English I students went over their first major writing assignment on “The Cask of Amontillado” and whether or not we can trust the narrative despite the narrator being a confessed murderer. (We can — the “confessed” part is the key.)

Afterward, we began going over our third and final writing assignment for the first unit. Students will be using irony and symbolism to analyze one of two stories.

• ”The Gift of the Magi”
• ”The Necklace”

We began as we always do, working on a common story to get the feel for how we’ll be examining the main story. We’d read “The Blue Stones” earlier this quarter, and that’s how we’ll be practicing our analysis. We determined a few points regarding irony and symbolism in the story:

English 8 students switched Thursday work with Friday so we could continue with Friday inference work and have some more time for students to review our first two stories for the test tomorrow.

Homework

• English 8: 
  • prepare for the test on Friday over our first two stories (Story 1 is here and Story 2 is here);
  • complete the Inference Practice 1 on Google Classroom (as needed);
  • complete Participial Phrase Practice 1 on No Red Ink (as necessary).
• English I Honors: 
  • read “The Necklace” and “The Gift of the Magi” (on the courses site);
  • create a working TS incorporating irony and symbolism about the story “The Blue Stones”