Tommy goes on the Titanic / Stop buzzing. I can’t think.

Nines: You know, I often think if anyone else read these blog posts they wouldn’t have a clue what the titles mean.  Today, Tommy was on the Titanic. Sad, but true. You had a Tommy Day and you now know exactly what must be done quick, quicker, quickest, and quickly! It is now the cut off date for Term 2 and at some point somebody with authority is going to say to me, “Okay, Watson, you have to do report cards!” — and that I shall do. You have from now until Sunday to make sure you’re up to date. If you’re not, you just bought yourself a ticket on the Titanic and I can’t swim out to you! There are no life boats! There are no life guards! You don’t have a life jacket! And there are ice bergs! (Do I have to keep this metaphor going? All I have left is polar bears.)

I have put all of your assignments at the top at 9:Assignments. I will give you any marks you haven’t already got by posting a comment on your blog. Don’t click “approve” or the whole world will know! I assume you want some privacy. When I am able to get your ID numbers I will put your marks on 9:Marks.

Elevens: Okay, this is a clear indication that

• a) I should not read newspapers
• b) you people freak me out when you all  hover around me like a cloud of bees.
• c) I’m getting old.    (Option c) is not an option. I will get old when I can afford to get old and not a minute before. I may end up the only 100 year old teacher in Langley but too bad. Your grandchildren will be just as delighted listening to my meaningless stories as you have been.)

I promised you I would put all of your assignments on my blog. I did that last night. No wonder it seemed like such a good idea today. Actually, I shall be accurate. I started it last night. I will now add every minute detail you need to insure you know exactly what you should have handed in. So you need to go to 11:Assignments. That’s where I store minute details. When I am able to get your ID numbers I will put your marks on 11:Marks.

Secondly, no matter what storms may or may not ensue in the next week, you must do your essay. Remember the logic of this: If the storm continues and you have a long period of time not at school, you will not want to go back and reread Lord of the Flies to do an essay. Now is the time to do the essay. When the storms pass, our little boat still has to travel to the other Islands of the Curriculum. We can’t go back. And more importantly, I know you will not want to go back. The novel is an outcome. It has to be checked off the list!

Thirdly, no one who is in Ireland wants to write an essay on Lord of the Flies. You want to be in Ireland!

Finally, now that I have all of your blog addresses, I can give you all of your marks in a comment. If you don’t want it posted on your blog, don’t click “approve.” Just read it. I will tell you the marks on the assignments you gave me today and you can transfer it all to your marks sheet if you choose.

Important Update: Much as hate to interfere with the kind  of male bonding I will never understand, I have to give two of you unfortunate news. Kody, your blog cannot be http://everittisstupid.wordpress.com and Everitt, your blog cannot be http://kodyisstupid.wordpress.com. I cannot explain this further. It is just a teacher thing. Just make up a new name. By the way, I’m happy to see you both understand the concept of irony. What day was it today?

The Ladies of Maycomb

10′s: I am so glad I don’t live in Maycomb. If I did I might be forced to join the Maycomb Ladies Missionary Society and listen to Mrs. Merriweather talk about helping the “darkies” and her hero, J. Grimes Everett. Mrs. Merriweather is blindly racist and … I don’t  like her. She thinks she’s being a good Christian woman, even announces she’s glad to not be a hypocrite like the President’s wife … but she is nothing short of delusional. I think that is what Harper Lee is showing us.

Power fools us. If you’ve had power for a long period of time, you just don’t see what’s in front of your eyes. All of the ladies — with the exception of Miss Maudie — just assume that black people are there to be the servants of white people. They should be grateful for their low wages and non-existent social status. They should apologize for being wrongfully convicted and they should apologize for being sulky when they’re wrongfully convicted. Maybe they should even apologize for breathing. I mean, the air is just for white folks, isn’t it?

At the base of this thinking is the idea of superiority. Mrs. Merriweather believes she is superior. Aunt Alexandra believes she is superior. Even someone as clearly inferior as Bob Ewell believes he is superior! It’s hard for us to even fathom how someone could feel superior to another human being because of something as superficial and random as the colour of your skin, but even fifty years ago, that was the case.

Harper Lee didn’t write TKaM in the thirties; she wrote it in the early 60s, right in the heat of the Civil Rights Movement. If you’d like to see what that time period was like, look at the video footage that was filmed then.

