This Week in Language Arts

The end of the quarter is right around the corner.  Here’s a quick guide to what’s coming up in language arts and social studies over these next two weeks.

The common theme during these weeks is persuasive speaking, whether it takes the form of courtroom testimony or a formal speech.  In language arts, students will present speeches based on their persuasive essay.  Last week, students wrote notecards, and we discussed techniques for effective speeches.  This week, students will practice their speeches in small groups (and, ideally, at home too).  Beginning on Wednesday, students will present their speeches to the whole class.  The will be the last major grade of the semester in language arts.

In social studies, we are preparing for a mock trial based on the events of the Boston Massacre.  Every student will study a role and write answers to direct examination questions.  At the beginning of the last week before the winter break, we'll have a quiz on courtroom terms.  Students should prepare for their roles in the Boston Massacre by studying their questions and role sheets, as well as the courtroom terms.

Book Recommendation: DEAD END IN NORVELT

Dead End in Norvelt stars an awesome kid named Jack Gantos, who finds himself very, very grounded after shooting a gun his father brought back from World War II.  In Jack’s defense, he had no idea the gun was loaded when he aimed at the distant drive-in movie screen for some participatory, non-sanctioned viewing.  On the other hand, Jack’s also a kid who, when his mother asks him, “[D]oes your dad know you have all this dangerous war stuff out?” Jack replies, without skipping a beat, “He always lets me play with it as long as I’m careful,” which, as he himself points out a second later, “wasn’t true.”  In fact, Jack quite clearly recollects his father telling him that “This swag will be worth a bundle of money someday, so keep your grubby hands off it.” 

This book reminded me a little bit of The Teacher’s Funeral, in that it’s set in the midwest, and in a different time period (granted, the two books are set years apart, but it’s all history to the modern reader, especially the modern reader under age sixteen).  It’s funny and sweet, and I think it would appeal to kids who like books with crazy facts in them about everything from war to mummies, as those are just the kinds of facts that appeal to young Jack.  Plus, there’s a bunch of dead people, and obituary writing, and mystery, plenty of bloody noses, and an old plane that might just get off the ground again.  It’s all just kind of great, a book that takes flight from the very first scene, with a little boy and a Japanese gun and a distant drive-in movie screen.   

This Week in Language Arts...

This week in language arts, we'll be working with the rough drafts of the persuasive essays, editing and revising.  Though we often think about writing as a solitary endeavor, I believe that once a draft is complete, the writing process becomes shared.  I tell students that the more readers they receive feedback from the better.  I know that even in graduate school, I could always find something useful from every reader; in critique sessions, that could mean ten or more readers giving me ideas about how to improve my work.
In the beginning of the week, we'll talk about effective critique partners and how to give feedback.  (Here's a handout that summarizes the expectations and steps for critique groups.  And here's a chart students fill out to give one another feedback.)  Students will become editors, responding to each other's work.  I'll read the essays and give feedback too, so that every student will finish the week with a stronger version of his or her essay.  One of my favorite things about being a writing teacher is this: seeing a piece of writing evolve and improve and shine.  This is a great week to witness that process.

Book Recommendation: DELIRIUM

Love is beautiful and wonderful and amazing.  Sometimes.  It is also the root of some of our very deepest pain.  If you could protect yourself from the pain, would you give up the wonders?  Lauren Oliver’s dystopian novel Delirium is about a society that has decided that’s exactly what they want: a nice, even existence with sensible life pairs that are assigned at eighteen, pairings that will never cause either party any pain.  It’s a society that has found a cure for love.  One catch: you don’t get to choose whether or not you want to take the antidote.  It’s required.

Enter Lena Haloway, a seventeen-year-old who has been counting down the days until her eighteenth birthday, the day she will receive the cure.  She lives with the fear that she might catch the disease of love before she gets the antidote, a disease that could jeopardize the life of safety and contentment she’s long seen as her due.  And then, on the day of her evaluation, Lena finds herself saying that Romeo and Juliet is “beautiful” when she’s supposed to say “frightening.”  And then she says that her favorite color is that of the sky “Right before the sun rises…the pale nothing color,” when she’s supposed to say “Blue.”  When a herd of cows painted with the words NOT CURE. DEATH comes storming through the labs, Lena catches a glimpse of a laughing boy, and her world starts to fracture.

