English 8 worked on inferring about a text:

Every day after work Paul took his muddy boots off on the steps of the front porch. Alice would have a fit if the boots made it so far as the welcome mat. He then took off his dusty overalls and threw them into a plastic garbage bag; Alice left a new garbage bag tied to the porch railing for him every morning. On his way in the house, he dropped the garbage bag off at the washing machine and went straight up the stairs to the shower as he was instructed. He would eat dinner with her after he was “presentable,” as Alice had often said.

Using this text alone, students were to make inferences about what Paul’s job was. We worked together on this first exercise and came up with a rationale like this:

Paul is a farmer. The reason I know this is because the text says he has muddy boots. This proves my point because farmers work in the dirt, and if it’s been raining, his boots would be muddy. Another reason I know this is because the text also says he wears dusty overalls. This proves my point because it’s usually farmers who wear overalls, and these are dusty overalls, which shows he’s not just wearing them because he likes how they look but instead is working in them.

We’ll be doing one of these a week for most of the third quarter.

English I students finished up the final parts of the friar’s soliloquy that we didn’t examine last week:

We determining the parallelism within the lines “For nought so vile” and “For aught so good” which then echoes in “Virtue itself turns vice” with “and vice sometimes…” — a complicated passage. Afterward, we watched scenes 4-6 of act 2 to give kids some experience watching to Shakespeare without having the text in front of them for reference.  The class recording for English I is available here. (You’ll have to be logged into your GCS account to access it.)

Homework

• English 8: students who have not corrected their hero essay need to have it done by Thursday.
• English I Honors: 
  • read 2.3-2.6;
  • begin working on the study guide for these.