English I

Students in third and fourth periods worked on tone in poetry, looking at a lovely poem by Billy Collins called “The Lanyard.” We didn’t quite get to the tonal question as we were working on establishing a basic understanding of how the poem functions (i.e., what’s physically going on in the poem). We came to the conclusion that the speaker is having something like writer’s block in the first stanza, which leads him to look through the dictionary. He sees the word “lanyard” and like the narrator in Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past when he takes a spoonful of tea with madeleine crumbs in it, the speaker in the poem is thrust into the past. Toward the end of the poem, the poem returns to the present.

English 8

After going over the article of the week a bit

we returned to our work with Nightjohn. Today’s focus was on chapter three and employing effective readers’ skills once again for our It Says/I Say engagement:

Afterward, students worked on the new chapter and its accompanying It Says/I Say engagement.

Homework

• English 8 Studies: none.
• English I Honors: 
  • determine what the “gift” is in the final stanza of “The Lanyard”;
  • prepare for the parts of speech test;
  • optional practice for the parts of speech test:
    • Moodle practice
    • Kahoot 1
    • Kahoot 2
    • Gimkit