I love a book with a great question at its center, and that’s definitely the case with Delirium.  I mean, I love “love,” but I’m not sure I’d say that if I were suffering a broken heart.  Is passion always better than security?  Is freedom better than safety?  Is one perfect kiss worth the pain of loss?  I know what I’d say—and it’s pretty clear where Oliver stands—but I not only followed Lena’s evolution with a rather ravenous zeal, I’m also looking forward to seeing where her decision takes her in the sequel: Pandemonium.

This Week in Language Arts...

This week students will continue to work on their persuasive essays.  They will write outlines and rough drafts.  We'll talk about the importance of a concession paragraph, and students will write concession paragraphs about their topics.  Here's a link to the pages about concession paragraphs in the persuasive essay packet.

This might be a good week to read some of the essays students wrote in previous years such as this one about an ice rink in the valley or this one about gun safety classes in schools.  Reading model essays is a great way to see the big picture as we work through the steps to completing such a major essay.

This Week in Language Arts...

This week students will begin researching and developing arguments for their persuasive essays.  We'll begin with a research overview, reviewing key research concepts such as the parts of books (index, table-of-contents, etc) and types of reference books (encyclopedias, atlases, etc.)  I'll also introduce the key concepts of essay structure.
Then, working with a driving question, students will begin researching their topic and developing a thesis, writing supporting points, and discovering evidence.  We'll be working in the library, but students are encouraged to research at home too.
By the end of this week, students should have completed pages one through eleven in their persuasive essay packets.
On Friday, students will turn in their research overview and their research log (a daily record of a student's research into his or her essay topic).

Due on Friday...

The following assignments are due on Friday, November 2nd:

-Write Around (This was an activity in which students came up with a persuasive topic/question, wrote about their opinion, and passed it to classmates who also responded to the topic.)

-Zinn “Bill of Rights” Analysis
-"Sweet Land of Liberty” Analysis
Links to the assignments are available here.

NaNoWriMo!!!

I'm excited to announce that nineteen student writers have signed up to participate in National Novel Writing Month, otherwise known as NaNoWriMo.  This means that these students have pledged to try and write anywhere from thirty to three-hundred pages of a novel before the end of November.  The excitement has already begun, as many students have gotten a jump start on their novels.  Some have already reached ten percent of their goal!

Students track their progress with stickers on a poster in our classroom.  Tomorrow, all participating students will be given buttons that announce their participation.  (This year's buttons read "Imagination Activated.")  Also, there are incentives for reaching different page-count goals.  Plus, we'll hold an informal Novelist Group every Wednesday during the month of November to discuss what everyone's working on and to share some pages.
In addition, there are many great resources through NaNoWriMo's Young Writer's Program.

This Week in Language Arts: An Introduction to Persuasive Writing

This week in language arts, we'll begin an extensive unit in persuasive writing.  Over the course of the unit, students will analyze and compose persuasive pieces.  As in past years, our classroom will continue a partnership with the Capital City Weekly to publish selected student writing from the Persuasive Writing Unit.  A Student Editorial Board will select essays for publication, so this is an exciting opportunity for students to get their writing out in the world.  Here are links to a few essays published in the past: one about study halls, one about gun safety classes in schools, one about building an ice rink in the valley, and one about laptops in the classroom.

We'll be working on a persuasive essay, using this packet as a guide.  Before we start writing and researching, we'll analyze and discuss a variety of persuasive pieces and topics.  We'll analyze a persuasive piece about the Bill of Rights by Howard Zinn (link to the analysis questions, link to article) and a persuasive essay by Grace Llewellyn (link to analysis questions).  We'll also analyze and discuss something we recite every day: The Pledge of Allegiance (link to analysis questions).

I look forward to the lively discussions and debates ahead!

