MARCH UPDATE

Every day that is born into the world comes
like a burst of music and rings the whole day through,
and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.”
Thomas Carlyle

Sixth Grade
In March we move from our study of the novel to non-fiction essays! We will be reading about a snowball fight from Annie Dillard, a rattlesnake hunt with Ross Allen and a personal favorite for students, James Thurber’s essay “The Night the Bed Fell!” We will focus on becoming more critical readers by learning the tools to evaluate this genre. Parts of speech have been viewed and reviewed and we move into the study of their functions within the sentence structure. In Vocabulary we used graphic organizers to review sixty words in a cumulative review.

Seventh Grade
We caught that fish in The Old Man and the Sea and this week we will finish our novel. With success in failure, stoical perseverance, and always courage, Santiago refused to give into the challenges that the world threw at him. He is the seminal “code hero” symbolizing grace under pressure. I think Hemingway would be pleased to see students of 2010 find the meaning in his novella. We now move into a most unusual docu-drama novel, Nothing But the Truth by Avi. Written in script form, it explores the manipulation of truth in our world today. What is the truth and how can one be sure? It is a novel that resonates with today’s teens and always creates a strong response.

Eighth Grade
Poetry, the distillation of emotions, images, and thoughts into the most elegant of language, is our next genre. We live in such a visual world, so we begin by just listening to poet laureates for the simple pleasure of their words and how they connect in sound and rhythm, and meter, and ever so much more. Poetry is a breath of freshness, the art of specificity and no student fails to respond to the depth of meaning in so few words. We begin with Emily Dickinson’s poem below…and end with original poems of our own.

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.

This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!