First, fourth, and sixth periods began working on unit 1: the memoir. We’ll be reading Mark Twain’s “Cub Pilot on the Mississippi”, which is actually a chapter from his memoir Life on the Mississippi. We began today by looking at conflict and prediction. We discussed methods to predict and why it’s an important reading skill, we looked at the major forms of conflict.

Second period went over chapters 1-3 from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. We began by looking at a sonnet Angelou mentioned in her memoir: Shakespeare’s 29th sonnet:

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

After taking the time to tease out the meaning — Billy is not the easiest writer to comprehend — we discussed how this sonnet might have appealed to a young Angelou. We concluded by working in groups to determine which, if any, of the characters in the memoir might play the same role as the “thee” of Shakespeare’s sonnet

Homework

• First, fourth, and sixth periods:
  • Read “Meet the Author” (pg 60);
  • Answer the question on page 61 (under picture) in a 200 word (2/3 page) entry in your response journal.
• Second period
  • Read chapters 4-7;
  • Write two “Right there” questions for each chapter