Book Recommendation: WHEN YOU REACH ME

So when you read a book that won the Newbery Medal, you know that a few people already noticed it and thought it was pretty good.  Still, that’s no guarantee that I’ll love it as they did.  But now that I’ve finally read When You Reach Me, I can say this: they were right.  This is an amazing book.  It deserves every accolade it’s been given.  I’m so glad that it has the shiny gold circle on its cover, because the more people that read this funny, sweet, original book, the better.

When You Reach Me stars Miranda, a New York City native (circa 1978).  Miranda lives with her mom in an apartment on a street they share with a crazy man who sleeps under a mailbox, a friendly shop owner who gives out free Vitamin C, and a gang of intimidating but mostly harmless kids.  (With this last group Miranda follows her mom’s advice: “Don’t laugh, don’t take off running…Do nothing.  Act as if they’re invisible,” and it works pretty well.)  When not swiping office supplies from her job, Miranda’s mom is training for her spot on The $20,000 Pyramid.  And when Miranda’s not assisting with her mom's game-show training, she’s attending sixth grade, losing and making friends, working in a deli (during her forty-five minute lunch break), and trying to track down the person—possibly from the future—who’s leaving her mysterious notes.

The setting—or rather, Miranda’s description of the setting—is one of the (many) awesome things about Rebecca Stead’s novel.  Living in Alaska, far away from the big city, I thoroughly enjoyed Miranda’s casual mention of New York life, from the fact that most sixth-graders leave school for lunch “unless something is going on and they won’t let us, like the first week of school, when there was a man running down Broadway stark naked” to “Mom’s Rules for Life in New York City” (including gems such as “Look ahead.  If there’s someone acting strange down the block, looking drunk or dangerous, cross to the other side of the street, but don’t be obvious about it.  Make it look like you were planning to cross the street all along.”)  What’s more, all the strange details play a part in the mystery at the center of When You Reach Me.  Every detail matters; it’s the kind of book that once you finish, you want to go right back to the start, just to revel in Stead’s craftsmanship.

When You Reach Me is about time-travel and growing up and seeing the story behind a stranger on the street.  It’s about misunderstandings between friends and grandiose scientific theories.  One of my all-time favorite books—Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time—plays a starring role.  And while Madeleine L’Engle, who won the Newbery in 1963, left some big shoes to fill, I think Rebecca Stead steps into those shoes with grace.  Shortly after Stead’s Newbery win was announced, Stead said this about A Wrinkle in Time: "What I love about L'Engle's book now is how it deals with so much fragile inner-human stuff at the same time that it takes on life's big questions.”  Her description could easily be transferred to her own award-winning novel.  Her admiration for L’Engle pours into her own work, and that’s a great thing.  Simply put: When You Reach Me is a delight.

[Stead, Rebecca.  When You Reach Me.  New York: Yearling, 2009.]

This Week in Language Arts...

Welcome to the first week of the second quarter.
This week in language arts, we'll continue to explore sentence patterns and styles.  Students will revise, critique, and finalize paragraphs they started last week.  We'll also review sentence structure and sentence types.  On Friday, students will take a test assessing their understanding of key sentence concepts: identifying sentence parts, and identifying and writing simple, compound, and complex sentences.

This Week in Language Arts

Note: This is the final week of the first quarter.  All first quarter assignments and test/quiz re-takes must be turned in by this Friday, October 19th, at 3:00.

This week in language arts, we'll continue to build our understanding of sentences, exploring a a variety of sentence patterns and styles, from simple sentences to compound-complex sentences.  Some of the materials we'll be using include the following:
Run-ons and Fragments 
Compound and Complex Sentences Review
I can write... (level one, level two, level three)
Simple/Compound/Complex Review
Simple and Compound Sentences: Paragraph

This Week's Assignments...

Below is a list of this week's assignments.  Click on the links to see the assignments.

Weekly Assignments 10/8 - 10/12

Verbals Review

Tricky Sentences Notes & Practice

Tricky Sentences Diagrams

Sentence Structure Vocabulary Review

Compound and Complex Sentences Packet

Book Recommendation: KIKI STRIKE...

