Hooray for a great week!

I'm quite proud of the progress you've made with our short story unit. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the work you're currently doing -- small group collaborative discussions about a text, intentional annotations, strategies for inferring meaning, some pretty awesome Socratic seminars, and a creative project meant to extend your understanding. 

A cherry on top, a formative assessment dealing with thematic complexities. Go team. 

Additionally, we welcomed Miss Carder this week! She's lovely and smart and I'm quite excited to be to hosting her. Please make her feel welcome and continue to be your awesome selves. 

Here are the handouts from the week: 

Picture This freeze frame 

Bananafish assessment 

*Check back soon for bananafish freeze frames! 

Last week, we got after our anchor story, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" by J.D. Salinger. It's the most challenging and demanding story we've read to date. It's deeply weird and a bit disconcerting. 

We spent at least one day inferring meaning from important sentences from the text. You collaborated with your small groups to suss out what the sentences might tell you about character, setting, situation, and conflict. It was a nice day of thinking and discussion. 

Otherwise, it took a couple of days to get through the reading before we began the A Perfect Day for Analysis activity, which requires you to "claim" one aspect of this story to closely examine. 

This week, we're returning to Bananafish and getting into a seminar, a lit analysis activity, and an iPad photo challenge. 

This week, we also welcome our new student teacher Miss Carder! Please make her feel welcome and show her your awesomeness.