English 8 students continued with their effective readers’ skills work. We’ll finish it up tomorrow and begin our first novel of the year Monday.

English I Honors students finished up yesterday’s work, taking the initial planning and creating two model Schaffer paragraphs about “The Sniper.”

Sixth period’s paragraph:

In “The Sniper,” the setting of the civil war is critical to the surprise ending of the brother unknowingly killing the other brother. To begin with, because it was a civil war between the Republicans and Free states, he clearly didn’t know whom he was shooting at because he “decided [the sniper] was a good shot, whoever he was.” This shows that he didn’t know whom he was shooting at. This is really only logical in a civil war, where one nation is divided against itself and brothers could end up fighting each other. As a result of the confusion, when the sniper went to check the identity of his foe, he “turned over the dead body and looked in his brother’s face.” This proves he didn’t know his enemy’s identity. Because it was a civil war, this could very easily happen. Clearly, the surprise ending of the short story depends on it being set in a civil war.

Seventh period’s paragraph:

The setting of “The Sniper” in the Irish Civil War is critical to the plot twist of a brother unknowingly killing his brother. To begin with, since it was during a civil war, the sniper didn’t know his enemy’s identity even though he admired “whoever he was.” This shows that it has to be a civil war because it’s the only way to have two brothers fighting on opposite sides. Situations like this happen often in civil wars but rarely in other conflicts. As a result, when the sniper goes to determine his victim’s identity, he “[turns] over the dead body and [looks] into his brother’s face.” This illustrates how civil war can cause a brother to kill another brother. A soldier in a civil war really never knows whom he’s shooting at. It’s clear that the setting of “The Sniper” affects the plot.

Tomorrow we start working on group and individual paragraphs for two stories.

Journalism students practiced note-taking and interviewing skills before their big interviews, coming up soon.

Homework

• English 8: (fifth period students) complete through fourteen from the work today.
• English I Honors: 
  • read “The Most Dangerous Game” and “Harrison Bergeron” for tomorrow;
  • complete the benchmark test (on the Moodle site) by Monday.