English 8 Strategies students continued with their narratives. We should be completely done with the preparatory work by tomorrow, though many students are already done. We’ll spend next week writing the narratives and revising them.

Fourth period English I Honors students began the final Lord of the Flies writing assignment:

When Piggy faces his violent death, the conch shell shatters into dust. Ralph shortly after that runs into the forest, where he encounters the Lord of the Flies, now a gleaming, white skull. Ralph remarks to himself that it’s as white as the conch shell once was. There is nothing more symbolic in the entire book than the juxtaposition of these two events. What do they symbolize? What does the conch shell represent in this allegory? What is the significance of Ralph’s remark about the whiteness of the skull?

This is the pivotal symbol in the book, the cipher for the whole novel.

Sixth period English I Honors students began a close-reading engagement with a passage from To Kill a Mockingbird that confuses some on the initial reading: the Missionary Society meeting in chapter twenty-four.

Class notes

We’ll continue with the analysis tomorrow.

Homework

• English I Honors: 
  • fourth period students: check the Lord of the Flies unit in Moodle for due dates of the final writing and assessment assignments.
  • sixth period: continue working on the allusions work on the Moodle site.