What the Heck Do I Do With This Book I'm Supposed to Read Over Break?

Well, my little sparrows...

You have a few options. Choose one.

• You may write a 10 stanza poem about the book.
• You may do a 5-minute one-man play representing the entire book.
• You may write a 3-page journal entry/entries as if you were the main character.
• You may create a visual display (posterboard style) of the plot outline/structure.
• You may create a Power Point or a video or an audio clip (no longer than 5 minutes) about the book.

Be creative, folks. Email me with any questions.

struckey@thecollegeschool.org

Her/She, I, Called, Hope, Silently, Under, With, There, Had POEM

We could only use the following words:
Her/She, I, Called, Hope, Silently, Under, With, There, Had


Hope, I silently called under there with
hope I called her silently with her there.
Silently I had her. She had me silently. -ST

Had Hope silently called with her under there. -LL

I silently called her Hope under there. -JR

Had I called hope with her, she, there, under with I had silently called I. -AR

Hope I called silently under there with her. -SA

Under there I had called hope with her silently there. -LF

With her under there silently had I called Hope,
had there under she called hope with I
silently under, with her under there silently. -JA

There under hope I with she called. -CM

Hope had called silently with her I there,
hope silently had called, with I under there. -GM

Dead Poets Society Reflection

To be completed on looseleaf or typed in COMPLETE SENTENCES. I will collect the sheets on MONDAY. They are to NOT be FOLDED or MESSY or WITHOUT NAMES. Be proud of your work, my little sparrows! Be proud!


1. What was the Dead Poets Society? What did they do? WHY did they have a society?

2. What is the symbolism in the scene where the boys go to the cave?

3. How does Mr. Keating get the boys to look at life differently? What are some of the lessons he teaches them?

4. What does T.S. Eliot mean by the following quote?

"No poet, no artist of any art, has complete meaning alone. His significance, his
appreciation, is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot
value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead."

- T. S. Eliot, from "Tradition and the Individual Talent"

5. Do you think of poetry differently now? Explain.

6. What do you think of Neil’s suicide? Why did he do it? How did it affect his friends?

7. Write a haiku about Mr Keating.

8. Summarize, in your own words, why Henry David Thoreau went to the woods:

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what is not life, living is so dear; did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God..."
- Henry David Thoreau, from -Walden

Questions for Annabel Lee

1) How does the speaker explain the death of Annabel Lee? How does he feel about her death?

2) Find as much as you can about this poem. What does it mean? What does it represent? (Googling Annabel Lee Analysis may be a good start...) Why a kingdom by the sea?

3) What is the effect of using assonance, alliteration and repetition in this poem? How does it make you feel? Why is Poe using them? What do those things create? Read it outloud to find out.

Questions for Thomas Hardy's "The Man He Killed"

PART 1: Answer these questions about "The Man He Killed" in your LA#2 notebooks in COMPLETE SENTENCES.

1) Who is the speaker? What does he do for a living? What do you learn about him through his language?
2) What do these two men have in common?
3) Why is "because" repeated in lines 9 & 10? What does it say about the speaker?
4) How does the speaker feel about his enemy?
5) How does the speaker feel about war? What adjectives does he use to describe it?
6) How do YOU feel about this poem?
7) What rhyme scheme does it use? Is it in couplets? Is is iambic? Are its stanzas in quatrain form?


PART 2: Also, complete the 15 vocab words on the "How To" sheet that I gave you. The words are under the headings "Word Usage," "Meter" and "Rhyme." Look them up in the context of poetry! How do these words apply to poetry? Fill out the words on the sheet.

Track Your Life in 6-word Memoirs

Based on the timeline you wrote a couple weeks ago, write 12-15 SIX-WORD MEMOIRS tracking the past 12-13 years of your life.
Turn them in on a SINGLE SHEET OF PAPER, presented in CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER OF YOUR LIFE.
They do not have to be LITERAL, but can be ABSTRACT also.
These 12-15, 6-word memoirs are a timeline of your life. They represent who you are as you've gotten older, as you've made your journey through life.
So, again, I want 12-15 6-word memoirs representing your life thus far.
On one sheet of paper.
Amen.
DUE MONDAY DECEMBER 6TH

6-Word Memoirs about TCS

The class has been looking into different types of memoirs, and we wrote 6-word memoirs about love, family, friends and The Outsiders (the book we just finished). Here are some that represent what TCS means to them.
________________

A special place for special people.
Exploration and experience, fun to all.
Small school, like a second family.
A place where true magic happens.
Where inspiration and energy work together.
A very special place for anyone.
We are the seeds that become trees.
We imagine, we learn and we grow up.
Learning by doing every single day.
The valley of love and delight.
Means learning in a special way.
To be all I can be.
Fun powerful teaching: learning indescribably thorough.
Accepting the weirdest one in existence.
At this school we learn treasures.
You know, the awesome learning shack.
My jumping off point for life.
Experimental eduction? It's more like mega-phresh.