School Integration and KKK Protests http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=px3xytbNzcs&feature=related

Birmingham 1963 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0lD37bq8YI&feature=related

Bull Connor and the Civil Rights Movement http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9kT1yO4MGg

Selma to Montgomery March http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubmIkJxd-i4&feature=fvst

The Children’s March http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk_n-C5S8g4&feature=related

Civil Rights, Life Magazine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0lD37bq8YI&feature=related

Civil Rights Movement in Photos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6kMgUzNxKM&feature=related

Watsons Go to Birmingham http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4Yf5yhWN2g&feature=related

In class writing assignment: Racism in the Ladies Missionary Society of Maycomb: one paragraph of 10 sentences, 3 facts. (P.S. The photo at the top is the Ladies Missionary Circle of Garden City, Florida, 1929.)

And Then There Was Yours / And Yours Was an Essay

9′s: This Double Block has been brought to you by Michaels — where I bought all kinds of interesting paper for 15 cents a pad. (Don’t bother going. I bought it all.)

Here’s what you did in the first block: You worked individually on the Lightbulb paper, making a point form list of everything your character does in your chapter. Then you worked on the rainbow paper, plotting out only the important events. You then looked at the chart I put on the board about the Big Picture and I wandered around annoying you by asking questions and getting you on task.

Then in second block, you had a giant piece of paper on which you worked on the Big Picture of all of the chapters in your book and how they fit together. Happily, you are doing very well on this. I see your story starting to form in every group. GOOD. Then you had the Typewriter paper and you wrote your first paragraph in your chapter.

11′s: What can I say? You have an essay to do. Into each life some essays must fall — and this is yours.

Choose a topic. Find quotes. Create a topic sentence that is general and introduces the topic (eg. no reference to the book or to the characters’ names) and then write a thesis statement that clearly states what you will prove. Then … prove it! Your essay topics are conveniently located at 11:Assignments or on the lovely checkerboard handout I gave you.

Be of good cheer and remember this: All over the entire world, Grade Elevens are being forced to write 750 word essays just like you. In fact, millions of them have already written essays on Lord of the Flies. They’re on the internet. Write your own. It will be much, much better and it will match your writer’s voice which I already know and recognize. I can be quite subtle when I want to, can’t I?

Gossip for Tens

In the category of Who Knew?

The fellow who plays Atticus in the movie is Gregory Peck.

Gregory Peck’s grandson is Ethan Peck, who acted in 10 Things I Hate About You and Gossip Girl.

I didn’t know who Ethan Peck was but I bet you did. If you google his name you’ll find out he’s dating Lindsey Shaw. I don’t know who she is, either.

Here is he is beside his grandpa when he was the same age. There’s some serious DNA at work with these two. You Science people might find this interesting. If you google Ethan Peck’s father, Stephen Peck, you’ll find out that he barely looks like his dad. That face skipped a generation.

More Trivia:

• When Gregory Peck died, Brock Peters, the actor who played Tom Robinson, delivered the eulogy at his funeral. Brock Peters was 75 and Gregory Peck was 87; they’d been friends since 1962 when they filmed To Kill a Mockingbird.
• When Gregory Peck was eight years old he lived in La Jolla, California. When a black family rented a house on the outskirts of town, the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross nearby. “None of us youngsters knew what it was all about,’ Peck said. ‘But even with the sheets we could recognize some of the hot bloods of the town. They made quite an impression on us.” Isn’t this just like Scout at the same age?
• Mary Badham, who played Scout, kept in touch with Gregory Peck until he died in 2003. She always called him Atticus.
• Mary Badham’s older brother is the director John Badham; he directed Saturday Night Fever – a movie so bad I shouldn’t even be telling you it exists.
• A quote from Tony Peck, Gregory Peck’s youngest son: “With Dad, what you see is what you get. He is totally like the lawyer he plays in To Kill a Mockingbird. Gregory Peck is Atticus Finch.”
• Gregory Peck had four sons and a daughter. His daughter named her son Harper (like Harper Lee, who wrote TKaM!).

No chickens were killed in the making of this blog.

10′s: You read Chapter 23 and Chapter 24 and you had a quiz on Chapter 21. At least that’s what I assume you did. I was home being sick. Maybe the TOC took you all to Swiss Chalet and you had chicken pot pies with a side order of fries and/or corn and she/he charged it all to the School District of Langley. And when I see you on Tuesday you’ll all say to me “Why don’t YOU take us to Swiss Chalet? You never take us anywhere. You just make us read To Kill a Mockingbird.”

What will I say? It’s true. I didn’t realize I could charge meals to the School District of Langley. I think I’ll do even better. I’ll hire a bus and we’ll all go down to Seattle to the Museum of Music. And we’ll go to a Seattle Swiss Chalet. Would that work for you?

Wait. I don’t think this is going to work. We’d all have to have passports and parent permission forms and some of you might be vegetarians. Guess we’re back to To Kill a Mockingbird. Tell you what, when we watch the beginning of the movie we’ll have a junk-food-a-thon. It’s no Swiss Chalet but the chickens will be grateful.

