In Writing class, each student wrote a brief journal entry (something we will be doing periodically) about what they want from their educations. This was an opportunity for the students to reflect on their long-term goals. It also gave me a chance to get to know everyone a little better, as well as discover a little about their writing styles and abilities.
We also began a project that will be ongoing throughout the school year. Any time that students are finished with their writing assignments earlier than their classmates, I wanted to have a relevant project for them to work on. Our spare time project for the year was inspired by our study of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin last year. We learned then that Benjamin Franklin taught himself to write using some intriguing methods. He would read a selection of beautiful, classical writing, and then re-write it in purposefully poor language, as badly as possible. He would put that away for a few weeks, and then, using only his poor version as reference, attempt to re-write the beautiful selection. Franklin commented that on some occasions, he was pleasantly surprised to see that his final revision was better than the original!
In this vein, each student is given a book that is very simply written, and while good reading practice, not beautiful or meaningful literature. Their assignment is to re-write that book using rich, beautiful language. It should be a lot of fun to see what the students can come up with!
We have had a lot of fun in our Literature classes. The concept of narration (a student retelling a paragraph or page of a book after it has been read aloud) was quickly understood by the students who are new to Flint. In Mrs. Roy's class, we began Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, and have really enjoyed it so far. Mr. Flint's boys began Edgar Allen Poe's Tales of Mystery And Terror. The first story in that collection is Ligeia. The boys are impatiently waiting to discover how Ligeia is a scary story, because so far it has only been about love :)
For Coach Hallford's boys, we have begun Frankenstein, and the class has been intrigued by the author's device of narrative letters to introduce the story. The plot of the story did not begin where they expected, and we are enjoying learning how different the book is from the more familiar movie versions.
My class has begun Johnny Tremaine for literature, and we are really enjoying the descriptive language of the book. We completed the first chapter, and the class illustrated it. Most chose to depict the loft that Johnny shares with his fellow apprentices.
In all of the literature classes, we begin each lesson with a few minutes of recitation. Each class is memorizing a poem, and we take a little time to learn a new line each day.
I am really pleased with all the classes, and I'm very proud of my class for adjusting so quickly to all the changes that joining the upper school presents. They are doing a great job! Next week we will begin our first picture study, which should be a really fun project for the afternoons.
I hope everyone has a great weekend!
God bless,
Mrs. Hallford
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