Did you know an immense underground city lies beneath a small, Turkish town?  Did you know that when a person lies, her voice often rises and she may hold her head unnaturally still?  Did you ever realize that baby monitors can make excellent spying devices?  Did you know that looking bland can often be the best form of disguise?  What about the fact that if you have a tooth knocked out, you only have thirty minutes to get to a hospital and get the tooth returned to its place before it dies?  Kristen Miller's novel Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City includes these tid-bitty treasures along with information about How to Follow Someone...Without Getting Caught, How to Prepare for Adventure (everything from a compass to chewing gum included in the supplies list), How to Spot A Fake Diamond, and How to Respond When You're Attacked by Wild Animals, Frozen Alive, and/or Bitten By A Rattlesnake.

Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City follows Ananka Fishbein after she discovers an underground city revealed by a sinkhole outside her New York City apartment.  Before Ananka finds the legendary Shadow City, she spent most of her days reading from her parents' immense collection of books on every subject imaginable.  Thus, she's an expert on "at least five subjects" including "1. giant squid 2. human sacrifice among the Aztec and Maya 3. carnivorous plants 4. alien abduction" and "5. Greek mythology."  While uncovering a secret underground city is exciting, Ananka's life really starts turning upside down (in the best way possible) when she meets one of the city's primary protectors: Kiki Strike, a girl who no one seems to realize exists and who seems capable of disappearing at will.  Kiki Strike dresses in black, rides a Vespa, and is in the process of organizing a band of Girl Scout Drop-outs to...well, whether she's organizing them for good or evil is what Ananka needs to find out.

This book is crazy and original and just a ton of fun.  It's like dressing in black and roaming New York city and attending secret midnight balls on islands and meeting Russian princesses and hanging out in underground speakeasies.  Plus, if you've ever wanted to know how to foil a kidnapper, well...just guess where you can find out.

Due on Friday (Weekly Assignments)

The following assignments are due on Friday, October 5th.  Links to the assignments are available here.

Verbals………………………………………………….…………………………                        /5

THE SENTENCE: SUBJECTS AND PREDICATES

Subjects Notes…………………………………….…………………………                        /5

Subjects Practice #1 and #2…………………….…………………………                        /5

Predicates Notes…………………………………………….……………                        /5

Predicates Practice #1 and #2………………….…………………………                        /5

DIAGRAMS

Simple Diagrams (packet/level 1) …………………………………………                        /5

Adjective, Adverb, Preposition Diagrams (packet/level 2) …………………                        /5

Direct Objects Diagrams (packet/level 3, page 1-2) ……………………………                        /5

Predicate Adjective and Nominative Diagrams (packet/level 3, page 3-4)…..                        /5

Indirect Object Diagrams (packet/level 3, page 5-6)……………………………..extra credit

Book Recommendation: CHASING REDBIRD

Spook Hollow.  Sleepy Bear Rock.  Baby Toe Ridge.  Crow Hollow.  Bear Alley Creek.  These are the places of Sharon Creech’s novel Chasing Redbird.  More than any other book I’ve read recently, Chasing Redbird led me down a trail and into a place both strange and spooky yet oddly familiar.  It’s a trail blazed by thirteen-year-old Zinny Taylor, who uncovers a few stones of an ancient trail and decides to spend her summer discovering the rest.  Luckily, she invites the readers along, and from the first page, we realize that’s an honor.  After all, Zinny won’t allow her parents or any of her multitude of siblings or even her handsome—though repeatedly rejected—suitor Jake to come along on her adventure.  (On the other hand, she wouldn't mind a horse.)

Still, Zinny’s not alone on her expedition.  Not at all.  She’s accompanied by the ghosts of her beloved Aunt Jessie and her cousin Rose who was her best friend until Rose died of whooping cough at age four.  And Zinny's self-doubts follow her along the trail as well.  She’s not sure if she’s “Zinny Taylor: Murderer” or “Zinny Taylor: Explorer” or “Zinny Taylor: Thief” or “Zinny Taylor: Detective.”  She’s not really sure who she is at all.