By the way, here’s a picture of a real Swiss chalet. Not quite the same, is it? If they lie about the building, what do you think they’ve been telling the chickens?

Piggy’s Letters / And Then There Was Yours

11′s: You entered the character of Piggy today and wrote five letters to his auntie. Each letter was at least 12 sentences long and focussed on a particular incident in the story. The goal was to understand and empathize with the character of Piggy. Today’s in class assignment was worth 50 marks and was summative.

I also gave you a list of all of the assignments we have done since Macbeth. Monday is the cut off date for this term. You were reminded that all  assignments are on this blog at 11: Assignments at the top of the page.

9′s: You received a brand new folder for your group and people were astonished and disbelieving that Kevin could actually guess a number in my head. It’s true. I did think “77.” I will never lie to you. And I will definitely never lie to you about numbers! How could I? Why would I? Anyway, number guessing Kevin’s group got the pink folder. Sorry. I will try to find stores with more variety in the future!

Today you did this: You wrote a mini bio of your individual character on hot pink paper and then you set about brainstorming as a group. How will you introduce your characters in Chapter One? How will you describe the setting?  There was discussion about what types of characters and plots you’re doing. Please remember the following: You want believable characters. If they are just stereotypes, your reader won’t care about them. Also, you must have a sense of place in your story. If your characters are on a road trip, you have to describe the car, the road, the scenery, the weather. It has to be believable. This is exactly like a real book. You are doing real writing. Finally, some of you were reminded about character’s names. I know I’ve surprised you that I know what you’re doing. What can I tell you? I hang around teenagers all day. Don’t give your character a name that is risque. If your Grandma would be shocked, it’s not a good name. Ditto for numbers; certain numbers are not going to be okay. Use your energy for making your story interesting and readable. Don’t waste your time trying to shock people.

P.S. The faces you don’t recognize above are all of teenagers who have written books and had them published.

P.P.S. Here’s a quote from a Danish writer named Isak Dinesen: ”When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself.” Some of you are “getting” this assignment and some of you aren’t. It actually is a “great and difficult task” and I am dividing it into little pieces for you every class. If you suddenly think, She’s given me something too big, then you’re in the right place. You get what you’re doing. It’s big but not too big. It would only be too big if I wasn’t helping you. Then it would be overwhelming. I want you to think beyond your group. I want to think of yourself. I want you to think, I am writing a chapter in a book. That is a big deal.

Dolphus’s Excuse and Atticus’s Speech

10′s: You had the Quiz on Chapter 19 and then you had Course Planning with Ms. Peterson. And then we read Chapter 20!

Chapter 20 is quite amazing. You’ll have to read it again to do the in class assignment I’m going to give you. It’ll be about Dolphus Raymond, a character I particularly admire. In real life I wouldn’t, but now that I know his secret and motivation, I think he is one smart guy. He has sacrificed his public reputation for personal integrity and for love. That’s pretty amazing. Not many people would have the courage to do that.

And speaking of courage, Atticus is winding up the case. The speech he gives the jury would be welcome in any law textbook as an example of an excellent concluding argument. It’s logical, rational, appeals to the highest standard of human behaviour … Will it work? So far, most of you think no.

Don’t forget you have to read Chapter 21 at home. You’ll get a quiz question on it at the beginning of the next class.

P.S. This should be my last cat picture for a while. I just felt symmetry was in order. My 9′s and 11′s had cats so you had to have one, too. Next class when we’re reading, I want you to imagine we all have giant cats sitting beside us turning the pages. Imagine how much faster we’d get through the book! Cats are notorious for their inability to turn pages accurately.

Update: Just came across this quote by Truman Capote: “Sometimes when I think how good my book can be, I can hardly breathe.” He does sound like Dill, doesn’t he?

 

American LofF / And Then There Was Yours

11′s: Double Block. Today you watched the end of the colour movie, wrote an in class assignment on which format you enjoyed most (the book, the black and white movie, the colour movie), received a handout on both movies, gave your Course Planning forms to Ms. Peterson, had a Lockdown Drill, listened to a very long story, annoyed me, received your marks, and received marked work back — not necessarily in that order and in varying levels of intensity.

You are now preparing for the Major Essay. Criteria sheet to follow.

9′s: You did the following: You entered the room, went into your groups, took out your 67 character traits, chose which traits were relevant to your story and entered them on your Character Map. This you did on your own. The rest of the class was working in your Book Group. You filled in the Character Relations Web, showing the connections between characters. After that, you determined the conflicts within the story and worked on the plot. Then you discussed and plotted out the elements of your story on paper. Finally, you worked out how your character “exited” the story.

