitions, lessons, tests IN ORDER; Vocabulary notebook

Literary Terms--literary terms from To Kill a Mockingbird, characterization terms, plot diagram, literary terms from Night.  The terms we've had so far will be on the Vocabulary page for those students who need to catch up.

Literature--all handouts and notes from To Kill a Mockingbird and Night unit.  Add Animal Farm notes.

Writing--Acceleration short answers and assignment, To Kill a Mockingbird Venn diagram and short answers, Heroism Project work