English I students looked at the opening pages of To Kill a Mockingbird to determine how the author is creating a distinctive Southern voice by using ten tricks:

1. Long sentences
2. Diversions
3. Dated language
4. Folksy-sounding language
5. Exaggeration/embellishment
6. Understatement/deprecation
7. Importance of family,
8. Sense of community,
9. Importance of religion,
10. Importance of time, place, and the past

We’ll focus on a few of them tomorrow in more detail. We also had our first karaoke performance for a spot of extra credit:

English 8 students began working on The Diary of Anne Frank. We began with a little drama-based vocabulary

• act
• scene
• stage instructions/directions

We then looked at the opening scene, which is a little confusing because it happens after World War 2 is over.

We’ll finish up scene 1 tomorrow.

Homework

• English 8 Studies: none.
• English I Honors: first draft of all paragraphs for the R&J project are due Friday!