Days 8 & 9

Chapters 9 and 10 were read and discussed. As usual, students followed our regular procedure. My role in all discussions has been that of a facilitator. I have never told students the answers to their questions. Instead, I would pose another question that might help guide them toward the answer. I have tried to make the conversations very inquiry-based. I think that this has helped to strengthen my students reading skills. They are learning to read between the lines to infer the author's message.



As a short review, I had the students look back at the characters discussed in the novel thus far. I had them create a list of three to five highly descriptive words for each character. "Fluffy" words like nice, caring, etc would not be considered highly descriptive. Some students decided to use a thesaurus. The students came up with some great words to describe the characters; however some students struggled, especially when they tried to use the thesaurus. Two students in particular were choosing very uncommon words that didn't really fit with the story. I sat with these two students to help them get a better idea of choosing highly descriptive words and using a thesaurus. Of course, students had to have evidence from the book to back up their descriptive word choices. I think that this list will eventually help them decipher some of the themes of the novel. At the end of class, we started to have a discussion of what it means to be ignorant, since it was a word that appeared on one of the students' lists. We will pick up with that discussion tomorrow.