First and fifth periods had a final day to prepare for their presentations on Mary Todd Lincoln, which will take place tomorrow.

Second and fourth periods went over the homework, which involved an examination of the phrases in this sentence:

To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine — who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal struggle — I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers- pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.

First we marked some — though not all — of the phrases in this rather long sentence.

Phrases

Afterward, we took a detailed look at how all of the phrases worked together, how they were related.

Sentence parsing

Afterward, we returned to Great Expectations and went through the first chapter. Students all agreed that my reading made it easier for them to understand what’s happening in the book. With that in mind, I recommended to students to download an audiobook version if Great Expectations from either iTunes or LibreVox.org.

Homework

• First and fifth periods: complete the online writing assignment by Thursday. If you’re unable to complete it online, you can do it by hand. The assignment is:
  

  We make choices every day. Are some choices more important than others?

  Think about the choices you make throughout the day. Some are big; some are small. Some affect your whole day; some affect only the few seconds after you make the choice. Some choices have consequences that build on other consequences; other choices have consequences that seem unconnected to anything else.

  What do you do when you’re faced with a choice? How do you made a decision?

  To answer this question, you’ll be writing three Schaffer model paragraphs that deal with the following:

  • What makes a choice significant/important or insignificant/unimportant?
  • How do you go about making significant choices?
  • How do you go about making insignificant/unimportant choices?

• Second and fourth periods:
  • Read chapters one and two of Great Expectations;
  • Complete the 6-5-4-3-2-1 on Dickens by
    • viewing again the Dickens biography as necessary;
    • playing the “Surviving Dickens’ London” game;
  • Parse the following sentence as we did in class today:
    

    At such a time I found out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond, was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.