You are slotted into the Library on March 7 to learn how to do all of this on zoho. If I can get you to a computer faster, I will! With zoho or google docs you can work from home in your group. You don’t have to be in the same room.

Trial and Reading List

10′s: Today we saw two people on trial, Mayella Ewell and Tom Robinson. Technically, only Tom was on trial but we did see the character of Mayella and, through her testimony, learned more about Bob Ewell. Miss Mayella shows herself to be defensive, easily offended, and unsure of herself in public. Because of her isolation and the abuse she sustains at the hands of her father, Bob Ewell, she has no way of knowing how to interact with people outside of her family. She has an instinct toward having a better life but no means of creating it; the best she can do is grow a row of red geraniums and save for a whole year to provide an ice cream cone for each of her siblings. As for her siblings, there is no hope for them, whatsoever. It is a first come, first served kind of family — and no one is ever served. The children are left to their own devices and are pretty much not raised by anyone. They come across as little animals just settling themselves on windowsills or foraging through the town dump. It is a very sad household and when we hear Mayella’s obvious lies we have to feel sorry for her. The tiny bit of attention she has received from Tom Robinson — wh0 is just being cautiously polite — is the most attention she has received her whole life.

That was Chapter 18. Chapter 19 is Tom’s chapter. Always note what Harper Lee does. It isn’t the first time she sets people side by side in adjacent chapters. She does this on purpose. It is the character and life of Mayella set beside the character and life of Tom Robinson. The first thing we note in Tom’s chapter is that he has gone to prison. This would make us question his integrity if it wasn’t so clear that he was victimized. A man pulls a knife on him and because he tries to save himself, he is accused of disorderly conduct. So Tom has a “record.”

Atticus then shows us the story from Tom’s perspective. Mayella’s facts are simply not true. Nothing happened when she said it did. She has telescoped events and rewritten history so that her father will not beat her. Clearly, he has, though — particularly on the day when Tom was asked into the house to fix a door. No door needed fixing but instead she asks him to retrieve a box from atop one of her famous chiffarobes.

Dates and Chapter Quizzes: The chapter you read in class is italicized; the one you read at home is highlighted. There will be a quiz on the chapter you read at home at the beginning of the next class.

• Monday February 20: Chapter 18/ Chapter 19
• Wednesday February 22: Chapter 20/ Chapter 21;    Quiz on Chapter 19
• Friday  February 24: Chapter 22/ Chapter 23;    Quiz on Chapter 21
• Tuesday February 28: Chapter 24/ Chapter 25;    Quiz on Chapter 23
• Thursday March 1: Chapter 26/ Chapter 27;    Quiz on Chapter 25
• Tuesday March 6: Chapter 28/ Chapter 29;    Quiz on Chapter 27
• Thursday March 8: Chapter 30/ Chapter 31;    Quiz on Chapter 29

And Then There Were Nines / American Lord of the Flies

9′s: This is what you did today: You organized and planned and collaborated and brainstormed and created. Those are the teacher words. When I watched you, I just saw you playing with words and having fun. It made me happy to watch.

For the people who were absent, this is what people did (and you still need to do): They went to this blog, then to 9:Story, then to the And Then There Was Yours blog, and then to the Characters page. There they found a list of  77 questions about their specific character and answered them.

This is Part One of creating the corporate story. Next class you’ll be focussing on plot. If you go to the ATTWY blog you’ll find pages on plot, characters, conflict, and criteria. I’ll be adding to it and giving you the rubric for the peer assessment there.

Here’s the criteria you are working with, so far:

• your story has five to six characters, each with unique, clearly discernible personalities
• there is a cat or person named Margaret Catwood or Margaret Atwood
• each of the characters is eliminated from the story
• smaller conflicts emerge from the interactions between the characters; the large conflict is to avoid being eliminated
• suspense is created in how people are eliminated and in the paranoia they feel as others “exit”

Your stories will be published in an anthology replete with drawings and photographs. You will all get a copy of the anthology.

11′s: You watched the colour Lord of the Flies and I attempted to get the computer working long enough to take attendance. Once again, Mr. Linke came to the rescue and beat the computer into submission, thereby allowing me to let the Office know you were officially in the room. Several of those statements are true, except for the one about Mr. Linke attacking a computer. He does something else and I have no idea what it is.

What can be said about the American Lord of the Flies? There’s a lot of swearing. There’s colour. I think some of you like it better and I am really interested in finding out why. I am less interested in my opinion than in yours. I already know my reasons. (It’s not English; it’s not true to the book.) You may see something in it I don’t. So after Tuesday, I’ll know!