English 8 students worked on completing their Schaffer discussion from last week after going over the graded effective readers’ skills work from last week. Of course they started with the article of the week.

English I students went over their workshopped paragraphs about “The Most Dangerous Game,” determining what went well and what needed improving. Afterward, we turned our attention to the opening passage of “The Cask of Amontillado” after determining the difficulties students had with the opening.

I gave them three points to remember when reading these older, more challenging texts:

1. Be aware of inverted sentences (OSV as opposed to SVO).
2. Use punctuation to break sentences into smaller chunks of meaning.
3. Be aware of earlier writers’ tendency to lapse into philosophical (or pseudo-philosophical) discourse on things like the nature of revenge in the middle of a story.

Homework

• English 8: complete the Socratic Seminar self-evaluation.
• English I Honors: 
  • read a summary of “The Cask of Amontillado” before reading the story again;
  • find a recording of someone reading it on YouTube and follow along as you listen.