English 8 students continued working on their cumulative first-quarter writing assessment in which they analyzed the author’s use of language in creating an effective voice for the narrator of Nightjohn. Today we worked on the hook, which should echo both the theme of the essay as a whole and the thesis statement, which we created yesterday.

English I students worked on their practice poem for their test. Students will be annotating a new poem as part of the test, so we’re working on something similar in preparation.

The test, which will be Tuesday 26 October, consists of 25 questions plus the marked text of one poem. The questions are as follows:

• 12 questions about definitions and figurative language
• 4 questions about tone
• 9 questions dealing with analyzing poems

These questions come from poems we’ve already studied in class as well as new 8 poems, including one Shakespearean sonnet. The new poems are all similar in one way or another to poems we’ve already studied.

I also provided students with several poems to practice their analytic skills.

• Elizabeth Bishop “The Fish”
• Elizabeth Bishop “Filling Station”
• William Merredith “The Illiterate”
• Yusef Komunyakaa “The Tree”
• Jim Daniels “American Cheese”
• Debora Greger “The Poetry of Bad Weather”
• Denise Levertov “Intrusion”

You can find all of these poems at the Poetry Foundation website or by simply searching the title and the author.

Homework

• English 8: 
  • work on AOW as needed;
  • work on Nightjohn writing project as needed;
  • work on No Red Ink as needed.
• English I Honors: 
  • work on AOW as needed;
  • study for the test (study guide on Google Classroom);
  • work on No Red Ink as needed.