Effective readers do a lot of things without even thinking about it. It’s as if their brains are divided: half the brain engaged with reading; the other half is monitoring comprehension, connecting to prior knowledge, commenting on the text, making predictions. These skills are especially important for tough, older texts. English 8 students began just such a text today, so we applied our understanding of antecedents to start making some sense of the text.

English I Honors students finished up act three with the powerful confrontation between Capulet and Juliet. The screw of the conflict is now so tightened that it is stripped; there is no way back.

We also looked briefly at the end of class at gerunds.

Homework

• English 8 Studies: none.
• English I Honors: 
  • work on gerunds and prepositions at Moodle;
  • continue practice at IXL if the above isn’t sufficient;
  • complete the first two connections for “Decoration Day” for the Romeo and Juliet soundtrack project;
  • re-read the beginning of 3.5 to find
    • the use of the light/dark metaphor;
    • the mirroring of the balcony scene;
    • the foreshadowing about the grave.