First period continued with the Diary of Anne Frank projects, with the third group presenting their portion of the first act. We continued looking at character development and practicing backing up our conjectures with textual evidence.

Second and fourth periods looked at the importance of connotation in poetry — it is, in essence, the heart of poetry. We began by examining the different connotations of words that have relatively similar denotations.

Turning to specific poetry, we examined one of the greatest poems of the twentieth century, Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays“. (This link also includes audio of Hayden himself reading the poem.) We compared it with a “revision” a former creative writing professor of mine had created to show the importance of connotation.

Fifth period continued with the Anne Fraank presentations, with group four showing us one of the most important scenes in the whole play. Students also began looking at the character of Anne in some detail, after some scaffolded practice with Mr. and Mrs. Van Daan as well as Mr. Dussel.

Homework

• First period: review vocabulary for quiz Friday.
• Second and fourth periods: begin the anthology project.
• Fifth period: complete first characteristic of Anne with two pieces of textual evidence.