There is so much to love about Chasing Redbird.  There are those places along the trail with their beauty and their legends.  There’s earnest Jake Boone, who chases Zinny by stealing things for her, despite her repeated rejections.  (Zinny thinks Jake must be interested in her older sister May.)  There’s Zinny’s big, messy family with its love and sadness and charming chaos.  There’s Zinny’s Uncle Nate, a man who carries a stick to beat away snakes (and the occasional coiled rope) and who dances with his wife long after she’s passed away (Uncle Nate: Make That Company Jump!).  There’s the freed turtle in the creek and the cardinal who finally finds his mate and flowers that grow from eggshells (kind of).  And there’s Zinny herself: stubborn and earnest and crazy and brave and difficult and wonderful.

And there are moments like this, when Zinny’s waiting for dark on the first night camping out on her trail:

…there was no moment of dark.  Instead, what I saw was the most subtle shading in the sky, a gradual deepening of color, so gradual that you could not actually see the changes, but could only think, Is that the color it was a moment ago?  Isn’t it deeper now?  Is it dark yet?  Is this dark?  Soon I noticed the white specks of stars, but still they weren’t draped on a black sky, still it wasn’t dark.  And although I watched intently, I did not see the moment of dark, and I wondered if maybe it wasn’t a moment at all. (156-7)

Capturing the reason why I fell in love with Chasing Redbird is a little like capturing the moment of dark.  The fact that it remains elusive makes it all the more true.

[Creech, Sharon.  Chasing Redbird.  New York: HarperCollins, 1997.]

This Week in Language Arts...

This week in language arts we'll be learning about sentence structure.  Students will learn to identify the parts of the sentence: subjects and predicates (simple and complete).  We'll unpack the structure of sentences and discuss how sentence variety can enhance writing.  Some of the assignments we'll work on include the following:
Subjects and Predicates Notes and Practice
Simple Diagrams
Sentences Writing Prompts
Adjective, Adverb, and Preposition Diagrams
Tricky Sentences
Subjects and Predicates Review
Direct Objects, Predicate Adjective, Predicate Nominative Diagrams
We'll also learn to define and identify verbals (words that look like verbs but act like other parts of speech: Verbals Introduction and Practice

Links to Weekly Assignments

With mid-quarter conferences, it's a good time to check the first half of the quarter for any missing assignments.  Specific missing assignments are listed in Power School, just click the score of "Weekly Assignments" for the date of an incomplete score, and there will be a message listing missing or incomplete assignments from that week.  Almost all assignments are available on the website.  Here are links (or the links to the links) to the various weekly assignments so far:
Weekly Assignments 8/20-8/24
Weekly Assignments 8/27-8/31
Weekly Assignments 9/4-9/7
Weekly Assignments 9/10-9/14
Weekly Assignments 9/17-9/21
All notes are available here.

Parts of Speech Review Guide

With the Parts of Speech Mastery Test coming up on Wednesday, here's a study guide:

Parts of Speech Study Guide

Nouns and Pronouns

Nouns and Pronouns are people, places, things, and ideas.

            NOUNS:

                        a/an/the   NOUN           

                        Proper Nouns= Peru, Floyd Dryden, Joe

                        Ideas & Qualities (I have   NOUN            )

            PRONOUNS;

                        can't put "the" in front of it (she, he, they, it, everyone…)

Verbs

ACTION VERBS- action, you can DO it

LINKING VERBS- in describing sentences, linking verbs link the subject to the description, state-of-being verbs

            (SUBJECT   linking VERB            DESCRIPTION)

            (common linking verbs: is, am, are, were, was, be, being, been)

HELPING VERBS- make a verb phrase (Is the following word a verb?  Is the word part of a verb phrase?

             I could run.

            You did run.

            She may run.

            Tom might be sad.

            The rabbit could be happy.

            I am running.

            I am being silly.

            I have walked.

            He does walk.

Adjectives

Adjectives modify nouns and pronouns (which noun/pronoun, what kind of noun/pronoun, how many nouns/pronouns)

Adverbs

Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and adverbs (where the verb happens, when the verb happens, how the verb happens, how often the verb happens)

(HOW adjective-y or adverb-y)

Prepositions

Start a PHRASE that adds information

Try putting the word in one of these blanks:

                                     the log   or                                 dinner

Examples of Prepositions: above, about, before, behind, during, over, under, up, down, with, to, through, on…

Conjunctions

Conjunctions connect words, phrases, and clauses

            FANBOYS: for, and, neither/nor, but/because, or, yet, so

Interjections

Interjections express a feeling, say yes or no, indicate a hesitation, or call attention with a single word (Oh! Hey! Yes.  Wow!  Ouch…)

This Week in Language Arts...

