First and fifth periods began a new unit with the thematic question, “What is a hero?” Our primary texts for the quarter are Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl and its dramatic adaptation, The Diary of Anne Frank. We began by writing in our “diaries” — informal response journals — about the character John from Nightjohn and what qualities we admired about him. We’ll be using these all quarter, and the list of topics (for makeup work) is here.

First period hero notes

Afterward, we conducted a written conversation (a group of four students share thoughts in writing) to determine the characteristics, actions, and specific examples of heroism as well as some negative, non-examples. Students then worked in groups to create Frayer diagrams defining “hero” based on their written conversation and further oral conversation.

First period Frayer diagram

Second and fourth periods began the second half of our selected readings of the Odyssey. Odysseus has made it to Ithaca but he’s not yet emerged triumphantly, so to speak. After going over homework, we worked on the differences between summarizing and paraphrasing

Second period notes

In groups, students worked to paraphrase lines 1010-1019 of the selection, when Telemachus expresses doubt that the stranger is his father, Odysseus.

Homework

• First and fifth periods: none.
• Second and fourth periods:
  • work on group-decided portion of paraphrase lines
  • read the sections entitled “The Beggar and the Faithful Dog” and “The Test of the Great Bow” (pages 1083-1093)