This week in language arts, we’ll keep talking about prepositions.  Also, we'll discuss the final two parts of speech: conjunction and interjections.  We’ll be reviewing al eight parts of speech in a variety of ways over the upcoming week, through individual assignments, projects, and games.  Students will be able to choose a Parts of Speech Project from a variety of options, including the following: creating a video teaching about the parts of speech (I've seen some great ones over the years!), writing and illustrating an instructional book about the parts of speech, making a parts of speech game, analyzing the parts of speech in the pages of a novel, and more.  Some of the materials we'll use this week include the following:

Prepositions Writing Prompts

Nouns through Prepositions Review

Conjunctions and Interjections Notes and Practice

If you're looking for some online ways to review the parts of speech, the following two sites have games to do exactly that:

Grammar Ninja

Grammar Gorillas

They're a little goofy, but they're great reviews, especially as we look ahead to next week and the cumulative parts of speech assessment.

Book Recommendation: DIVERGENT

If you liked The Hunger Games, and you're looking for a new book, look no further than the dystopian awesomeness of Veronica Roth’s Divergent.  Divergent feels like the successor to The Hunger Games trilogy; it's the perfect book for those who are missing Katniss and Peeta and Gale (while, perhaps, waiting for the movie sequel).  Like The Hunger Games, Divergent introduces readers to a futuristic world set right in the center of the present-day United States, and it follows a teenaged girl who moves into the position of hero, if sometimes reluctantly.  One of the cool things about Roth’s novel is the set up of the society, a society confined to the city formerly known as Chicago.  The society is divided into five factions, and each faction has a different strength, or value.  There’s Candor, with the virtue of honesty, and Amity, whose people value peace above all else.  The Erudite believe in the importance of intelligence; they devote their lives to learning and research.  Dressed in black with tattoos and piercings, the Dauntless show their value of bravery by jumping from moving trains.  And then there’s the faction Divergent’s protagonist, Tris, grew up in: Abnegation: those who value selflessness above all else.

When characters in this world turn sixteen, they get to choose to stay or leave the faction they were raised in.  The teenagers take a test that indicates which faction is the best fit, but the final choice is up to the individual.  Then again, in the world of Divergent, one can never quite be sure where a choice might lead, or if there are not as many choices as one might have thought.  That’s certainly what Tris discovers, as she not only questions the faction she signed up for, but who she is and how her world works.

I love reading books that have a rip-roaring good story—and Divergent has that, it’s fast-paced and fun—but I also love books that make me think, and Roth does exactly that, posing the questions to her readers that she poses to her protagonist: Which faction would you choose?  What are your greatest strengths?  Are they also your weaknesses?  And while she starts to answer the questions in Divergent, she promises to keep us thinking, and wondering, in the next book of the trilogy: Insurgent.

This Week in Language Arts...

This week we'll explore adverbs and prepositions.  Last week we talked about how adjectives can make our writing lush and descriptive, but they can sometimes be overused (which is probably why Mark Twain once said, "When you see an adjective, kill it").  Just as strong, specific nouns can eliminate unnecessary adjectives, strong verbs can help writers avoid unnecessary adverbs.  (I had a writing teacher who taught me to question every adverb.)  Of course, we need prepositional phrases, those phrases that show the relationship between various nouns and pronouns in a sentence.  A preposition trick I learned once was to think of prepositional phrases as anywhere a squirrel can go in relation to a hollow tree (up the tree, in the tree, on the tree, over the tree, under the tree, through the tree...).
Some of the materials we'll use this week include the following:
Adverbs Notes and Practice
Nouns through Adverbs Review
Adverbs Writing Prompts
Prepositions Notes and Practice
Your Choice Prepositions
Prepositions Writing Prompts

Due on Friday 9/7

The following assignments are due in tomorrow's Friday Packet:

Adjectives Notes…..………………...……………………………_________/5

Adjectives Practice…………………..………………………..…._________/5

Your Choice Adjectives (book or paragraph)…..………….…..…._________/10

Adjectives Review…………………..………………………..…._________/5

 

 Adjectives Writing Prompt……………………………………._________/5

TOTAL WEEKLY ASSIGNMENTS SCORE………________/30

Note: This reflects a little change from our original plan outlined in the "This Week in Language Arts" post.  We spent a little more time with the creative projects and writing, and we also went into some more details about adjectives, discussing the differences between positive, comparative, and superlative adjectives. 

Book Recommendation: THE GREAT WIDE SEA

Hatchet.  My Side of the Mountain.  Island of the Blue Dolphins.  I’ve been waiting for a great survival story to arrive, following in the footsteps of these classics.  So when I saw The Great Wide Sea on the shelves of a Bainbridge Island bookstore, I snapped it up and went for a sail.

What would you do if, in the wake of tragedy, your father announced that he's going to sell your house, get rid of nearly all of your possessions, move your family aboard a thirty-foot-long sailboat, and head out to the islands of Bermuda?  The Great Wide Sea is the debut novel of M.H. Herlong, and it follows three brothers—Ben, Dylan, and young Jerry—on a wild ride through the Atlantic Ocean, from the Bahamas to the seas south of Bermuda.  I grew up sailing, and Herlong’s passion for all things sail is evident from the first chapter.  (According to the author note, he’s sailed many of the areas where the story takes place.)

If you’re thinking that life without classrooms and cars and computers sounds pretty nice…well, the beginning of the trip does have many idyllic moments:

At one island, we gathered lobster just like the Bahamians did.  At another, we watched sharks cruising after a fishing boat.  At another, we found a coconut and ate it…Each island was small and perfect.  Each one was our anchorage for days and days.” (115)

But all the while a conflict between Ben and his father is simmering, and occasionally erupting.  Both of them are reeling from the sudden death of Ben’s mom, and Ben’s increasingly frustrated with his father’s erratic and dictatorial behavior.  But it’s the disappearance of the boys’ father one night in the middle of the ocean that really sets the novel in motion.  The three brothers must survive a wicked storm, a shipwreck, and life on an island somewhere in the Bahamas.

It’s the combination of these conflicts—the clashes with his dad, the loss of his mom, the storm, the shipwreck, the suffering of his brothers he’s powerless to alleviate—that nearly drives Ben over the edge.  But The Great Wide Sea is as much about pressing on as about the struggle.  As Ben explains,

The thing about life is that it goes on.  You wake up and there is the sun like always.  There is your own body with bad breath and bruises and a headache.  You have to pee.  You have to get a drink.  No matter what happened the day before, you wake up and there is life and you have to do something about it. (173)

This paragraph gets to the root of any great survival story.  It’s not just about surviving the elements, it’s about surviving all the other twists life might throw at you.  Maybe that’s why survival stories will always hold an important place in literature.  They remind us of our power to be extraordinary, to find courage when we feel emptied and battered, to rise above any of the storms life may throw at us, whatever form they may take.

(Herlong, M.H.  The Great Wide Sea.  New York: Puffin Books, 2010.)

This Week in Language Arts...

This week we'll be studying adjective and adverbs.  Some of the materials we'll use include
the following:
Adjectives Notes and Practice (for notes see here)
Your Choice Adjectives
Adjective Writing Prompts
Adverbs Notes and Practice (for notes see here)
Review
I hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend, and I look forward to another week of learning with you.

Due on Friday 8/31

The following assignments are due tomorrow, Friday, August 31.  Links to the specific assignments are available on the "This Week in Language Arts" Post from Sunday, August 26th.

VERBS PACKET:

Verbs Notes…..……………………...……………………………_________/5

Practice 1 (Circle Action Verbs)…..………………………..…._________/5

Practice 2 (Circle Linking Verbs)…..………………….…..…._________/5

Practice 3 (Underline Verbs)…..…………….………….…..…._________/5

Labeling Sentences…………………...………………….…..…._________/5

VERBS Writing Prompt…………………………………………._________/5

Nouns, Pronouns, and Verbs Review……………………..…._________/5